On the November morning when the sulfur burp began, Deron Borders welcomed prospective students to the graduate school he works in New York. Every few minutes, no matter how much he tried to stop it, another cloud of stench leaked out of his mouth. “Belching that tastes and smells like rotten eggs— I think that’s what I typed into Google,” he told me.
Eventually, Borders learned that her diabetes medication was to blame. Sulfur burping appears to be a somewhat rare side effect of semaglutide, tirzepatide, and other drugs in their class known as GLP-1 receptor agonists.In the past few years, these drugs have more popular It is marketed as a diabetes treatment and weight loss drug under the brand names Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro. And as the number of prescriptions increases, the odd and unpleasant side effects are becoming more apparent.
GLP-1 receptor agonists are well known to cause gastrointestinal symptoms such as abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting.of Clinical trials of semaglutide For weight loss, 44 percent of participants experienced nausea and 31 percent experienced diarrhea. (Only about one-sixth of placebo-treated participants suffered from the same symptoms.) Burps, aka “belching,” occurred in about nine percent of drug-treated subjects, Less than 1 percent of placebo-treated subjects. The FDA lists belching as a possible side effect. semaglutide and tirzepatide similar.
However, I could not find any information in clinical trial reports or FDA fact sheets such as: sulfur Regarding burping in particular, neither Novo Nordisk nor Eli Lilly, who make these drugs, responded to my inquiry. Laura Davison, director of medical weight management at the West Virginia University School of Health Sciences, said more than 1,000 patients in her clinic are currently taking GLP-1 receptor agonists, with about a fifth He said he first experienced sulfur burping. In all but a handful of patients, the problem subsides after a few months, she said. Holly Lofton, an obesity medicine expert at New York University, estimates that obesity affects only 2% of patients.
Experts aren’t sure why taking GLP-1 receptor agonists makes your burps stinky, but there are several theories. Dr. Davisson proposed that semaglutide increases the number of hydrogen sulfide-producing bacteria in the patient’s gastrointestinal tract. Hydrogen sulfide is discharged from both ends of the digestive tract and is a gas that (as Borders discovered) smells like rotten eggs. She also pointed out that the drug may slow down digestion, giving the stomach more time to break down food and produce gas. In this situation, putrid air can escape most easily through the mouth, Lofton said, because it’s lighter than the liquids and semi-solids that fill the stomach. “Whatever is on top will show up,” she said.
Eating more than usual while taking the drug seems to be a common trigger. Davisson said certain foods, such as dairy products, can also increase odor emissions. “Sometimes it takes trial and error,” she says. “The advice we give people is this: Don’t eat too heavy. Don’t eat too much at once. Don’t eat right before you go to bed.” These Behavioral Approaches In addition, Craig Gluckman, a gastroenterologist at UCLA Health, told me he recommends antacids and antigass for patients with GLP-1 agonist-associated sulfur burps. (Although apple cider vinegar is commonly recommended as a remedy online, Gluckman said he doesn’t recommend it.)
Health care providers I spoke with said that patients generally tend to experience sulfur burping when they first start taking drugs like Ozempic or when they increase their dose. Crystal Garcia, a human resources manager in Texas, started taking semaglutide at a pharmacy after her doctor told her she had prediabetes. (Garcia video blog Three months later, Garcia’s family started complaining about the smell of eggs when they went out to eat breakfast at a restaurant. Garcia thought the smell was coming from the food, but the smell lingered in the car even after eating. The family wondered if Garcia’s young son had been in an accident. “I thought it shouldn’t be me. It can’t be helped,” she told me. But when she burped again, she was forced to change her mind.
Many patients do not realize that sulfur burps are a possible side effect of their medications until they appear. For a while, Borders didn’t think diabetes medication could be the culprit. When he saw a doctor’s assistant discussing his problem, “Ozempic was never mentioned,” he said. Side effects are relatively new to doctors. Previous GLP-1 agonists didn’t seem to produce sulfur burps as often, Lofton said. In her practice, the phenomenon wasn’t really apparent until Ozempic entered her American market in 2018, and even then, she only learned about it from patients. “She had never even heard of sulfur burps until I started prescribing this drug,” she said.
Sulfur burps are harmless (physically), Lofton says, but they’re causing some people to stop taking diabetes and weight-loss drugs. But most, including Garcia and Borders, end up sticking with their programs. The side effects may be terrible, but patients believe the benefits of the drug are worth it. “I have patients who say their burps smell like poop,” says Davisson. But even then she didn’t want to quit.