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
The Big Bang theory star Mayim Bialik is one of the latest celebrities to discuss her experiences with GPL-1 injections.
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 it to aid weight loss.
The drugs have a number of known side effects, including nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal pain. As with any medication, everyone reacts differently.
Bialik has now shared her experiences after just taking one dose, explaining that she had severe gastrointestinal symptoms that lasted for weeks.
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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 doctors 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.’
That’s when doctors recommended she took GPL-1’s 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’.
The actor described how shocked she was at the doctors ‘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. Kardashians star Kris Jenner recently said the drug left her ‘feeling so sick’ that she was unable to work.