Mayim Bialik’s ‘Nightmare’ Experience with Single Dose of a GLP-1

Bialik shared that she had gained around 20 pounds during early menopause.

However, that wasn’t why she started using a GLP-1 medication. She had been told that the medication may help ease some of the symptoms she had lived with most of her adult life.

At 48, Bialik consulted with various specialists for other symptoms she was experiencing after perimenopause. Each physician gave her a separate autoimmune diagnosis, but none seemed 100% certain.

She decided to try a GLP-1, not for her postmenopause weight gain, but because three separate doctors suggested she try it to help with her autoimmune symptoms. There is evidence to show GLP-1s may help reduce inflammation.

However, after one dose of the GLP-1 medication, Bialik began to experience severe side effects.

She wrote in her essay that she experienced “explosive, uncontrollable diarrhea. Sulfur burps so violent, they left me afraid to open my mouth in public. Sneezing attacks every time I tried to eat or drink—which apparently has a name: snatiation.”

“Cramping. Bloating. Full-body aching, as though I had the flu,” she said.

“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.”

Jeffrey Lee, MD, a double board certified plastic surgeon and founder of JL Plastic Surgery in Boston, MA, told Healthline in a previous interview that gastrointestinal side effects from GLP-1s are not unusual.

“The most common side effects I see in practice are gastrointestinal, things like nausea, bloating, or constipation,” Lee said.

Bialik said that although her GLP-1 experience was a “nightmare,” it shouldn’t overshadow the widespread success that millions of people have had with this class of drugs.

“GLP-1s have helped people in serious need,” Bialik said. “Of that I am certain. But nobody talks much about what happens when it goes wrong.”