Actress Mayim Bialik shares her ‘nightmare’ experience with a GLP-1

Any new drug should be given a 'wait and see what it does to others' time period before trying it yourself.

Especially ones that seem to give amazing results.

Always remember the 'if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is' caveat.

YMMV. I'm on it because my gastro doctor said that it would help with inflammation and to manage my Crohns. It has been a total game changer for me. I haven't had a flare in 18 months, I'm able to eat healthier, I even went back to running (which I was forced to give up after diagnosis). I've lost a little weight, but not from the medication. It's from being more active and eating well.

GLP medications have been around for 20+ years and used for off-label weight management for 15 years. We have a good idea of what long term, short term, and immediate side effects are. The issue is that people forget that all medications aren't for every person and when somebody discovers a med doesn't work for them, that doesn't mean it is now not great for anybody to use. I can't have Prednisone or penicillin because I'm allergic. If I were to write an article about it that says those medications make me sick, I need to be hospitalized if I'm exposed to them, and it takes weeks and weeks for symptoms to resolve and imply that, because of my reaction the meds are dangerous, that would be a faulty conclusion.

Partner with your doctor for what treatment works for your issues, not a People Magazine article from a B or C list actress.

ThatRobGuy said:

...."Artificial replacement for willpower" solutions don't tend to end up well.

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Coffee has worked well for me, so far and anecdotally. Minimal side effects.

ThatRobGuy said:

https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/5914552-mayim-bialik-glp-1-weight-loss-drug-experience/

Since 2023, roughly 4,400 patients have filed lawsuits against GLP-1 drugmakers. The plaintiffs, who range in age from 18 to 87, have pointed to severe, undisclosed side effects, including blindness, loss of brain function and organ damage. About 75 percent of plaintiffs say they have been left with gastroparesis, a condition that delays stomach emptying, while another 8% report extreme gastrointestinal injuries.

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These reporting percentages are not of all users. They are a percentage of just the plaintiffs - which of course is a tiny minority of all users.

Still sounds bad. But a small slip in reading comprehension could lead one to believe much worse.

ThatRobGuy said:

Obviously different people are going to have different experiences. I'm sure there plenty of people who took Vioxx and didn't experience any catastrophic effects from it either.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/lawsuits-claiming-ozempic-other-glp-1s-led-blindness-become-second-mass-2025-12-15/

One distinction that needs to be made here is that while GLP-1 have been around for a while and were used to treat diabetes (and off-label weight management), prescribing practices have changed a bit over the past 20 years.

In the case of a person who's diabetic or morbidly obese, I'm sure the benefits can outweigh risks. However, that's not necessarily going to be the case for a person who's simply looking for the holy grail of "effortless way to drop that extra 15-20 before beach season", and then hops on Ro or ForHims (or one of the other dozen online prescribing services) for a 10 minute questionnaire and a rubber-stamp prescription.

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This all reads as you are gatekeeping weight loss. If you don't do the "hard work" then you are unworthy of weight loss (ignoring that you acknowledge the medication comes with very difficult side effects but yet you don't consider working through those "hard work"). There's zero accepting that there can be medical barriers that prevent weight loss and that this is a solution, or that people may have it a weight that starting the process to resolve it is not achievable.

I just get super tired of people who don't understand medications, don't understand medicine, and have zero training in the medical field feeling like their opinion somehow supersedes what any patient's doctor would have to say to them.

I expect we'll see problems with the requisite infomercial announcing class action lawsuits. People use the strangest methods to solve problems. If you eat food that isn't laden with chemicals and grown in healthy soil a lot of issues disappear. The same holds true for refined grains and sugar. A little effort and exercise will suffice.

~bella

ThatRobGuy said:

There needs to be more of a gate than "person can hop on a website and fill out a quick questionnaire and get meds in the mail two days later" because they saw a targeted ad talking about how Serena Williams and Charles Barkley took it and lost 30 pounds.


And more broadly speaking, No, I don't think it's a "net good" for people to start getting conditioned into thinking that "let's see if there's a pill for that" is preferable to minor lifestyle changes.


As a fun little exercise, I just walked through the process on the Ro website. I put in my honest stats (6' 1", 185 lbs -- I'm still pretty fit for a guy in his 40's), and checked the reason "I want to lose weight". Took all of 5 minutes.

The response: "Great news, based on clinical data, you can expect to lose 11-17lbs in your first year, get ready to start your weight loss journey!"


Is that a good approach to medicine?

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But your experience here is not a complaint about GLP-1 but how US runs it's healthcare. Are you wanting to discuss the possible issues with widespread GLP-1 adoption or with the overall capitalistic approach the US takes towards marketing new medications?

ThatRobGuy said:

There needs to be more of a gate than "person can hop on a website and fill out a quick questionnaire and get meds in the mail two days later" because they saw a targeted ad talking about how Serena Williams and Charles Barkley took it and lost 30 pounds.

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Why? It's not more dangerous than most drugs. What is there to gain by making medical care and generally low-risk medications more difficult to access? This all just sounds like gate keeping weight loss, again. If somebody is overweight, they need to earn the right to lose weight, zero acknowledgement that losing weight has innumerable benefits.

ThatRobGuy said:

And more broadly speaking, No, I don't think it's a "net good" for people to start getting conditioned into thinking that "let's see if there's a pill for that" is preferable to minor lifestyle changes.

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Taking a pill is a lifestyle change. That's a point of meds... To change something about the person that hinders them to being a healthy human being.

ThatRobGuy said:

As a fun little exercise, I just walked through the process on the Ro website. I put in my honest stats (6' 1", 185 lbs -- I'm still pretty fit for a guy in his 40's), and checked the reason "I want to lose weight". Took all of 5 minutes.

The response: "Great news, based on clinical data, you can expect to lose 11-17lbs in your first year, get ready to start your weight loss journey!"


Is that a good approach to medicine?

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Guess what? Everybody gets that response. Kind of like everybody makes it to the last round of Publisher's Clearinghouse and every Prime Day sale on Amazon is always "the biggest one ever." They want you to stay on the website, click through it, explore it, and join them. If their screening said "get out of here, you don't need this," they'd be idiots.

The fact is for your body type you could lose 11-17 pounds. That doesn't mean you should, just that you can. I say this from experience because my insurance stopped covering my medication so I had to resort to those sites to get it with the cheapest out-of-pocket. Every one of them said I was eligible and it wasn't until I'd given them my contact information, set up an account, and requested an RX that they said no because my BMI doesn't indicate I need it. It wasn't until I worked directly with the drug company, called them, had my doctor call them, that they finally signed off on a RX.

ThatRobGuy said:

Any particular reason why they should be getting prescribed these meds instead of making some changes to their food and exercise habits?

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Yes, and their doctor (who is infinitely more qualified than you) is more than capable of deciding how to treat patients with obesity and their possible need for a weight loss shot.

ThatRobGuy said:

And how is it gatekeeping weight loss? Is someone proposing physically stopping them from losing weight? I don't recall seeing any armed guards posted at the Planet Fitness or the Fruit & Veg section at the supermarket.

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It's gatekeeping because you feel like people who need to lose weight should do so in a way that makes them worthy of the weight loss. We don't tell smokers who get lung cancer that they need to do the "hard work" to curing their cancer. We let them get medical care. We don't tell people injured as a result of their own negligence that they need to do the "hard work" to recover, foregoing meds that may help them.

The big difference is that we live in a fat-phobic society and there is this perverse belief that if one is overweight, they need to prove themselves and "earn" the weight loss through exercise, deprivation, and misery. I think people like seeing other people who are obese so that they can have a "I would never let myself get that obese" or "look at how they are compared to me" and have this elitist attitude that because they don't have that particular sin, those who do are worth less.

ThatRobGuy said:

Would you label concerns about anabolic steroid use as "gatekeeping building muscle"?

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Not a comparable situation.

ThatRobGuy said:

Taking a pill is not a lifestyle change. Changing the diet and exercise is a lifestyle change.

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Let me tell you, taking a pill is a lifestyle change. You have to manage getting the medication, taking the medication, manage the side effects, keep up with the doctor at a rate that's more frequent than somebody not on medications. Even doctors say taking medication requires a change of thinking and lifestyle that shows commitment to doing what you need to do to be on the medication. You yourself were even implying that there were lots of debilitating side effects, acknowledging that taking these medications has a significant impact on a person's lifestyle.

Maybe you're lucky enough to not have any conditions that need managing with lots of medications, but as somebody who does let me tell you, you're perpetually doing mental calculations about how to take them. This one has to be at night because it makes you sleepy, this one has to be before dinner because it gives you reflux, this one needs refilling next week, that one is on a taper so you need to change dosage next week, this one makes you nauseous so you have to take it before bed and with melatonin... It's work. Lots of work. And it's a lifestyle change because this is now my everyday reality.

ThatRobGuy said:

If this were a conversation about cholesterol issues, nobody would consider "I got on statins" as "making a lifestyle change"

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Yes, that would be a lifestyle change. Not going through the effort to get your medication you need, that would be rejecting a lifestyle change.

ThatRobGuy said:

Nor is is actually making a person healthy if they're using it purely for weight loss and aren't introducing those other two aspects in conjunction with it.

If someone is leading a sedentary life and eating fast food six times a week, taking a pill or injection that makes the number on the scale go down by 10% (while changing nothing else) isn't making them a healthy human being.

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So, again, it's about gatekeeping. They're eating fast food but taking a shot to keep weight under control, they are unworthy of the benefits of weight loss.

ThatRobGuy said:

https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/5914552-mayim-bialik-glp-1-weight-loss-drug-experience/

Since 2023, roughly 4,400 patients have filed lawsuits against GLP-1 drugmakers. The plaintiffs, who range in age from 18 to 87, have pointed to severe, undisclosed side effects, including blindness, loss of brain function and organ damage. About 75 percent of plaintiffs say they have been left with gastroparesis, a condition that delays stomach emptying, while another 8% report extreme gastrointestinal injuries.


While I don't want to jump the shark on this, I've wondered for a while if the recent GLP-1 craze would end up leading to a Vioxx type situation. I wouldn't be surprised if that number of lawsuits has a sharp increase from the 4400 in the next 5 years.

"Artificial replacement for willpower" solutions don't tend to end up well.

We also saw that happen with Chantix (the prescription med aimed at making people not want to smoke)

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It's been over marketed, the new wonder drug to make you socially acceptable in a shallow society. TV ads say you don't have to go to a real doctor - they will provide one! - and you can bypass any insurance interference. Any medication that is effective is likely to have trade-offs.

ThatRobGuy said:

Yes, I'm sure the doctors who work for Ro and ForHims (who are incentivized based on how many units they can move or how many questionnaires they can mow through quickly) are putting a lot of deep thought into the process as they're reviewing the 5 minute asynchronous questionnaire

And can we stop pretending that someone having an MD (especially the kind of person who would work for a pill mill) have some sort of profound knowledge of pharmaceuticals and the best uses for them?

Even the doctors who work in outpatient settings had demonstrated a rather insufficient caution in this area.

CDC Newsroom

Press releases, advisories, telebriefings, transcripts and archives.

archive.cdc.gov

Look how many are still handing out antibiotics for viral infections.

"Antibiotics don't work on viruses, they're only practical for bacterial infections" should be pretty standard knowledge for people who went to Medical School for all those years, should it not?

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Again, you’re playing doctor despite having no knowledge.

Antibiotics are often given with viral infections as a means to shorten illness (yes, that even works for viral infections) preventative against also falling victim to a co-infection which is bacterial. Literally just went through this with myself and my son. We had a viral infection and prescribed antibiotics. I asked why, he said because viral infections tend to lay out people more than bacterial, leaving the immune system more susceptible to bacterial illness. They did the same with my 70+ year old father when he got pneumonia… It’s a means to prevent another illness.

ThatRobGuy said:

For a person who's just looking to drop 20-30 pounds, and doesn't have any underlying conditions that GLP-1 drugs were approved for, any particular reason why skipping the fast food and not needing the shot shouldn't be the first thing recommended?

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Because their treatment is none of my business. Anybody who’s not you’s treatment isn’t any of your business either. If it helps them do something that’s incredibly hard, why not? I’m not a big believer in people making themselves miserable for no reason in an effort to manage their health. Nor am I a big believer in punishing people for “bad behavior” by limiting their access to medical care. Nor am I a big believer in being nosey and judgmental about other people’s medical choices. I tend to think it’s none of my business, just like it’s not any of your business.

ThatRobGuy said:

It's not luck, it's the result of decision making.

Do you think I want to be setting my alarm to go to the gym at 6am four days a week and eating chicken breast & broccoli for most meals, rather than sleeping in and eating pizza at every meal?

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And there it is. You’re bitter and gatekeeping weight loss by deciding who has or hasn’t earned it, thinking people who take a shot are somehow getting a shortcut you don’t have. It’s so petty.

For the record, sometimes weight gain or loss is the result of a malfunction of the body where diet and exercise won’t do it for you. You require better living through chemistry intervention.