Colitis Led Mesha Moinirad to a Stoma Bag. He Made It His Life’s Work.

In May, Mesha Moinirad changed his stoma bag on live morning television. “I changed my stoma bag live on national television,” he wrote on TikTok on May 13, 2026, thanking ITV’s This Morning “for giving me the opportunity to share my lived experience and show what it is really like to live with a stoma.” He hoped it would “remind others that there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.” Three days later he posted the clip to YouTube under a plain title: “This week, I made my live TV debut.”

Moinirad posts as @mr.colitiscrohns to 4.8 million followers on TikTok and 1.59 million subscribers on YouTube, both read logged out on October 17, 2026. He is a UK personal trainer who lives with an ileostomy after ulcerative colitis, a product designer and a campaigner; he is not a doctor or a nurse. On Friday, October 16, he marked a milestone with a full bag change on camera: “I’ve been living with an ileostomy for 10 years,” he wrote under it. Gut Health Times read his posts, his website, his podcast appearances and the patient charity guidance behind his condition to tell the story of the decade.

The turn: Three years of medicines, then a decision he made himself

His story, as he tells it on his website, starts with an emergency: “At the age of 23 I suffered a burst appendix.” The description of a July 2026 episode of Back Your Body, a Holland & Barrett podcast on which he was the guest, puts it starkly: he was given “just a 20% chance of survival following undiagnosed appendicitis.” Ulcerative colitis, a form of inflammatory bowel disease, followed. His home page says he was “studying a degree in High Performance Coaching and Nutrition” when he had the operation.

“I found living with the condition isolating and often debilitating,” he writes, “trialling numerous medications unsuccessfully over the course of three years and ultimately making the decision to have a stoma bag fitted.” That sentence is the hinge of everything that came after, and the next one on the page reads like relief: “Having a bag had such a positive impact on my quality of life I started blogging under the alias Mr Colitis Crohns.”

The audience: A blog, then a billion views of one bag change

The blog became a channel. His YouTube account dates from May 2, 2018, and its About page now counts 1,541,454,671 views across 646 videos. On TikTok he has posted 1,154 videos and collected 79.9 million likes. The format that built it is the one he took onto live television: the bag, the stoma beneath it and the routine, shown plainly. On October 8 he reposted the clip he credits with the start of it all: “This video alone had 1 billion+ views across my channels. It’s where it all began!” That total is his own count across platforms; we could not add it up independently.

The tone of the feed is calm, and often funny. “The bag that saved my life,” he captioned one September post; “Still climbing,” another. Under the ten-year video he set out the aim in a sentence: “Living with a stoma doesn’t have to stop you from living a full, active life.” He wants viewers to see that “there’s no need to be embarrassed about something that keeps us alive.” His YouTube About page says he is an ambassador for Coloplast, “who make my medical supplies”; some of his posts are paid partnerships, labelled AD.

The science: What the colon does, and what changes without it

Crohn’s & Colitis UK says at least 1 in every 233 people in the UK live with ulcerative colitis, in which parts of the large bowel become swollen, inflamed and ulcerated, causing diarrhoea, blood in the stool, tiredness and pain. Most people are diagnosed between 20 and 40. The charity is direct that “right now, there is no cure for Colitis,” and that medicines or surgery can keep it under control. Surgery is the less common road: around 7 in 100 people with the condition need an operation to remove the colon within five years of diagnosis, and around 10 in 100 within ten, fewer than twenty years ago.

When the colon is removed, the end of the small bowel, the ileum, can be brought out through the abdomen as a stoma, with a bag worn over it: an ileostomy. The colon’s quiet job is to take back water and salt, so without it more of both leave the body. That is why hospitals use a home-mixed drink called St Mark’s solution for people with a high-output stoma. The NHS Specialist Pharmacy Service says the mixture provides 90 mmol of sodium per litre, and that people with intestinal failure are advised to avoid plain water when thirsty, because hypotonic drinks such as water, tea and coffee can draw sodium and fluid into the intestine.

The work: A belt, a sachet and a coaching programme

The products came out of his own routine. “I got tired of compromising on what I wanted to wear because of my stoma bag,” he wrote on September 22. “So I designed the belt I wished had existed from the start.” The belt, he says, “has given me back a sense of control and confidence, whether I’m training, swimming, travelling or just going about my day.” His shop lists it at £85 and describes it as support for people with a stoma, abdominal scarring or hernias.

The second product answers the salt problem above. His Hydrostomate page calls it “a specialist rehydration drink for people who don’t have a colon,” says it is based on St Mark’s solution, and says it was “designed by a patient advocate alongside colorectal experts.” It comes as effervescent sachets, 14 to a box, listed at £15.99. The page does not publish an ingredient panel, so we have not compared the formula with the hospital recipe; the dose advice on the page defers to a doctor, dietitian, pharmacist or stoma nurse.

The third is coaching. His Life Beyond Illness programme runs online over Zoom, and the page says he has been “a personal trainer and rehabilitation coach for over 7 years” and asks anyone with an existing condition to get their doctor’s permission first. In a July 2024 post he said he had “successfully coached hundreds of people with colorectal based problems.”

Where to find him: TikTok first, YouTube for the long version

The short, daily version of Moinirad’s life is on TikTok, where his bio reads “Educate & support those suffering with chronic illness.” The long version, including the ten-year bag change step by step, is on YouTube. The products and the coaching programme are on mrcolitiscrohns.com. Ten years in, he puts the bag in its place in one line from October 12: it is not the story, it is “the reason the story gets to continue.”

How we checked this: Sources and method

Every count in this piece was read logged out on October 17, 2026: his TikTok profile (4.8 million followers, 79.9 million likes, 1,154 videos) and his YouTube channel (1.59 million subscribers, 1,541,454,671 views, 646 videos). His Instagram could not be read logged out that day, so no Instagram figure is printed. Quotes come from his own TikTok captions (May 13, September 22, 27 and 29, October 8 and 12, 2026, and July 1, 2024), his YouTube video of October 16, 2026, and the My Story, home, belt, Hydrostomate and coaching pages of mrcolitiscrohns.com, all read the same day. The survival figure is from the July 2, 2026 episode description of the Back Your Body podcast. His own pages give different dates for his surgery, so we print the ten years he gave on October 16 rather than a year. Condition figures are from Crohn’s & Colitis UK (last full review October 2024) and the NHS Specialist Pharmacy Service (updated June 2024). The billion-view total and the coaching numbers are his own. Gut Health Times has no relationship with Mesha Moinirad or his businesses. This article is educational, describes what the cited sources say, and is not medical advice.