to overcome long Covid, to aid with getting pregnant, to help with cancer, to lose weight pre surgery or generally.  Me, I had bronchitis for about six weeks over the winter.  I coughed so long and hard that I slipped a disc in my lower spine so was up for some restoration.  One guest told me that her husband had been told he would die by his doctors because of his intestines (I didn’t ask from what) but after a month at Viva Mayr, he very much thrived so they come back twice a year for a month at a time because the Spa protocol has given him his life back.

The spa’s philosophy is based on the Mayr Cure created by Dr. F.X. Mayr who believed that disease begins in the gut.  The protocol is all about gut health by detoxing the body from swirling oil in the mouth in the morning to grab toxins to drinking Epsom salts in the morning to achieve significant release of intestinal matter, to drinking 3- 4 litres of water a day to bolster urination to sweating through exercise, infrared and Finnish saunas, steam rooms to lymphatics drainage massages to move toxins out of the lymph.  And then some.  Flush, flush, flush.

The protocol is tailored made to each guest.  For me it was discovered that I currently have gluten and fructose intolerances, that my tired body (I am hypothyroid so tiredness comes with the territory) needed drips of selenium, B vitamins, and assortment of minerals.  I have learned over the years that intolerances (as opposed to allergies) go away if we remove them from our system for a time.  Gluten is now something I must monitor because the thyroid doesn’t like it.  After four trips to Italy last year, it is no wonder my body is shunning gluten at the mo.  And let’s be clear, I could eat pasta every day.  Woe is me; I adore pasta.

Blessed are they who have First World problems and opportunities.  In two weeks, I lost nine pounds and put my body back to balance sans caffeine, alcohol and sugar whilst freeing up the muck in my gut.  Yuk yes, but so important.

“In The Depths of Grief, The Mayr Cure Led Me Back to Myself” – Gerri Gallagher, British Vogue, 23 April 2022

Given I will be 65 later this year (how is that even possible?!), I have decided to take ‘the Cure” on an annual basis because one thing we know at this age is that our health is everything.  Like many of us, when I think of the age 64, I think of my mother, not me.  In my head, I am in my Forties.  Yet my body continues to remind from time to time that I am two-thirds the way in, if I continue to care for my vessel that is and the genes cooperate.

I’m by no means fanatical about health, rather I am keenly aware.  I do not deny myself.  Joy is a top value of mine and sometimes, that means wine, ice cream and pomme frites and that’s okay.  We are human beings after all meant to experience the physical.  Sometimes the simplest things in life bring us immense joy and how ‘golden’ I feel when I leave Austria is one of those things.