Doctors say they're seeing more GLP-1 users with rare ear disorder that can cause people to hear their own blood
Topics: US News, Health, Weight loss
Kit Roberts
Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock Images
Topics: US News, Health, Weight loss
Doctors have highlighted an unusual side effect in people who are taking GLP-1 medication.
GLP-1 medications were originally licensed for the treatment of diabetes, using hormones to help manage the condition.
However, one effect of the medication is that it can make people feel full and satisfied after eating less food.
When combined with diet and exercise, this can support someone weight loss, and the medications have exploded in popularity as a result.
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Like more or less any form of medication or treatment, GLP-1 drugs can also cause some side effects in the people who take them.
But doctors have said that they are noticing an unusual thing in people on the medication, though unlike others this is not caused directly by the GLP-1 medication, but by the rapid weight loss it helps to bring about.
Sarah Ago spoke to the New York Post about her experience, which included a strange noise in her ears.
“It was like being in a tunnel, only able to hear my own magnified voice,” she said. “You’re in your own head, hearing yourself like Darth Vader.”
This is patulous eustachian tube, which means that you can hear the inside of your own body.
While it doesn't cause a serious physical health problem, but it can affect someone's quality of life over time.
The eustachian tube is the tube inside the ear between the middle ear and the throat, and while it is usually closed it opens when someone swallows, chews, or yawns, balancing the air pressure.
Dr. Jessica Lee is a otolaryngologist at Charleston ENT and Allergy in South Carolina in the US, and told the New York Post: “This used to be something we wouldn’t even see once a year. Now it’s gone up to one every other month.”
Ago said that GLP-1 had 'worked beautifully' for her, and that she has lost 60lbs after going on the medication, and feels a 'huge relief' at being 'confident in my own body.
But she described how after her weight loss her right ear was 'entirely consumed with the sound of my own breathing and my voice', which felt 'like 400 times louder than the normal volume'.
Dr Lee said: “Many patients are initially misdiagnosed with things like allergies or fluid in the ear. Some people, women especially, are just told it’s anxiety.
“It’s something that people don’t know about but should absolutely be aware of, because with these medications, the incidence is increasing.”