You wouldn’t guess from our obsession with talking about our health, but a report a few weeks ago found that British Jews are in better health than almost any other group in the country.
I’m not convinced. Having just turned 50, I could cure your insomnia with a list of my various ailments — and I am far from alone in this.
Let’s start with the most obvious. Jack Sprat I ain’t.
I have tried Atkins, Weight Watchers, Dukan and pretty much every other diet, to no more than partial effect. So the thought occurred to me that maybe I should try something more radical, and shlapp myself to a diet prison (sorry, clinic).
My ideal place was somewhere in the US. Nowhere in particular; my default option for any trip abroad is somewhere in the US. But if I was serious — I was — then timing and availability meant that it had to be Europe, and in particular the Viva Mayr Clinic in Austria, where I arrived one Sunday last autumn, booked in for 7 nights.
Let me spoil the cliff hanger and tell you now that I lost nearly 8 pounds. So on one level, it worked (although here we are, over 6 months later, and I’ve found those 8 pounds again).
But on every other level it was one of the most unpleasant weeks of my life. Admittedly, my life has never involved weeks of hot pokers being administered to orifices. But on the scale of unpleasantness experienced by nice Jewish boys from North London, this was up there at the top.
The Viva Mayr clinic is set in truly stunning scenery, on the shores of Lake Worth, near the border with Slovenia. It’s very white. The walls, the rooms, the dining room chairs and the staff uniforms, all white. Very clinicy.
I would say that no one comes to Viva Mayr for the hotel, except that they do. I spoke to a few fellow guests who came to get away for a week, to an atmosphere as far from hustle and bustle as you can imagine. It is easier to go a day — or more — without speaking to any other guests than it is to speak; the prevailing atmosphere is respectful silence (respectful of others’ wish for quiet). I can’t criticise that; it is what it is. It’s simply that, for me, silence is the very worst thing I can be made to endure.
I have never understood the ‘let’s get away from it all’ idea; I like where I live and what I do. I like my iPad and my TV. I like wifi and the connection it always gives me to the rest of the world. Turn it off and I don’t fall into tranquility; I get jumpy and anxious. So even without what followed, Mayr was close to my vision of hell.
But, oy, what followed!
Mayr resists the label of weight loss clinic. It says it’s about rebalancing one’s body, removing impurities and regaining a properly functioning body. The weight loss comes with that as a by-product.
And I say: who are you trying to kid?
The Mayr programme is built on the daily drinking of Epsom Salts, designed to evacuate the bowels, the intestines and much else besides over the course of the week. Without going into too much detail, let me tell you that it worked. They were indeed evacuated.
On the first day, you see one of the resident doctors. This is when I started to wonder if the supposed scientific and medically based clinic was all that it claimed. I was prescribed the following daily routine of pills and tinctures:
Pre breakfast
Epsom salts, Magnesium, Oil
Breakfast
Antihistamine, Drops,
Pantelmin
Mid-morning
Magnesium
Lunch
Drops
Afternoon
Magnesium
Dinner
Pantelmin, Drops
Bed
Magnesium, Melatonin, Zinc
I have no idea of the medical validity of any of those. What I do know is that it was prescribed on the basis of the physician waving her hands over me, prodding my tummy gently a few times, and then putting some powders in my mouth.
These powders — apparently egg, wheat, milk and such like — apparently showed the physician that I was gluten intolerant.
I just knew — I tell you, I knew! — that’s what I’d be told. It’s hard now to find someone who doesn’t claim to be gluten intolerant based on some sort of diagnosis. When her hands started waving around me, I started to think, whether or not it was, that the whole thing was quackery.
I may indeed be gluten intolerant, although what she did not know was that I have had a series of in-depth tests at various points in my life, not one of which has made that diagnosis. Then again, it’s possible, I suppose, that a woman waving her hands over me could have produced a more accurate diagnosis than a hospital taking blood samples, conducting biopsies and testing me for allergies.
But if I was sceptical about the prescriptions, when it came to the treatments I was not sceptical; I was hostile. I was to have a daily electrolysis foot bath, oils stuck up my nostrils with a cotton wool bud, a herbal bath and a dozen other things.
Some were perfectly pleasant. Others were painful. But they were all, in my view, utterly pointless.
Meals were effectively a starvation diet. Herbal tea and two thimble size pieces of spelt bread for breakfast, a small fish fillet for lunch and some broth and spelt bread for dinner.
By day 3 my headaches – a combination, presumably, of the detox and lack of food — were so crushing that I had to miss some of the ‘meals’; I couldn’t move from my bed.
As I said, by the time I left I had lost nearly 8 pounds. But not for a moment do I think this had anything to do with the supposed medical expertise of the clinic. If you or I had almost nothing to eat and took Epsom Salts every day, the weight would pour off. Mine did. Big deal.
But I’ll tell you a secret. Although I was booked to stay for 7 nights, I left three days early. The reason is the same reason why I remain sceptical — to put it mildly — about the medical validity of the Viva Mayr clinic.
A few years ago I was diagnosed with leukaemia. I’m lucky; it was caught early and I have a very good prognosis. But I do have to be careful about some things, and it can stop me doing others.
The clinic was told in advance, and responded that they were keen to show how they could benefit me.
But at no point were they ever told anything more detailed than the vague word ‘leukaemia’. I brought with me my medical records, with various test results and the specifics of my cancer.
When I tried to show these to the doctor, she was dismissive. Her arm waving and prodding was apparently enough.
That’s the context of what follows. Being by a lake, the Viva Mayr clinic is full of mosquitos. Most people there didn’t seem to notice them; I have always been ludicrously attractive to the things, so it didn’t surprise me that they bit me and left others alone. But the bites were not just the usual bites; they were huge — the size of a tea cup — and all over me. I had well over 20 within 48 hours of arriving.
When I asked for some cream or other treatment for the bites, I was told they had nothing: “We believe the body is its own best healer.” I would have left there and then — when I hear anyone reject science and medicine in favour of quackery I get angry very quickly — had it not been the middle of the night. But thanks to the one wifi spot in the place, I immediately booked the next flight out.
When I spoke to the director the next day, he flatly denied that there were mosquitos, as if I was somehow blaming the clinic for nature. I showed him my arm. He walked off, muttering. I got into my taxi and left for the airport.
There is an established link between my form of leukaemia and an exaggerated reaction to mosquito bites. Had I known, I would never have gone. Had they cared, they might have bothered looking at my records and considered the implications.
When I returned, my doctor was so concerned by the impact of my week at the Mayr that she ordered immediate blood tests.
The good news is that, beyond a wasted week and another month suffering with the mosquito bites, nothing had happened.
The even better news was that my scepticism of anything that claims to supersede or embellish traditional Western medicine — science, in other words — has been reaffirmed.
And I discovered that not eating causes weight loss.
