Dispatch from Mayrlife

I’m fresh off a seven-day Cure at Mayrlife, a medical health resort on Lake Altaussee in the center of Austria, in a region called Salzkammergut. I’d always been curious about it—I know many people who go there once a year, and I have several friends who swear by its life-changing effects. I was well overdue for a detox—while Matt and I will seasonally do a four-day fast, it had been a year of lots of travel (read: lots of trying everything, indulging, lack of routine, jet lag, working on the road, not exercising as much as I should…) and it was taking its toll. I’d wake up desperate for coffee, and just keep drinking it until midday, and then at the end of the day make the shift from workday to relaxing by drinking a martini. I didn’t feel bad, I just didn’t feel or look my best. My face felt puffy, I didn’t seem to have the cheekbones I once did, and my clothes didn’t fit me the way I wanted them to. I was tired of feeling this way, and I was very excited to make a change. 

The drive from Salzburg was about an hour and a half through the most beautiful scenery—past the lovely, mountain-ringed Wolfgangsee Lake (home of Mozart), and through charming little villages. We arrived at Mayrlife, a modern structure built roughly a decade ago, and checked in. The space was calming, with a big green-tiled fireplace at the center, and kind women at the front desk wearing dirndls. Our room had an outdoor deck, lots of light, a bathroom with a tub and a shower, and a separate bathroom. We took a walk around the sweet village just to get our bearings (noted a great-looking vintage shop!), and walked along one side of the lake, which would look different every day that we walked around it, and always more beautiful. (If you’re a Bond fan, you might recognize it from Spectre, as it’s the lake where the Pale King lives.)

The stay really begins with the first doctor visit. Both Matt and I met with Dr. Iris Maislinger and talked through our lifestyle and health histories, followed by an exam in which she massages your stomach and begins to observe your gut and health condition. After that comes Functional Myodiagnostics, which is a bit like TCM and kinesiology combined. Various substances (diluted homeopathic preparations of potential allergens, such as lactose, glucose, mold, etc.) are placed onto your tongue, and then your muscles are tested to see the reaction. Of course bloodwork is taken, and those results come back later in the week, but just from touching your stomach and seeing how your body reacts to these different substances the doctors are able to assess your well-being and set you on your path for the week. 

Iris diagnosed me with a parasite and a gluten and dairy intolerance. She believed Matt had a parasite as well, and just a wheat intolerance. We were both put onto very individualized programs—different physical therapies, supplements, and foods, which were in evidence at our first lunch. I had a gorgeous piece of fish with a carrot and squash puree, while Matt had several pieces of boiled chicken and a hard biscuit with some linseed oil. We were instructed to chew chew chew—40 times per bite—and to have very little liquid with our meals. The idea is that digestion needs to begin in your mouth, and diluting the food with water dilutes the digestive process. To help you concentrate on chewing, they encourage quiet dining, being mindful of the process. They don’t want guests being super social over the meal and prefer that you think of it as a retraining, like school for how to eat. We saw for ourselves how easy it was to forget to chew once we were mid-conversation. 

Because you’re not fasting, it’s not a hard program to follow. Dinners are definitely the most challenging because they are the lightest—Matt and I were only on broth in the evening. And while it’s not fun, going to bed light is something I’ll continue back home on days I’m not going out. The other new challenge for us was to wake up early enough to have breakfast before starting the day’s activities. I had something scheduled every morning at 8, so I had to get to breakfast by 7:30—they consider it to be the most important meal of the day. Since I was hungry from not having a big meal the night before, I was ready for it. Breakfasts switch up between eggs and a side (for me it was a choice of smoked fish or poached chicken), and then other days it was two proteins and a “chewing trainer” (their language for a roll that is a challenge to chew and makes you mindful of your chewing). With the trainers, and actually with all the meals (even for your dinner broth), they offer a range of cold-pressed oils high in omega-3 fatty acids, like linseed, olive, or my favorite, camellina. These are all made in the region, and they believe healthy fats are super important for your metabolism. The camellia has a very faint garlic flavor, and made everything taste a bit better. The food was always perfectly cooked, and they allow you to salt it as much as you want with salt that comes from the surrounding mountains. Lunches were always interesting: my boiled meat with carrots and salsa verde was divine (sorry Matt), as was the day I was served a sous-vide egg with truffle on a bed of spinach and mashed potatoes. Throughout the day, just not at mealtimes, you can go down to the lounge area and help yourself to a delicious broth. They don’t consider that a snack, but it feels like one, which is good, because you’re not supposed to snack between meals, ever again! They want you to have a 4-6 hour gap between meals. And ideally, several nights a week you’d forgo dinner—which they call “dinner canceling.” They like intermittent fasting, just not the version we practice of skipping breakfast. They want the body to begin its rest at the end of the day and to be in a fasting state until breakfast.  

The therapies they offer here are incredible. A blood test showed I still have signs of Borrelia (a Lyme bacteria) after years of trying to get rid of it—I’d tried to find IHHT oxygen therapy in the States to no avail, and it really only works to have multiple sessions over 6 days. They had me do this for 45 minutes daily, which entailed putting on an oxygen mask and breathing through it, alternating between high and low amounts of oxygen, which supposedly kills the parasite. This treatment is used by many for altitude training and is supposed to be great for long Covid, as well as long-term Lyme. I also did two rounds of ozone blood therapy, where they take your blood out, spin it with ozone, and inject it back in—it’s supposed to be great for mitochondrial function, inflammation and boosting immunity. Beyond that, I had foot reflexology, osteopathy, several different kinds of massage, like lymphatic drainage and cranial sacral. The Watsu (essentially Shiatsu in the water, in a private pool with high-salt-content water) was very interesting, and supposedly invented by a doctor in California named Harold Dull from Harbin Hot Springs. 

I was fascinated by how into walking they are, and not so much into intense workouts. Movement yes, crazy intensity no. They suggested that we walk 1-2 hours daily and at a pace where we could have a conversation or sing a song—not that ultra-rapid walking. And ideally, in nature. (Prune will be happy about this change!) 

Over the course of the week, I learned so much about my body. I never understood why I had been taking certain supplements—here, they explained every single reason. I also learned that my shallow breathing—something I knew I did, but never prioritized changing my breathing technique—was also affecting my metabolism. It’s not just our eating and exercise habits that shape our physiology, it’s how we breathe and how we deal with stress. Matt and I would compare notes on our different therapists and always found it humorous how fascinated they were when they looked at our bloodwork and said, “Ohhhhhh…it seems you have…..stress???” As if it was this very foreign thing they’d heard of but hadn’t personally experienced. After the third or fourth time I heard it, I’d just laugh and say: look at where you live and work—it’s paradise! You’re in this idyllic village where the food is so good, you have the cleanest air, your water comes from the lake, you walk around the lake or in the mountains every day—of course you have no stress. But it did really impact me beyond the charming/innocence of their question. Constantly working, even if we love what we do, isn’t good. Being constantly online and available on the phone, not good. Getting out and walking for 1-2 hours a day is good. Using mealtime to stop working and be mindful of what we are eating, and how we are eating it, is good. 

At my last checkup with Iris, I told her I was nervous to go—Rome wasn’t going to be a problem with eating clean, but Hong Kong, where I had visions of eating my way through—how was I going to manage? She said encouragingly that I’d be fine, that I just needed to continue with my no-snack rule, taking my supplements, drinking base powder (alkalizing mineral powder) in a glass of water 3x a day, and staying away from gluten and dairy for six months to protect all the work I’d done this last week. 

I’m writing this on the plane from Hong Kong to Tokyo, and… I did it! No, I wasn’t able to follow many of the amazing recs in our Hong Kong Black Book, or the suggestions of our local friends… but I did feel good every day, finding plenty of rice dishes and eating Peking goose without the pancakes…and honestly, no egg tart is worth taking away that feeling.