Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

How Reddit is convincing people to get Botox to cure their burping disorder

Doctors say social media helped raise awareness of lesser-known throat condition

Josh Marcus
San Francisco
Wednesday 04 September 2024 10:21 BST
Comments
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian resigns from Reddit board

Your support helps us to tell the story

This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.

The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.

Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.

Reddit users are banding together to spread the word about an unorthodox treatment that uses injections of Botox to ease an often-overlooked condition that prevents people from being able to burp.

On pages like r/noburp, which has roughly 32,000 members, individuals are sharing their experience using the muscle-freezing agent to treat retrograde cricopharyngeus dysfunction, otherwise known as abelchia or no-burp syndrome, a condition that can cause bloating, excess flatulence, and discomfort.

In June, Reddit user Lucie Rosenthal, 26, shared a clip of her laughing with delight after experiencing her first burps after receiving the Botox treatment, which involves injecting 50 to 100 units into a throat muscle that controls access to the esophagus.

“It’s really rocking my mind that I am fully introducing a new bodily function at 26 years old,” she told KFF Health News.

The treatment was first reported in 2019 by an Illinois doctor to treat patients whose upper esophageal sphincter muscles have trouble relaxing.

Patients say a Botox infection to the throat is curing their inability to burp
Patients say a Botox infection to the throat is curing their inability to burp (Getty Images)

Dr Robert Bastian, a laryngologist outside of Chicago, came up with the procedure after a man who had long struggled with abelchia reached out to see if he might try using Botox as a cure. The medicine was already in use to treat people who had other throat conditions, like difficulty swallowing after a stroke.

“It was just kind of a thought,” Bastian told Very Well Health.

The doctor added that even after the Botox wore off, patients seemed to still be able to burp with more ease.

“To my surprise, people would say to me at six months, at eight months, at 12 months, ‘I can still burp,’” he said. “It’s like training wheels...People find that little hook to the burp, and they practice it.”

However, despite doctors from Noway to Thailand using the treatment, the procedure remains costly because many insurance companies regard Botox as a red flag.

“We hear that in Southern California it’s $25,000, in Seattle $16,000, in New York City $25,000,” Bastian told KFF Health News.

Others have argued the seeming effectiveness of the treatment is a placebo effect, or a symptom of social media-fueled “cyberchondria.”

It’s indisputable, though, that social media seems to have been a key player in the rise of the treatment reaching patients like Rosenthal, bringing further attention to a condition that was subject to little study until recently.

Her Colorado doctor first heard of the Botox method in 2020, when a teen arrived in his office with a bundle of papers about the procedure. He’d found out about the Botox scheme on Reddit.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in