Lifestyle

After a restorative sojourn at a Swiss wellness clinic, my pursuit of equilibrium - physical, mental, metabolic - drew me next to Mayrlife, a medical spa poised like a secret on the glassy banks of Lake Altaussee, deep in the Austrian Alps. More than a retreat, Mayrlife was whispered about as a sanctuary for those seeking not just renewal, but recalibration: a medically supervised immersion into the art and science of well-being, particularly for those - like me - wrestling with the early edges of pre-diabetes.

The clinic’s legacy begins with Dr. Franz Xaver Mayr, an early 20th-century Austrian physician who argued, long before “gut health” became a hashtag, that all vitality begins in the digestive tract. To Mayr, a troubled gut was not a local problem - it was the root of systemic dysfunction. His cure was deceptively simple: rest, cleanse, and retrain the digestive system. A century later, that principle still anchors the Mayrlife method, though the tools have evolved dramatically.

Today, Mayrlife’s version of the Mayr Cure merges tradition with twenty-first-century precision. Before the first herbal tea is poured, guests undergo an array of diagnostics - food intolerance testing, full blood panels, and body composition scans - forming the blueprint for an exquisitely personalized program. Days unfold in rhythm: cryotherapy, therapeutic massages, and medically guided nutrition plans, all supervised by clinicians whose manner is both meticulous and reassuringly kind.

But the true revelation, at least for me, wasn’t the lab work or the treatments - it was the act of eating itself. Mayrlife treats every meal as a meditation. Chewing - thorough, mindful, and slow - is nonnegotiable. In an age that prizes efficiency over awareness, this simple directive feels almost radical. Each bite becomes a conscious moment, a recalibration of attention that reminds you food is not fuel alone, but communication between body and brain.

There’s also the choreography of the meal: vegetables first, then proteins, then carbohydrates. This isn’t aesthetic preference but metabolic strategy, designed to stabilize blood sugar and reduce post-meal spikes - critical for anyone managing insulin sensitivity. Every sequence, every portion, is rooted in clinical evidence yet executed with the elegance of ritual.

And then there’s the atmosphere itself: no phones, no noise, no rush. Meals are taken against the backdrop of Alpine stillness, where mist hangs low over Lake Altaussee and time, briefly, loosens its grip. Presence becomes its own medicine.

Perhaps most compelling is the clinic’s embrace of the gut as a “second brain.” Housing up to 70 percent of the immune system and deeply entangled with the nervous system, the gut-brain axis is now a serious subject of scientific research - a link between digestion, mood, and cognition that Dr. Mayr seemed to intuit a century ahead of his time.

By the end of my stay, what had begun as a wellness experiment felt more like a quiet awakening. The lesson was elemental yet profound: health begins not with supplements or superfoods, but with the simple, intelligent act of eating well - and paying attention while doing it.

In a world enthralled by quick fixes and glittering diet trends, Mayrlife’s message is refreshingly unglamorous: true wellness is not invention, but return. Return to balance, to awareness, to the rhythm of a body that already knows what it needs - if only we’d listen.

And perhaps that’s the real question the Mayrlife philosophy poses: if the gut holds the key to our vitality, why is this wisdom still treated as luxury, rather than common knowledge?

Photo credits: Mayrlife

Luiz Costa Macambira

Luiz F. Costa Macambira is the former Publisher of Forbes Monaco and Forbes Netherlands.