Big Bang Theory star Mayim Bialik shares side effects she suffered for weeks after just one GLP-1 injection
Topics: Celebrity, Weight loss, Health
Kiesha Dosanjh
Featured Image Credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney
Topics: Celebrity, Weight loss, Health
Actor Mayim Bialik couldn't even keep a sip of water down without 'sprinting to the bathroom' after she was prescribed GLP-1 drugs.
Bialik, who played Amy Fowler in The Big Bang Theory, said she was left 'weak and debilitated' after facing a handful of horrendous side effects on the lowest dose of the medication.
GPL-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro are drugs intended to be used by people with type two diabetes to help lower their blood sugar levels, although many have adopted them to aid weight loss.
Bialik has now shared her experiences after just taking one dose, explaining that she had severe gastrointestinal symptoms that lasted for weeks.
Advert
The actor wrote about her experiences in an essay published by The Free Press. However, unlike a number of others, Bialik took the medication under a doctor's recommendations - but not to lose weight.
Instead, she used it to help symptoms of an autoimmune disease, which she had suffered with for years.
The 50-year-old was diagnosed with Graves’ disease when she was just 23, as she wrote: “Twenty-five years, four unexplained hernias, and four exploratory surgeries later, I was well past perimenopause and drowning in symptoms I couldn’t explain.” These included ‘full-body rashes, palpitations and hourly wake ups.’
According to the National Institute of Health, Graves' disease is when your immune system attacks your thyroid gland, causing it to produce more thyroid hormones than you need and speeding up many of the processes in the body.
It can lead to a rapid or irregular heartbeat, issues with your bones, problems with fertility and your menstrual cycle, and eye discomfort.
That’s when doctors recommended she take GPL-1s as they said they ‘had shown promise in reducing systemic inflammation which drives these conditions.’
The star tried the drugs but said that to say she had ‘an adverse reaction would be an understatement.’
With the lowest dose, Bialik described having ‘explosive, uncontrollable diarrhea, violent sulfur burps and sneezing attacks every time she tried to eat or drink'.
That’s not all, as she also had severe cramping and bloating and flu-like symptoms, as well as ‘what was closer to an allergic reaction’.
She described 'an inability to keep down even small sips of water without sprinting to the bathroom with yet more explosive diarrhea', adding: "More than three times, I didn’t make it."
The actor described how shocked she was at the doctor's ‘unsurprised reaction,’ as she was told ‘extreme side effects were not unusual’.
"And yet, in the depth of my misery—my exhausted body, my aching joints, another pair of ruined underwear—a piercing, devastating thought occurred to me: At least you might lose some weight," she wrote.
She said she ‘wouldn’t blame’ anyone for pushing through the side effects, but decided to stop herself.
The lingering symptoms went on for weeks due to the drugs' ‘long half-life,’ the actor wrote.
Bialik is not the only celebrity to experience bad side effects with the drug. Kris Jenner recently said the drug left her ‘feeling so sick’ that she was unable to work.
According to Harvard Health, the most common side effects of GLP-1 drugs are:
Other side effects can be a hollowed-out look to the face and sagging around the jaw and neck, which is not due to the drugs themselves, but the result of rapid weight loss.
Less common but more serious side effects include: