Crohn's disease: Nottingham man spends seven years "exhausted" by bowel disease

For seven years a Nottingham business owner has been left "exhausted" by flare-ups caused by Crohn's disease.

John Tarr, 59, has spent the better part of a decade living with Crohn's disease, which causes debilitating bowel problems. Symptoms of Crohn's can include pain, diarrhoea, tiredness and blood in your poo – but other parts of the body can also be affected.

A study last year found that more than half a million people in the UK have Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis.

John said: "With Crohn’s disease, it comes and goes in flare ups. I’d go into remission and have nothing, then all of a sudden it would just come back and get me and I wouldn’t be able to leave the house, I’d want to go to the toilet all the time and I’d just feel incredibly uncomfortable.

"I was in so much pain and absolutely exhausted, like the energy had been zapped right out of me.

"One treatment involved going to the hospital and sitting there for three-hour infusions of auto-immune system suppressing drugs to stop your body attacking itself, which is what Crohn's is. But when we went into Covid, taking drugs to suppress my immune system was obviously not the right thing to do, I had to sprint away if I heard someone coughing.

“I'd been self-injecting every two weeks for about three years with that, then had some awful oral tablets which were chemotherapy drugs. They did keep the Crohn’s away, but they just knocked me sideways."

In severe cases, the inflammation can lead to bowel obstruction and those suffering from the disease are at greater risk of colon and small bowel cancer. The precise causes of the disease are unknown, but thought to be a combination of genetic, environmental, immune and bacterial factors.

For the past 10 months, John has been taking low dose naltrexone (LDN) after a prescription from Bodyline, which helps to regulate the body's immune system.

"I have a better standard of living and I can finally go travelling," John said. "I can just jump on a plane and go anywhere, whereas before I really had to consider how Crohn’s would affect me. I’m not nervous anymore, I can do anything."

Next week (1-7 December) is Crohn's and Colitis Awareness Week in the UK, with the Crohn's and Colitis UK charity looking to make people more alert to the potential symptoms of the diseases. The charity says that most people are diagnosed between the ages of 15 and 40 – meaning it has a significant impact on their working life.

It can also take more than half a decade to be diagnosed with Crohn's or ulcerative colitis, with it commonly being misdiagnosed as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).