Weight loss jabs are causing a spike in patients requiring treatment for haemorrhoids, a doctor has warned.
Once aimed at diabetes patients, drugs like Mounjaro and Ozempic are now famous for bringing about rapid weight loss by reducing appetite.
But the injections often come with side effects, from nausea and constipation and, in most severe cases, life-threatening organ damage.
Now, Dr Ross Perry, medical director of Cosmedics Skin Clinics in London and Bristol, has said an increasing number of patients on the drugs, which belong to class of medications called GLP-1 agonists, have reported ‘significant bowel changes’ including haemorrhoids.
Many patients who have increased how much they exercise and weight train — in line with NHS guidance to prevent muscle wastage — are also straining more, which may make haemorrhoids worse, Dr Perry added.
Also known as piles, haemorrhoids are small lumps inside or around the anus that contain enlarged blood vessels.
Straining to release your bowels puts pressure on the veins in the lower rectum, causing them to bulge.
Doctors have previously warned that constipation, a known side effect of the injections, can lead to complications including painful tears in the anus and piles.
Once aimed at diabetes patients , drugs like Mounjaro and Ozempic are now famous for bringing about rapid weight loss by reducing appetite
They have also warned that bowel cancer can trigger similar symptoms, making the latter difficult to catch early on.
Dr Perry, a former NHS GP, told The Sun: ‘There’s been a 41 per cent rise in the last six months alone of patients with haemorrhoids, and many of those, both men and women in almost equal numbers, tell us they’re on drugs like Mounjaro and Ozempic and have seen significant bowel changes which have led to the problem.
‘Weight loss drugs are generally well tolerated. But when doses increase, this can lead to piles — and we know this because we ask those questions during consultations.
‘On top of that, many patients are hitting the gym to counter muscle loss caused by the weight loss.
‘But weight training can involve straining, which can make haemorrhoids worse.’
This is because GLP-1 medications can cause delayed gastric emptying and slows how food moves through the gastrointestinal tract, making stools drier and harder, he said.
Straining more when opening the bowels, then, in turn causes piles, small tears and anal skin tags.
In online forums, jab users have also told how they have suffered haemorrhoids while on the drugs, despite not previously having any issues with constipation.
One, 59-year-old woman who claimed she lost 40lbs on Ozempic — dropping from 185lbs to 145lbs in six months — then developed haemorrhoids.
‘My gastroenterologist explained that my haemorrhoids were definitely caused by chronic constipation I had due to the Ozempic,’ she wrote on Reddit.
Another who had ‘never had haemorroids really that have lasted more than a day’, saw ‘Mounjaro change that’.
They said: ‘The haemorrhoids pain I have right now is unbearable that I can’t even walk without being in serious discomfort.’
A third, who began Ozempic four weeks earlier’ told that despite eating prunes and drinking a ‘decent amount of water’, they continue to suffer from hemorrhoid’s and are now ‘scared to go to the bathroom at this point’.
Almost three out of four adults will have haemorrhoids from time to time, according to The Mayo Clinic.
Small haemorrhoids often get better on their own by increasing their fibre and water intake.
But in the interim, medical professionals recommend buying over-the-counter creams to ease the pain and irritation, containing ingredients such as zinc oxide, that protects the pile against being irritated by stools, for instance.
Painkillers, cold packs and constipation treatments can also help.
Large haemorrhoids may protrude — or ‘prolapse’ — through the anus: these may shrink back, but for chronic piles the only effective treatment is removal.
The non-surgical options include banding, in which a tight surgical elastic band is applied around the haemorrhoid, cutting off its blood supply and causing it to wither then drop off, which can take roughly a week.
Other non-surgical alternatives are infrared light, gentle electric currents and injections of a chemical solution.
In the UK, hundreds of thousands of patients take the drugs safely and have been doing so for years.
Doctors insist that weight loss jabs will be ‘game changers’ when it comes to fighting back against Britain’s long-running problem of obesity, which costs the economy an estimated £100billion per year.
However, no drug is without risk, health chiefs say.
The NHS currently warns patients to ‘never take an anti-obesity medicine if it has not been prescribed to you’.
The MHRA also notes that the benefits and risks of using these medicines for weight loss by individuals who do not have obesity or a related illness have not been studied.
Experts have long called for tighter restrictions on how weight loss drugs are prescribed.
Meanwhile, there are concerns that illegal knock-off versions of the drugs are being increasingly used — often advertised on social media.
