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Ozempic partly to blame for wine bar closure, says owner
The owner of a Dallas wine bar has cited the growing use of weight-loss drug Ozempic as one of the reasons the business has folded. db investigates the link between GLP-1 drugs and alcohol.
Dallas bar Trova Wine and Market will close its doors for the final time on 18 January after four and a half years of trading.
In an interview with Dallas Morning Post, owner Michelle Bonds said that several factors had contributed to the business becoming financially unfeasible, including the growing popularity of Ozempic.
“I do have a lot of patrons who openly talk about the addition of Ozempic to their lives,” Bonds said. “We saw some traction when we marketed our salads as having 30g of protein if you add chicken — as those taking the drug should be consuming high amounts of protein with each meal. But at the same time, we saw a decrease in alcohol consumption and the amount of food ordered per customer.”
Bonds added that despite having “the bones of an amazing business”, signing on for five additional years “did not feel like the best move”.
What is Ozempic?
Ozempic is an injectable medicine designed to treat Type 2 diabetes, but which is increasingly being used among non-diabetics as a weight loss aid. It works by helping the pancreas to produce more insulin, which lowers blood sugar. According to Diabetes UK, Ozempic also slows down how quickly food is digested.
Ozempic itself, which should only be issued with a prescription, is a brand name for semaglutide, which belongs to a group of drugs called GLP-1 agonists.
Impact on the drinks trade
Last year db revealed that a report by financial services company Moody’s Ratings indicated that by 2023 as many as 30 million Americans could be on a GLP-1 drug such as Ozempic.
The report suggested that the growing use of Ozempic could end up impacting the drinks trade, as those taking the drug report experiencing a decreased appetite for both food and alcohol.
One person exploring the relationship between Ozempic and alcohol consumption in detail is pharmacologist Elizabet Jerlhag at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Jerlhag has for several years been researching how GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic reduce alcohol consumption in rats. In more than 12 published studies, Jerlhag found that taking the drugs significantly decreased the rats’ consumption of alcohol.
“We see a reduction by over 50%, which is quite dramatic,” she said.
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Another researcher examining the same topic is Christian Hendershot, a psychologist and addiction researcher at the University of North Carolina, who is leading one of six clinical trials aimed at understanding how GLP-1 drugs may alter people’s drinking and smoking habits.
“It does seem like there’s a pretty strong signal here,” he said.
Dopamine nation
The answer to why taking a GLP-1 drug such as Ozempic might lead someone to drink less seems to point towards suppressed dopamine release. Studies using both animals and humans as test subjects have found that GLP-1 drugs reduce the release of dopamine when alcohol is consumed.
Dopamine is associated with the brain’s reward centre, leading to feelings of pleasure and a desire to repeat a certain behaviour in order to experience those good feelings again. If dopamine is no longer triggered when someone drinks alcohol, there is little or no motivation to take another sip of beer or buy another glass of wine.
Who’s taking the most Ozempic?
According to US news platform Axios, Kentucky is the US state that prescribes the most Ozempic (at 21 prescriptions per every 1,000 people).
Next up is West Virginia at 18.9 prescriptions dispensed per 1,000 people. The third most prolific state is Alaska (17.5 prescriptions per 1,000 people), followed by Mississippi (16.1) and Louisiana (15.4).
Rhode Island had the lowest rate of Ozempic prescriptions (3.7 per 1,000), and Massachusetts had the second lowest (4), followed by Wisconsin (4.3).
The above is based on data collected in January 2024 from private insurers including Medicare and Medicaid. A year on, the number of prescriptions is likely to have risen substantially. Furthermore, the above data does not take into consideration the amount of Ozempic that is procured in the US without a prescription, meaning the real number of Ozempic prescriptions handed out per US state is likely to be considerably more.
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