Diarrhoea and MJ

[TreadLightly3]

I’m coming to the end of my 3rd month on MJ and having lost over 2 stone I’m really happy. However, despite having transitioned to 7.5mg almost a month ago I am getting sulphur burps and had horrendous diarrhoea for the past 7 days despite eating very little and very plain (as I initially thought it was a norovirus).

Anyone else had this at this stage in the journey?

Gosh @EliLilly that sounds horrific - really sorry. I hope it gets better for you eventually x

Me! I'm on 10mg now and after 3 weeks of constant sulphur burps and watery diarrhoea keeping me up all night I am definitely lowering my dose. However, I didn't have any weight loss on the lower doses. I've lost loads on 10mg - but that's because I can't eat anything!! The diarrhoea is miserable.

Took my 3rd 2.5 jab on Saturday... yesterday and overnight til now ive had lots of gas and trapped wind... lots of burps and farts until a fart wasnt a fart and at 03.25 i had to change the bed :(
im exhausted... im type 2, and this is my last stop before insulin. Darent even consider moving up to 5ml. Ive lost weight, but think thats through fearing the side effects rather than appetite suppression :(

I was up most of the night again last night with bad gas/stomach (intestine!) ache. Not so much of the burping and no diarrhoea but it is still stopping me sleeping and is grim. Think I got to sleep around 4.30 am, and now up for work at 6.30 am. I'm hoping this is it now...

I don't think I will be brave enough to try above 4.2 mg again.

@EliLilly ..its just exhausting isn't it?
I don't start work til after lunch today so am hoping for a nap this morning... can't believe I'm like this even on the 2.5 dose!

I'm still having really bad stomach pains and diarrhea, so almost 6 days now. I've got a whole pen at home that's 5, but i think I'm going to stop now. It's impacted family time and my sleep significantly.

Have you tried loperamide?

I had awful diarrhoea moving up to the my first 5mg dose. I injected on the Friday and the diarrhoea started Sunday, getting worse and worse until Thursday, when I took more immodium and spoke to the clinician at Voy.

I skipped the next 5mg dose and instead have been doing 2.5mg, three days apart, and everything has settled down. I'm planning to do another 2.5mg tonight (72 hours since last one) and then try the 5mg again on Friday.

One thing that might have triggered it was 2 slices of takeaway pizza on the day of my first 5mg dose. From reading various forums, it seems lots of people have suffered in the same way from deep pan pizza, so I shall absolutely avoid that.

I had the same when I took the 2.5mg dose, it's wiped me out for the best part of a week! I've lost 8lb in the first week.

My 2nd 2.5mg dose is due tomorrow, do you think it would be worth splitting it over the week like you are with the 5mg? Can I even do that with 2.5mg? Do you think that doing it that way would potentially lessen my side effects?

@yjo25 - I'm not a doctor so the first suggestion would be to contact your prescriber and see what they see.

But assuming that they are happy with that, then you can split any of the doses. A full dose (i.e. one week's worth) is 60 clicks of the pen. So you could do 30 clicks and have 1.25mg and then the same again a few days later. You'd need to buy some more needles as you'll be using more shots per pen than envisaged. I bought mine from Chemist 4 U.

I've been advised to keep a food diary and I'm going to be very cautious about what I eat and avoid anything greasy or fatty.

I'm fine now but the 4.4 mg was definitely worse than the 4.6 mg last time...I think.

4.6 mg - Sulfur burps then diarrhoea most of week starting after 1.5 days and ending on day next injection due. Worst around days 2-3.
4.4 mg - Sulfur burps then some diarrhoea (only last 12 hours) but lots of stomach ache/gas and vomiting twice around 35 hours and awake a lot the next night too with stomach ache (not bad but not good either). Felt like stomach was being way too slow to empty. Appetite over suppressed for 4 days.

Plan is to do 3.75 mg on Friday morning, maybe less...

oops meant to add this too

Wow that’s a very impressive graph @EliLilly!!

what I don’t understand is how you are having the .4 doses as I thought it was only available in increments of 2.5mg?

Good that you get decent suppression on the lowest doses though. Hope it works out for you this time 🤞

stupid question deleted! I think the MJ may be affecting my brain 😂😂

To update - I did my first 10mg injection on Monday and so far so good… have been extremely mindful of not eating that much and sticking to bland food but so far so good 🤞

I am on my 3rd pen, started it yesterday. I’ve done a 2.5, a 5 and now I’m on 7.5.

I have had no side effects whatever.

Great all is well with the 10 mg!

Pen 1 (2.5 mg): 4 x 2.5 mg + bonus dose 3.2 mg
Pen 2 (5.0 mg): 2 x 4.2 mg (didn’t go up again after first 4.2 as only holiday and didn’t want to risk it; 4.6 mg; 2.5 mg; 4.2 mg - then discarded excess as exceeded 30 days.
Pen 3 (5.0 mg); 4.2 mg (was ok on 4.2 so left it another week); 4.4 mg…so far

I just count clicks to get the lower doses

clicks = dose/standard dose x 60

so using 5 mg pen:

2.5 mg = 30 clicks
4.2 mg = 50 clicks
4.4 mg = 53 clicks
4.6 mg = 55 clicks

my plan to move up to 5 mg was - bonus from 2.5 mg pen (turned out to be 3.2 mg) then 50 clicks of 5 mg (4.2 mg) and then up to full dose BUT with holiday I did the extra week on 4.2 mg and also suppression was good so then decided to go up slower by doing 55 clicks…then the trouble started!

As suppression was good at 4.2 mg I should’ve stayed their in hindsight. It wasn’t as good second time round so I thought I would edge up…mistake again! Obviously ill and also very suppressed just by 3 extra clicks (plus buildup).

I forgot to move the black arrows on my graph - they should point to the first lot of 4.2 mg.

I shall stick with ordering 5 mg pens for now but not taking the full dose! I clearly can’t tolerate it, but 2.5 mg is not enough.

That’s great!

I think it is partially do to with how you metabolise drugs - slowly then issues as they build up too high; fast also issues due to build up of metabolites. Sure it is more complicated than that though!

Some people really struggled from very first dose. I had no side effects until the 4.6 mg that got me!

Trial and error!

😂 think I must’ve answered it before you deleted it. Sadly, can’t edit my post with ‘their’ rather than ‘there’. Oh well!

No I’m glad you explained @EliLilly I’m very impressed with how scientifically you’ve approached this. I might try a staged dosing across a week if I get issues again. On another thread someone suggested where you inject may make a difference?! I’ve always gone with stomach - could that make a difference?!

I inject Friday and tend to have diarrhoea every Tuesday. Only tends to occur for a couple of hours but if it persists I take an immodium. I’ve lost 2 1/2 stone in 14 weeks so I’m going to continue. I can work from home so that helps. Currently on 5, so will probably stay on this for another 4 weeks to see if the diarrhoea settles.

@TreadLightly3 Thank you!

Yes, I've heard that too - I do mainly stomach but did swap to thigh after first bout of side effects. However, I'm back on stomach again! That's a good point - I'll go back to thigh, and definitely do thigh if I ever dare to try over 4.2 mg again.

I've just looked back on my log and the week I tried 4.6 mg I my injection site was red and itchy (mild allergic reaction) for the first time, noticed this before the symptoms started to show up. The following week on the thigh I had the same but with a raised bump too. I then went back to stomach but continued to have the red/itchy patch (mild) ever since.