Unassuming city that's become America's Ozempic weight loss epicenter - and it isn't LA or NYC

The Ozempic boom has dominated Hollywood and the world of social media influencers looking to drop a few stubborn pounds.   

It has also given millions of people dealing with obesity a way to turbocharge their weight loss when diet and exercise alone aren’t cutting it.

But, rather than Los Angeles or New York City, it's a very unassuming city that's feeling this boom more than anywhere else in America: Bowling Green, Kentucky.

At least four percent of Bowling Green residents have got a prescription to take one of the game-changing drugs, considerably more than the prescription rates in metropolises like New York and Miami, where it's closer to one percent.

WEIGHT LOSS HOTSPOT: A very unassuming city that's feeling this boom more than anywhere else in America: Bowling Green, Kentucky 

A NEW WOMAN: Mary Ellis [right] lost 80 pounds on Ozempic

APPLE OF HER EYE: Mary's husband [left] has started taking it too. The med spa where they get their shots has become so packed they often can't get an appointment

That figure, devised by PurpleLab Inc., which tracks prescriptions covered by insurance, does not take into account the number of people getting their medicines from smaller pharmacies that make their own versions or people who pay out of pocket because insurance doesn’t cover the cost.

Given that an estimated 7.4 percent of Bowling Green's 75,000 residents are uninsured, the true number of residents with prescriptions for one of these drugs could be higher. 

Business is booming at Bowling Green doctor’s offices, compounding pharmacies, and med spas.

Everyone there seems to be taking one of the medications or knows somebody who is, and more places across the US are poised to become similar ‘Ozempictowns.’

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Marie Ellis was not immediately sold on the shots, whose clinical trial results showed that the vast majority of patients lost up to 20 percent of their body weight after about a year of taking them.

She was in her mid-40s, weighed 265 pounds, and had tried nearly every fad diet under the sun with no results, according to reporting in Bloomberg. 

So she figured she had nothing to lose when a doctor prescribed her Mounjaro, a drug similar to Ozempic made by Eli Lilly.

She dropped 80 pounds over the course of about a year. An added benefit was her sudden lack of craving for cigarettes, having been a smoker since her late teens.

Pretty soon, her husband started taking it. Singing its praises, the Ellis’ convinced Marie’s cousin to get a script for the shots. 

Until recently, Marie’s daughter-in-law Savanna had been taking Wegovy, a stronger version of Ozempic first approved for weight loss. 

She only stopped taking it because she was concerned about how it might affect her pregnancy.

Mrs Ellis joined a local med spa that was distributing the weekly shots, albeit cheaper knock-offs. 

But pretty soon, the place became so packed she couldn’t get an appointment: ‘If you went over tomorrow at 8am, or even before, you won’t find any parking spots.

‘You just can’t get in there now. It’s nearly impossible.’

Nikki Wilson before her weight-loss journey (left). The hair stylist in Bowling Gree lost about 20 pounds on the obesity medications. She often hears from her clients that they are also taking the shots

She now gets her shots from an out-of-state nurse practitioner who sends them in the mail.

Meanwhile, clients of Nikki Wilson, owner of Posh Salon, gab about the wonder drugs. While coloring someone’s hair, Ms Wilson gushed that she had lost 20 pounds.

She said: ‘Everybody would ask me how I lost weight, and I’d say the shots.’

Ozempic, which was initially approved to treat type 2 diabetes, and Wegovy are essentially the same medicine. The latter is just a higher dose. Both are made with the same main ingredient, semaglutide.

Semaglutide spurs weight loss by mimicking the actions of GLP-1, or glucagon-like peptide-1, a hormone in the brain that regulates appetite and feelings of satiety.

It also slows down the rate at which the stomach empties, making one feel fuller for longer and, therefore, less likely to eat more.

Mounjaro and its cousin Zepbound are slightly different. Its active ingredient is called tirzepatide, and in addition to working on GLP-1 receptors, it works on the hormone glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP), which compounds the positive effects.

They’ve made pharmaceutical companies Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly billions of dollars, and the profit stream shows no signs of slowing down.

Novo earned around $12 billion in profits last year, its largest annual net profit since 1989. Lilly reported $11.3 billion in revenue and $2.97 billion in net profit for the second quarter of 2024 alone.

That financial windfall has trickled down to Bowling Green, where gym business is booming, med spas are cropping up left and right, the local vitamin store is turning major profits on supplements to deal with nausea caused by the drugs, and the restaurant industry hasn’t suffered despite increasing numbers of people with shrinking appetites.

Candie Gray, who grew up near town and takes semaglutide, said: ‘Do we still do our dinners every Friday night with our friends? Absolutely.

‘Am I eating half of what I used to eat before? Yes. You have to figure out how you still function in those social settings.’

Ms Gray, executive director of a senior living facility, started taking Ozempic in 2022. Her two brothers, in their 50s and 60s, respectively, had died from massive heart attacks, and her sister warned that they could be next.

Candie Gray dropped 30 pounds on Ozempic and saw her overall health improve. She takes a version of the drug made by a compound pharmacy, which, rather than doling out the brand name Ozempic or Wegovy, it sells its own very similar concoctions 

At that time, Gray weighed in at around 205 pounds, was prediabetic, and had high blood pressure. But in a matter of just six months on the medicine, she was down 30 pounds, her lab results normalized, and her commitment to weight loss was turbocharged.

She walks her Great Dane regularly, she plays pickleball with her husband, and she grocery shops online to avoid temptation in the brick-and-mortar store.

Her progress was moving at breakneck speed, but she hit a speed bump when her insurance denied her coverage for the drug. After six months, the company said she no longer met the prior authorization requirements to get it, and they cut her off.

She switched to a copycat version of the drug made by a compounding pharmacy for $246 per month - more than she was paying with insurance but far less than the $1,300-per-mont list price.

She said: ‘You’ve got a nurse practitioner that you may be talking to over the phone, that you may be sending some labs to. But they won’t have any idea if I’m 125 [pounds] versus 225.’

Compounding pharmacies are meant to provide medicines for patients whose needs are not met with FDA-approved drugs. If a senior citizen takes a medicine that comes in pill form but cannot take it that way, a compounding pharmacist would make it in liquid form.

They’re not generics, nor are they approved by the FDA. Rather, state-level pharmacy boards have oversight power, meaning pharmacies selling compounded semaglutide may not be in compliance with state and federal standards.