“And why do you think you are sick?”
I knew why I was sick. I was sick because I had a cold. And I had a cold because I have a toddler. And toddlers are, as far as I can tell, living, breathing vectors of disease.
But when I gave that answer to Dr Melanie Gatt, pithily I might add, on my first proper morning at Mayrlife, she looked at me with the patient expression, ironically, of someone explaining something to a toddler.
Because at Mayrlife, it turns out there is much more to every sickness. Here, in a pristine clinic on the banks of an even more pristine glacial Austrian lake, illness is not simply bad luck that happens to you. It is a signal. And almost every signal, according to the Mayr method on which the whole place is built, traces back in some way to the gut.
It is fair to say that when I arrived at Mayrlife, and having read some of the reviews, I was a tad sceptical and a bit more than a tad apprehensive. No alcohol I could just about do, but no caffeine? And no sugar? Well that sounded like no fun at all. I was fully braced for days of being upsold pseudoscience by people in white linen. But I left, to my considerable and ongoing surprise, a convert. Not to a diet, but to an entire way of thinking about what it takes to live a good, healthy life.
Why stay here?
Mayrlife is tucked away on the banks of Lake Altaussee, a glacial jewel hidden in the mountains of the Salzkammergut, roughly two hours from Salzburg. Austria is not a country that does things by halves and if you come to Mayrlife solely for the views, you will not be disappointed. Throughout my stay I felt connected with nature in a way that is a lot harder to achieve in a city in the UK. In fact the spa town has a history of salt mining that stretches back centuries and some of Mayrlife’s treatments involve that very salt.
The medical methodology underpinning everything here was developed by Dr Franz Xaver Mayr, a 19th-century Austrian physician who became convinced that the health of the digestive system was the key to overall wellbeing. In essence, it was Mayr’s view that an unhappy or inflamed gut undermines the immune system and that a great many of the ailments we treat as separate misfortunes, such as my cold, are in fact the same story told in different symptoms. This was the crux of Dr Gatt’s question and it is the philosophical backbone of what is now called Modern Mayr Medicine. It is a fundamentally holistic way of treating ailments through a personalised nutritional plan and medical treatments.
If that sounds like a lot of hard work for a holiday, CEO Dr Dieter Resch and his medical team deliver the whole experience with the elegance and class of a five-star hotel as well as the rigour and scientific knowledge of a private health clinic. It was clear from my very first day at Mayrlife that these were not people gesturing vaguely at science. They were doing the actual thing.
Mayrlife has 64 rooms, ranging from comfortable doubles to suites, penthouses and even private residences. The park residences are Mayrlife’s most generous offering. Containing a loft-style living area with kitchen, two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a sweeping balcony with lake views, they also come with a private spa replete with steam bath and sauna.
While those are for the rich and famous (of which Mayrlife counts many as clientele, discreetly of course) even the rooms for us mere mortals are perfectly appointed. Every room in the building has a view of either the lake, the Dachstein Glacier or the village below. The interiors are warm and soft, while the beds are undoubtedly the most comfortable I’ve ever slept in. In fact, much of the experience of being in the room is very similar to that of a high-end hotel. Just with more materials offering you ultrasounds and IVs. And, of course, no chocolates on the pillow.
Eating and drinking
Food at Mayrlife is both a form of therapy and a learning exercise. The kitchen uses regional and organic ingredients to produce menus built around the principles of gut regeneration. They are also calibrated precisely to each individual’s diagnostics. Those initial assessments with Dr Gatt, tested through a muscle-response exercise, what your body is and is not tolerating when it comes to a number of food groups. That test, along with blood analysis, forms the foundation for a custom nutrition plan that evolves throughout the stay.
It is worth saying the meals you get at Mayrlife are not like the meals you’ve had at a hotel. They are broth heavy, smaller in volume than a typical hotel dinner and guests are encouraged to chew at least 30 times before they swallow. All of the meals I had at Mayrlife were delicious, but more importantly they felt nourishing. If the treatment at Mayrlife is holistic, that shines through in the food. The plate is put together as a whole, with no one aspect a star, rather the ingredients sing in unison. That is not to say I wasn’t dreaming of chocolate Hobnobs by day three. But they make it a lot easier to follow the plan by making the meals themselves so delicious.
Somewhere around day three I was handed a single sheet of paper headed “10 Ingredients for Your Well-Being”. It is a mantra for eating and one that on the face of it I knew but I very rarely did.
For example, begin the day with warm water and herbal tea rather than coffee. Eat raw food only before four in the afternoon, because raw vegetables in the evening sit and ferment in the gut rather than doing anyone any good. Try to leave four or five hours between meals so the digestive system can finish what the sheet euphemistically called its “clean-up”, like “a kitchen after cooking”. Use cold-pressed oils and keep them in the fridge. Everyone should have a good breakfast, a hearty lunch and a light dinner. Chew properly. Taste things. In fact, the most radical instruction on the entire page was to pay attention to what you were eating while you were eating it. That means no phones in the dining room and no chatting too. They place a real emphasis on mindful eating.
None of this is revolutionary, and that is precisely the point. What Mayrlife does is take a set of principles you already basically know to be true and remove every obstacle to actually following them. This means that after a few days the new rhythm stops feeling like a regime and starts feeling like the obvious way to do things. By the end of the week, I could see the error of my ways. Not only did I sleep better than I had done since my toddler was born, but the idea of stuffing myself full with pasta and then immediately going to sleep no longer appealed. It was fundamentally a change of mindset.
What distinguishes Mayrlife from the more spartan end of the detox resort market is the cooking school. Guests don’t just eat differently for a week, they can learn how to replicate it. The class uses everyday kitchen equipment and demonstrations showing how to put the dishes together, equipping guests for when they return home. The genius of it is in that implication. This is not a week you survive and then leave behind, but a way of doing things for the rest of your life.
Things to do
A typical Mayrlife day arrives, printed and personalised in your room. The diagnostics that underpin all of this, be it the blood analysis, tolerance testing, a 3D body scan, the myodiagnostic, are of a level usually associated with elite sport or at least very specialist private medicine. But it was Dr Gatt’s calm, evidence-led way of explaining the results that made me excited to see and feel their effects. The list of treatments Mayrlife offer feels limitless and they can range from psychotherapies to IVs to ultrasounds. What Willy Wonka was to chocolate factories, Mayrlife is to medical treatments.
My treatments ranged from the restorative to the genuinely bracing. Cryotherapy takes place in a chamber at minus 110C — a temperature the body treats as a full-blown emergency and responds to accordingly, accelerating recovery and dampening inflammation. The IHHT hypoxytraining alternates the oxygen you breathe to mimic high altitude and stimulate the body’s cellular machinery. Water plasma therapy and water shiatsu take place in a highly concentrated saltwater pool. There is a Swiss stone pine sauna, multiple infrared cabins, and a beauty concept developed alongside Dr Barbara Sturm, the skincare physician whose anti-inflammatory approach has acquired something of a cult following among skincare aficionados. The idea, consistent with everything else at Mayrlife, is to work from the inside out.
It is hard to say exactly what benefit each treatment brought me, given I had never had very many of them before. But I certainly felt rejuvenated and restored after the treatments and my fitness watch notified me of an improvement in my recovery times after exercise and my sleep scores. Data begets data but it’s hard to argue with the numbers.
For those who wish to venture out of the resort, the surrounding landscape is spectacular. There are guided hikes and mountain bike tours as well as tennis and a nine-hole golf course in the immediate vicinity. The lake itself is perfect for a dip – although I was warned off that because of my cold – and it is hard not to lose yourself in the magnificence of your surroundings, even if it’s just for a little walk to start your day.
The verdict
It is hard to compare the experience in Mayrlife. The comparison to make is less with other hotels than with places where you can get private diagnostic medicine and a week of serious clinical intervention. It is worth noting as well that the support does not stop when your stay does: Mayrlife’s medical team continues to guide you once you are home. In fact the number of repeat visitors is testament to the fact that their programme works for a large number of guests.
It is far more than a wellbeing reset, and far more than just a beautiful setting. The benefit of being shown that every choice you make when it comes to food and your gut can make a massive difference. And that there are better choices available.
So why was I sick? Well I still blame my toddler. But I am still following some of the Mayr method at home. I’m practising mindful eating and taking the supplements I was prescribed. But more than the effect on my day to day has been an effect on the way I view eating and the choices I make about what I put in my gut. Did I wolf down the free chocolate Hobnobs on the flight home? Yes. But as Frank Sinatra would have said if he’d been to Altaussee, I did it (the) Mayr way.
Mayrlife Medical Health Resort, Altaussee, Austria. Programmes from €2,990 (7 nights, all treatments and food included). Rooms from €460/night. mayrlife.com