Mayim Bialik calls his experience with GLP-1 drugs a “nightmare” in a candid new essay.
“Since appearing on my own NBC show at age 14, I have grown up in the spotlight, with my appearance under scrutiny every week,” the “Blossom” actress wrote in a Free Press essay, “My GLP-1 Nightmare,” published Friday.
“I was fortunate not to worry about my weight back then,” she wrote, describing her younger self as “naturally lanky and athletic” and able to eat “whatever I wanted without worrying about weight gain.”
However, the former Jeopardy! host wrote that as a teenager, she “took medication to control my moods, which led to weight gain.”
Bialik, now 50, writes that by her 40s, when she was “still a working actress,” she felt “a deep sense of shame around my body.”
“With the advent of social media, there was an obsession with being thinner, more toned, more surgically perfect, and that pressure disrupted my relationship with food, which I’ve spent years trying to untangle,” the “Big Bang Theory” alum writes.
She revealed that early menopause caused her to gain an additional 20 pounds, saying, “I don’t seem to have the discipline, motivation or time to lose weight.”
“Still, that’s not why I took GLP-1,” the actress continued. “I took weight loss pills because my doctor said they might help relieve symptoms that I’ve suffered with all my adult life.”
Bialik wrote that she was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, an autoimmune disease that affects the thyroid, at age 23. Although he was prescribed medication, he did not change his lifestyle. She feels that the action may have “very slowly worsened my condition.”
Later in life, the neuroscientist was also diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome, dysautonomia, connective tissue disease, and mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), which left him suffering from extreme symptoms, including “severe depression” and “rashes all over his body.”
Bialik revealed that three other doctors recommended that she take the GLP-1 drug, “not because I gained 20 pounds postmenopausal, but because the drug showed promise in reducing the systemic inflammation that causes autoimmune conditions.”
“Maybe this is the magic cure,” she recalled thinking at the time.
“GLP-1 has helped people in serious need. I am convinced of that,” she wrote. “But no one really talks about what happens if it doesn’t work out.”
After taking “one minimum dose of synthetic GLP-1,” Bialik said, “to say I experienced side effects would be a bit of an understatement.”
She detailed “explosive, uncontrollable diarrhea” and “sulfur burps that made you afraid to open your mouth in public” as the worst side effects.
“Every time I tried to eat or drink, I would get a sneeze. Apparently there’s a name for this: sneezing,” she continued.
“The cramps, the bloating, the pain all over the body, it felt like I had the flu,” Bialik added. “Then I couldn’t even run to the bathroom to drink even a small amount of water, which led to more explosive diarrhea. There were more than three times I couldn’t get to the bathroom.”
She said: “This drug has a very long half-life. The doctor who prescribed it told me it would be at least a week, if not longer.”
After experiencing dramatic side effects, Bialik said, “My body finally started listening to me after decades of clarifying its position and working through it.” She eventually decided to stop taking GLP-1 and “finally went to see a gastroenterologist.”
Doctors told her that GLP-1 drugs are “extremely destructive to the body and should not be used for anything other than specific, regulated, serious medical reasons, namely life-threatening obesity and related health effects,” and that she “does not meet that criteria.”
“A real doctor confirmed to me that I wasn’t abnormal, that the drugs really caused this, and I was nervous about what more I would have to deal with in the coming weeks,” Bialik said, recalling how she felt “validated” when she left the specialist’s office.
She ended her essay with an ironic recollection of her appointment.
“I caught a glimpse of myself on the way out and I didn’t flinch,” the “Call Me Cat” actress said.
“Underneath the first chin, I couldn’t see the other chin that I had been fixating on for months, because it wasn’t there. I could see my cheekbones. I stared for a moment, smiled like the Mona Lisa, and headed out to the parking lot, stopping for a moment to pull up my skirt, which was starting to hang slightly at my waist.”
Bialik is not the first celebrity to speak out about GLP-1’s negative effects. Bunny XO, Brianna “Chicken Fry” LaPaglia, and Kris Jenner have all issued warnings about weight loss drugs that have become increasingly popular in recent years.
