Doctors Treated a Woman’s Stomach Mass With Diet Coke, and It Actually Worked

A 63-year-old woman in Massachusetts landed in the emergency room with abdominal pain that wouldn’t quit. The eventual fix wasn’t surgery. It wasn’t a new drug either. Instead, doctors turned to Diet Coke, about 1.5 liters a day.

Her case appeared in a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine. It’s drawing attention for one main reason: semaglutide caused her symptoms. That’s the same medication found in Ozempic. She had taken it for roughly a year to manage type 2 diabetes and obesity, and it was working well. She’d lost around 40 pounds. However, something shifted during her final month on the drug.

She began experiencing nausea and vomiting. A burning pain stretched from her upper abdomen around to her back. She tried standard over-the-counter heartburn remedies first, but nothing helped. So she headed to the ER.

That’s when doctors found the problem: a gastric bezoar. Essentially, this means a hardened clump of undigested material sits in the stomach. It’s not a common complication. Still, it’s not unheard of, especially with drugs like semaglutide, and doctors confirmed it with an endoscopy.

Here’s the connection. GLP-1 receptor agonists, including Ozempic and Mounjaro, slow down how quickly the stomach empties. This slowdown actually helps drive their effectiveness for weight management, since people feel full longer and eat less as a result. In rare cases, though, food sits around too long. Consequently, it can clump together rather than move through the digestive system properly.

Once doctors confirmed the diagnosis, they took her off semaglutide immediately. Then came the harder decision. Removing a bezoar typically requires an endoscopic procedure or, in serious cases, surgery. But another option exists, and it’s been used for years with reasonable success: cola.

It sounds almost too simple to be real. Even so, doctors have documented this approach before. The typical protocol calls for about 3 liters of cola over 12 hours, administered by mouth or through a feeding tube. In this case, doctors scaled things back. She had diabetes, so regular soda was off the table. She also disliked carbonated drinks, so they cut the volume in half. That left her with 1.5 liters of diet cola daily.

The treatment worked faster than expected. By day two, she noticed a strange tugging feeling in her stomach. Relief from the nausea and pain followed shortly after. A follow-up endoscopy then confirmed the bezoar had disappeared entirely, meaning she avoided surgery altogether.

As for why cola dissolves these masses, researchers still aren’t certain. It might be the acidity. It could be the carbonation. Possibly both play a role, or perhaps some other factor nobody has pinned down yet. Most supporting evidence comes from scattered case reports rather than large clinical trials. As a result, doctors generally reserve this treatment for stable patients who show no signs of a more serious blockage.

This case highlights something important. Even widely used, FDA-approved medications like semaglutide and tirzepatide can carry real side effects and a real cost to consider. Slowed digestion, constipation, and occasionally a bezoar count among the known risks. They remain uncommon, but they’re not impossible.

If you take one of these medications and notice ongoing stomach pain, nausea, or vomiting, don’t wait it out. Call your doctor sooner rather than later. Most people never encounter this issue. Still, catching it early makes treatment far simpler, and sometimes the answer is already sitting in your fridge.