The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Well, well, well
Poke fun at sound healing and dog yoga all you want, but wellness is one of the world’s fastest-growing industries. Radhika Sanghani meets the enthusiasts taking ‘healthy living’ to mind-boggling extremes. Photographs by Robert Ormerod
Two marathons in a weekend, drinking ‘raw’ water and foraging for weeds… Radhika Sanghani meets the extreme-wellness addicts
When Josephine Mcgrail
wakes up at 6am, she starts with a simple meditation to prepare herself for the day ahead. After 15 minutes of deep breathing, it’s time for her Ayurvedic cleansing techniques. First, she uses a metal scraper to remove any bacteria that have built up overnight on the surface of her tongue. Then she does oil pulling: swilling a teaspoon of coconut oil around her mouth for 10 minutes to help prevent tooth decay. Finally, she uses her neti pot – a sort of mini teapot – to snort saltwater up one nostril and out through the other, to remove any bacteria from the nasal passage and ward off respiratory-tract infections.
By 6.45am, she’s ready for a glass of fresh celery juice (to improve digestion and mental clarity), followed by a pint of water infused with shungite mineral stones (to energise the water and rid it of toxins), which can be bought online for £15 a kilo. At 7.45, it’s time for her first yoga class of the day, and at 11, when most of us are on our second coffee, she sits down for a hearty bowl of vegan porridge. Namaste.
Mcgrail, a 33-year-old model, actor, healer and yoga teacher based in London, is one of many wellness devotees whose daily lives are filled with a number of unusual, and evermore extreme, techniques to improve their physical and mental health. The wellness industry has been booming over recent years – it’s now worth $4.2 trillion worldwide, according to the Global Wellness Institute – but it is no longer just about yoga and mindfulness, swallowed down with an almondmilk smoothie.
Instead, it’s also about ‘extreme wellness’ – a trend that incorporates everything from ‘primal’ diets and physical challenges like ultramarathons and ice baths, right up to taking nootropics (natural or manmade supplements that are professed to boost memory and mental focus) and visiting sweat lodges, where groups spend hours in extremely hot enclosed spaces to purify their bodies and minds. These are springing up in the likes of Kent, London and Oxfordshire.
‘I went to my first sweat lodge more than three years ago,’ says Mcgrail. She stayed in a handmade tent in the British countryside for five hours in 39C heat, with regular breaks to dip into a freezing-cold river. ‘I hadn’t done any research, but I immediately loved it. I’d never seen myself as a nature lover before, but being in that circle, around the fire, I started to feel a deep connection to the earth. It was almost primal.’
Jessica Harman, a senior editor at trend forecaster WSGN, explains of extreme wellness: ‘It’s all part of a wider trend of people finding bespoke solutions that work for them.’ Harman believes that our fast-paced, non-stop culture has encouraged the pursuit of the quick fix, which inevitably doesn’t work, and leads people into a self-perpetuating cycle of seeking more radical quick fixes. ‘We’re living in a time of excess, and we’ve put ourselves in an over-manufactured comfort zone. So a lot of people are going back to primal extremes, to try to solve issues that have come about as a result of today’s excess.’
One example is Brrrn, the ‘world’s first cool-temperature fitness studio’, which recently launched in New York. The idea is that people exercise in freezing conditions so they lose more calories during a workout as the body fights to withstand the cold. Dutch extreme athlete ‘Iceman’ Wim Hof has become famous for breaking records running on and swimming under ice, and now has more than 613,000 Instagram followers.
In the UK, extreme fitness has
Gymbox calls its Flatline fitness class the most dangerous in the world
already arrived, too – the Gymbox chain calls its Flatline workout the hardest and most dangerous fitness class in the world. It involves 45 minutes of high-intensity exercises, such as hoisting 60kg weights and sprinting for 45 metres – all in a 12kg weighted vest with just 15-second breaks. Paramedics are on hand during classes, and participants are required to sign a death waiver before getting started.
Beyond fitness, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently went viral for admitting he drinks ‘salt juice’ every morning – a concoction of water, lemon and Himalayan salt. While it is clearly good to stay hydrated and provide your body with electrolytes and vitamin C, ingesting too much salt can cause raised blood pressure, which can increase your risk of heart disease and stroke.
And there is another, more concerning trend afoot: raw water. This craze, which has its roots in the rawfood movement, is for consuming water from springs or rivers without it being processed; fans believe it is free of industrial toxins and rich in healthy microbes, which could improve gut health.
The fad has elicited a strong backlash, with health experts stressing that the water could be contaminated with harmful bacteria, parasites and pesticides. But in a turn of events that makes the jade vagina eggs of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop brand look tame, it’s becoming more and more popular, with a number of American start-ups capitalising on the trend: 2.5 gallons of untreated water can go for $36.99.
Dr Jeff Breckon, a chartered sport and exercise psychologist, believes that the rise in extreme wellness can be tracked alongside the explosion of social media. The hashtags #healthy and #wellness have been used more than 160 million times on Instagram, and it’s now commonplace for people to share gym selfies, screenshots of marathon-training routes, and even #sweatyselfies. ‘People have been more exposed to new ideas about promoting wellbeing, which can be great, but can lead to false expectations and hope, too,’ he says.
‘It also means that people are constantly looking for something unique and different to do to help them stand out in a crowd. We’re always looking to show off against our peers, and the more extreme the better – especially on social media where you can then get social affirmation.’
He believes that the political and economic climate is responsible too. ‘At a time of instability and unrest, people want challenges they can feel engaged in, and build a community in. In recent years we’ve seen a rise in things like Ironman and [other] triathlons [an industry that saw a 57 per cent growth in value in the UK between 2012 and 2017], because it offers something different but also the chance to be part of a community.’
In a similar vein, Nepal granted a record 381 permits to climb Mount Everest this spring (overcrowding amid harsh conditions, and a rising death toll prompted calls for these to be limited). To Breckon this is no surprise: ‘It’s about having a self-challenge where you can get something you’re not getting from the rest of your life.’
Jonny Muir, a 37-year-old
English teacher in Edinburgh, can relate. He ran his first marathon aged 18, but after becoming ‘bored of road running’, he took up the more intense sport of hill running. He now runs ultramarathon distances across the Scottish mountains at high altitudes – sometimes completing the equivalent of two marathons in a weekend – and tries to sneak in a daily 12-mile hill run in the evenings after putting his two children to sleep.
‘I never set out to run such long
distances,’ explains Muir, who once ran a 60-mile loop of 23 Munros (Scottish mountains in excess of 3,000ft) within 24 hours, a journey he details in his book The Mountains Are Calling. ‘It was just a progression where I started spending longer and longer running, then I covered ultra distances, and it became second nature.’
He has also tried sky-running, an extreme sport in which runners move quickly through steep terrain on exposed ridgelines, which can be incredibly dangerous.
‘It’s pretty hardcore; you have to be vetted to get in [to sky-running races] and prove you have relevant experience,’ he says. As a father to two young children, sky-running is an occasional hobby, but not something he’d do regularly: ‘I’d worry I’d fall off a ridge and break my leg, or worse.’
While running extreme distances can be damaging to the body, Kate Cook, a corporate wellness expert, says that it’s often less of an issue for experienced runners like Muir. ‘The problem is when people apply these things to their lives out of context, as a quick fix. You get this a lot in diet; a lot of people skip the basics – like eating real food, being mindful of where it comes from and so on – and go straight to extremes like paleo or keto diets [broadly low-carb, high-fat regimens that cut out starchy foods including a number of vegetables]. People spend all day in offices, with awful LED light, no fresh air, not sleeping well, eating bad food, and then say, “I need to fix my life: let me do this extreme hack.” It’s very human; we fix the downstream problems without fixing the upstream, because the upstream ones aren’t very sexy. The solutions are, eat well consistently, do exercise consistently – so instead you think, let me drink some salt juice.’
Richard Mawby, now 29,
turned to extremes to ‘fix his life’ seven years ago – and he has stuck with them. Back then he was running his late father’s business in Northamptonshire, fitting water filters, but was also eating unhealthily and suffering from stress. When he developed a tooth cavity, he started to research the causes and discovered that his ‘fairly normal’ diet of high-carb and sugary processed foods was having a negative impact on his health. He decided to adapt his nutrition to rebuild his teeth, and improve his wellbeing.
Overnight, he changed his diet to a ‘primal paleo approach’, which involved eating warm raw milk from Jersey cows, wild fish, freerange grass-fed local meat, or wild greens that he found growing on his parents’ land, which happens to include a private nature reserve. He gave up his job to focus on his health, moving out of his bedroom in the family home and into the garage to align with his new focus on living off nature.
Within five months, he had lost three stone, his cavity had stopped growing, and he found his mental clarity stronger than ever.
Since then, he has continued to live off a wild diet, and now runs Forage Frolics, leading tours around his family’s land to educate people on the benefits of eating wild food. ‘Today I don’t really subsist on things from supermarkets,’ he says. ‘I’ll occasionally buy wild fish from Waitrose, or raw cheese made from unpasteurised milk.’ He buys the cheese from local farms, believing it to have extra probiotic properties, despite the risk it could contain bacteria like listeria or E. coli.
‘But everything else I eat is seasonal and wild. Whatever plants are out at each time of year are what I incorporate into my diet – I’ll harvest wild nuts; pendulous sedge seed, found in plants that grow on damp soil; or fry common hogweed leaves, edible plants typically found on grassland and in meadows. They help cultivate a healthy gut, and I now find I don’t put on any weight, and have unlimited amounts of energy. I don’t need things like coffee in the morning.’
For the last year and a half, Mawby has also been drinking raw water straight from a local stream on his parents’ land. ‘I’m lucky to have this fresh source of water,’ he says. ‘It runs through tree roots, soil and pebbles and picks up natural nutrients. I feel much more hydrated for it, and would never go back to filters, or even tap which is effectively recycled toilet water.’ Even though he acknowledges the health risks, he believes his freshwater spring is free of dangerous bacteria, and says he has never fallen sick because of drinking from it. ‘Raw water is the extreme,’ he says. ‘But it’s something that works for me.’
He suggests that ordinary people could begin foraging for dandelions and nettles as a step into this way of life, but advises they do so under the guidance of a professional.
‘I would never go back to tap water – effectively recycled toilet water’
Mawby admits his mum, a retired nurse, thought he’d gone crazy when he spent an entire winter subsisting on raw milk, though she is now partial to his dandelion broths. Although it is illegal to sell raw milk on the high street in the UK, there are now over 180 registered raw cows’ drinking milk producers, compared to 114 three years ago. In spite of experts warning unpasteurised milk can contain harmful bacteria, a growing number of people believe that it not only tastes better, but retains important nutrients that can help to improve digestion and natural immunity.
People are adopting the traditions of other cultures, too. Mcgrail’s interest in ancient Indian Ayurvedic medicine extends to taking ashwagandha – a strong herb classed as a nootropic that is said to help people cope with stress and calm the brain. ‘These things do seem extreme to us,’ points out Cook. ‘But in other cultures, they’re actually the norm. In the right context, they can have their merit and be safe. The problem is when people go straight for the ashwagandha without doing anything else, and without doing any research at all.’ In those cases, excess dosage could lead to vomiting and diarrhoea – or worse if it is taken alongside certain medications.
Cook also stresses that some other ancient techniques beginning to gain traction in the UK can be dangerous, if not deadly, for people turning to them for quick wellness fixes, such as sweat lodges or ice baths. ‘Extremes of heat and low temperature, if you’re not acclimatised to them, could be potentially life-threatening – especially if you’re out of condition.’
Sweat lodges have their roots in Mayan and Native American traditions. The idea is for people to gather in tents outdoors, with burning red coals in the centre and scented water poured on top to create steam. Participants – whose faces are typically smothered with coconut oil to prevent burning sensations – spend 45 minutes in the lodge during ‘sacred ceremonies’, before coming out to dunk themselves in freezing water. The process is then repeated over the course of five hours.
The belief is that the sweating helps to purify the body, but the practice could also lead to overheating, dehydration or even suffocation. In 2009, three people died in Arizona during a sweat lodge ceremony overseen by ‘self-help guru’ James Arthur Ray, who was later convicted of negligent homicide. It appears to have been a tragic anomaly, but it underlines the possible dangers.
‘It is very intense,’ says Mcgrail, who has attended a number of sweat lodges in recent years. ‘But for me, it feels really raw and authentic, and you get a big connection with everyone there. It is very hot, you’re in the dark, and it’s about purification, and detoxification – not just on a physical level about what you’re eating and drinking, but about letting go of experiences you’re holding on to. It’s almost like a rebirth.’
Not everyone will feel as willing to enter into a 39-degree tent in the hope of being reborn. Nor will we all necessarily be tempted to run 30 miles over mountains, or ditch our Brita filters in favour of a local spring. But while these acts might not hit the mainstream, there will always be wellness thrillseekers in search of the next big challenge or cure.
‘I do recognise that my diet can seem extreme to some people,’ acknowledges Mawby. ‘But it’s just who I am.’