MODERN MAKEOVERS
An update on wellness
“Alot of men are really fatigued,”Dr Sepp Fegerl tells me. With a bucolic view through his window of lakes and forests, gentle meadows and snowy peaks, I’m finding it difficult to concentrate. But then distraction is clearly written into the DNA of VivaMayr Altaussee.
“It’s not only women who are striving to be the perfect wife, mother and career woman,” continues the idyllic health resort’s medical director .“We have a lot of male clients who are getting onto planes ten times a week–this is not healthy. They are overweight, stressed and suffer from insomnia. What’s more, the state of desperation in our male clients is sometimes higher than in our female clients.”
Dr Fegerl and his team believe that one ten-day stay here can add ten years to a lifespan, while adopting their clean living principles could give you at least another 20 years. Staff follow the doctrines of Austrian physician Dr Franz Xaver Mayr who started practising more than a 100 years ago – and who lived until he was 90. He believed that humans unknowingly self-harm by storing toxins in their intestines. To this end, he developed the Mayr Cure, a combination of fasting, sweating, sleeping, sensible living and chewing. Lots of chewing.Your ears need to echo from chewing.
Through word of mouth (the resort’s general manager Dr Dieter Resch tells me that they never advertise – though the website, vivamayr.com/en/altaussee, is comprehensive), it’s a philosophy that’s gained an avid following. What’s more, big corporations are buying into it as a method to maintain a healthier, happier ship.
“More companies are sending top-tier executives to VivaMayr in a bid to make them look after themselves better. A lot of big finance and pharmaceutical companies, including ones from Dubai, are benefiting from our programmes,” says Dr Fegerl.
It’s a sentiment that Paul Joseph, co-founder of Health and Fitness Travel, reaffirms.“With men still significantly less likely than women to make time to consult a doctor, wellness retreats catering to men offer a more approachable means of addressing health issues,”he says. “We had the GM of one of the biggest banks of England for three weeks recently just to take a break and re-energise,”Dr Resch reveals. And indeed, while women are still slightly outnumbering men in the detox spa stats stakes, during my stay here I actually encountered a large number of men.
Jonas, a 42-year-old originally from Munich, who now works in real estate in New York, says the soothing scenery alone is medicine for the soul.“I’m loving being in the mountains with all this fresh, clean air and walks around the lakes are so revitalising.”
Interestingly, he is here with his parents, a jolly, sprightly couple who permanently appear to be high on life. Perhaps it’s because they too are relishing being so far removed from the everyday world.
As a music manager, Rob who could almost pass as a millennial (confirming Dr Resch’s claim that more young people are signing up to VivaMayr), is someone who spends his life up in the air, with his weeks spent commuting between LA and London. With his foppish hair and youthful face he could be in one of the boy bands he manages – if it weren’t for his sluggish, puffy physique.
As I sit down for Nasal reflex therapy according to Roeder, a naturopathic treatment for sinusitis, rhinitis and headaches, I chat to Steve, with an earbud poking out my nose. Thankfully he’s having the same treatment and also looks like a one-horned aardvark so there’s no need for any embarrassment. On the contrary, being in this somewhat absurd situation together allows us to chat more freely to each other. A 52-year-old Brit, Steve has been living in a quiet village in the south of France for 16 years. He’s healthy, but he’s in a wheelchair. “Multiple Sclerosis,”he tells me,“I’ve had it for 20 years. It came as quite a shock, especially since I had been so active before. ”While the doctors here are not promising to cure him, they have said that with the right diet, minerals and treatments, they would be able to help his mobility in some way.
Improving quality of life for all their guests is key, with the main focus being on preventing “civilisation diseases” like gout, diabetes, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis and cancer.
The doctors define and adapt your diets every day according to your specific needs. With 75 per cent of the immune system located in your intestines, what you eat and how you eat it is very important for your health and quality of your life.
“We all have stressful jobs so we sometimes come home and eat the wrong things,” says Dr Resch. “But you should never eat raw after 4pm and always stick to smaller portions. Even if you eat large portions of something very healthy it’s not good for you because the stomach acids are not able to dissolve the food, so what’s not digested goes into your intestines and that’s when the bacteria comes. The intestines diffuse food to the blood, but if the blood doesn’t receive this, there is no value for you.”
At Viva Mayr it’s all about the base, or more specifically, an alkaline base powder as the objective is to make your body as alkaline as possible. “Losing weight is not a priority in our house – it’s a side effect,” says Dr Resch.
If your intestines are in good shape, you’ll enjoy beautifully presented, flavour-filled plates of steamed vegetables, fresh fish and wholesome soups. Sadly, mine let me down and I’m restricted to chewy bread, vegetable broth and herbal teas, with protein options of breasola, cheese, eggs or fish for breakfast.
“We don’t only teach you how to eat and how to sustain this diet when you leave,” says Dr Resch, “but also how to relax and sleep.You go to bed very early here.The people in the village think we have no business because there are no lights on in the evenings,” he chuckles.
But there’s plenty to keep you occupied during the daytime. Paul, an American in his 60s who has a stressful job in banking in Geneva, is making the most of the proximity to history and culture. The nearby Altaussee salt mine tunnels were used to store invaluable works of art, including masterpieces by Michelangelo, Dürer, Rubens and Vermeer during the second World War, and Admont Abbey is just an hour’s drive away. Containing the largest monastic library in the world, the spellbinding abbey is renowned for its baroque architecture, art, and manuscripts. Paul has also been enjoying horse carriage rides through Altaussee and a guided tour of the spa town of Bad Ischl – the “secret capital of Austria”.
I’m sticking to more sporting pursuits like snowshoeing – running down slopes of thigh-high powdery snow is the closet I’ve come to feeling like a child again in a very long time. I also embrace the 7.7km walk around the lake and feel physically elated. This is along with gentle morning stretching and yoga classes, a personal training session, a swim in one of the world’s most photographic pools and plenty of searing sauna stints interspersed with quick blasts of icy outdoor air.
While the emphasis is more on gentle activity while you’re doing the cure, VivaMayr is also gaining momentum with sportspersons, both men and women.
“This is one of our target group of clients and a side of the clinic we want to develop more. We had two athletes from the Austrian Olympic team recently and we were surprised by how bad their conditions were – no one had taught them how to eat properly. One had really bad digestion issues. By correcting their eating habits we helped them to become less prone to injuries because by reducing the acids in your body, you are not as easily affected by accidents.”
The days whizz past in a whirl of massages, consultations, yoga, PT sessions, infusions, saline inhalations, hypo xytraining (IHHT) to promote cell regeneration, liver compresses and some incredibly effective osteopathy. I could easily get used to this lifestyle.
Paul Joseph says the wellness sector will only continue to grow now as more
People don’t want to sit on a beach sunning themselves for ten hours a day; they want to return home with lasting benefits
people want to live healthy lives for longer. “Due to our sedentary daily lives, which can leave us open to health problems in later life, we want to stay active on holiday and use what time we have to boost our well being. People don’t want to sit on a beach sunning themselves for ten hours a day; they want to return home with lasting benefits, long after the tan’s faded.”
VivaMayr recently opened a walk-in clinic in Vienna and will open in London in March. The director of the Viva Centre for Modern Mayr Medicine, Dr Harald Stossier and his wife, make regular visits to the Dubai Herbal & Treatment centre. Prices at VivaMayr Altaussee start from AED880/`15,414 per night, including meals. Top: A pool with a view Right: The salt stone sauna Below: The light and airy dining room