Mayim Bialik labeled her experience with GLP-1 drugs a “nightmare” in a candid new essay.
“I grew up in the limelight, with my appearance scrutinized weekly from the time I starred in my own NBC show at 14,” the “Blossom” actress wrote in a Free Press essay titled “My GLP-1 Nightmare” published Friday.
“I was blissfully unaware of my weight back then,” she wrote, describing her younger self as “naturally lanky and athletic” and being able to eat “whatever I wanted with no concern for weight gain.”
However, the former “Jeopardy!” host wrote that as a teen she was “put on medication to manage my moods, and weight gain followed me from there.”
Bialik, now 50, wrote of acquiring a “deep sense of shame around my body” by her 40s, when she was “still actively working as an actress.”
“By the time social media arrived — with its fixation on being thinner, more toned, more surgically perfected — that pressure tipped into a disordered relationship with food that I have spent years trying to untangle,” the “Big Bang Theory” alum wrote.
Early menopause, she divulged, caused an additional 20 pounds of weight gain she doesn’t “seem to have the discipline, motivation, or time to lose.”
“Still, that’s not why I went on a GLP-1,” the actress continued. “I went on a weight-loss drug because a doctor told me it might help ease symptoms I’ve struggled with for basically my entire adult life.”
Bialik wrote that she was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, an autoimmune disorder affecting the thyroid, at age 23. Though she was prescribed medication, she didn’t make lifestyle changes — a move she feels might have “very slowly made my condition worse.”
The neuroscientist was also diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome, dysautonomia, connective tissue disease, and mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) in later years, and suffered from extreme symptoms of the conditions, including “crippling depression” and “full-body rashes.”
Bialik shared that separate three doctors suggested she go on a GLP-1 drug “not because of the 20 postmenopausal pounds but because the drugs have shown promise in reducing the systemic inflammation that drives autoimmune conditions.”
“Maybe this could be the magic cure,” she recalled of her mindset at the time.
“GLP-1s have helped people in serious need. Of that I am certain,” she wrote. “But nobody talks much about what happens when it goes wrong.”
After taking “one shot of the lowest dose of a synthetic GLP-1,” Bialik noted that “to say I had an adverse reaction would be somewhat of an understatement.”
She detailed “explosive, uncontrollable diarrhea,” as well as “sulfur burps so violent they left me afraid to open my mouth in public,” as some of the worst side-effects.
“Sneezing attacks every time I tried to eat or drink — which apparently has a name, snatiation,” she continued.
“Cramping. Bloating. Full-body aching, as though I had the flu” Bialik added. “And an inability to keep down even small sips of water without sprinting to the bathroom with yet more explosive diarrhea. More than three times, I didn’t make it.”
She shared, “This drug has a very long half-life; my prescribing doctor had told me to expect at least a week of this, if not more.”
Bialik noted that after experiencing the dramatic side effects, her “body made its position clear, and I had learned, after decades of overriding it, to finally listen.” She ultimately decided to stop taking the GLP-1 and “finally went to see a gastroenterologist.”
The physician told her GLP-1 drugs “are extremely disruptive to the body and should not be used outside of a specific, regulated set of serious medical reasons — namely, life-compromising obesity and its related health consequences” and that she “did not meet that bar.”
Bialik recalled leaving the specialist’s office “feeling validated,” noting that “a real doctor confirming I was not a freak, that the medication really had done this to me — and trepidatious that there was more to deal with in the coming weeks.”
She concluded the essay with an ironic memory of her appointment.
“On my way out, I caught a glimpse of my reflection, and I did not recoil,” the “Call Me Kat” actress recounted.
“I did not see under my first chin that second chin on which I had been fixating for months — because it wasn’t there. My cheekbones were visible. I gazed for a moment, flashed a Mona Lisa smile, and headed to the parking lot, stopping briefly to hike up my skirt, which had started to sag at my hips ever so slightly.”
Bialik isn’t the first celebrity to speak out about the negative effects of GLP-1s — Bunnie XO, Brianna “Chickenfry” LaPaglia and Kris Jenner have all shared cautionary tales in recent years about the increasingly popular weight-loss medications.
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