Pregnancy isn’t a good look on a bloke. But for the last three or so years, triggered by random foodstuffs, my belly would pop out and bloat – taking on an unnerving resemblance to someone about four and a half months into gestation. I’d picked something up when filming somewhere dodgy abroad. Despite seeing multiple specialists, I’d not been able to get to the bottom of what was causing the bloating – beyond a vague notion of gut bacteria being thrown out of sync. Rather than resigning myself to wearing baggier T-shirts (maternity clothing being a stretch too far), I decided to head off to Austria to spend a week with the pioneers in gut health.
I’m not a religious type, but to enter the Original FX Mayr – on a stunning lake in Carinthia near the Slovakian border – is to ascend to health-conscious heaven. Legions of attentive staff – who outnumber the guests by 80 to 60 – celestially float around, clad in stylish, white uniforms. Cutting-edge medical treatments are offered alongside complementary approaches. A deep-rooted serenity permeates the Mayr – where other guests ask if you’ve had ‘the cure’ before.
That cure, and the ethos running through the Mayr, dates back to the turn of the 20th century and a pioneering physician, Dr Franz Xaver Mayr. More
Tim Samuels visits the pioneering Original FX Mayr resort – to finally beat the bloat.
than a century before the gut became everyone’s favourite organ, Dr Mayr presciently recognised how fundamental bowel health was. He developed the ‘Mayr cure’, which a medical acolyte of his, Dr Rauch, refined and modernised, before opening the health centre in the mid-1970s by Lake Wörthersee. Other, shall we say, copycat centres have opened across Austria and Germany since, but the FX remains the original. And it’s where I entrusted my dodgy gut for a week.
‘The approach has always been holistic here. If the digestive system is in order, the whole body is in order,’ says Gabriella Schnitzler, MD at the FX Mayr.
To get that digestion to behave itself, my hairy, bloated belly was placed in the hands of multiple medical staff – all overseen by a wise, smart German GP, Georg Kettenhuber (who’d previously done stints in the NHS and around Europe). Diagnostic tests were repeatedly run – comprehensive blood, urine and fitness analyses, alongside the more leftfield practice of kinesiology. Bespoke treatments were then prescribed by Dr Georg during our daily sessions.
The week (many guests stay for two or more) was spent bouncing between back-to-back treatments: lymphatic drainage massage, nasal infusion
