Even the FT is getting in on the “Longevity” bandwagon:
Contrary to popular belief – and to be fair, the term is misleading in this context – longevity is not necessarily about making you live longer. Or it’s not only about making you live longer. It’s about helping you live healthier, so that if you do live longer, you will also live better.
I have reached day five of the Master Detox programme at Clinique La Prairie, among the world’s leading and longest- established facilities in what we might, with only a slight wince, describe as the longevity “space”. It’s Thursday afternoon. Since Saturday not a sniff of alcohol, not a grain of sugar, not a morsel of meat or animal product (no dairy, no fats), not a molecule of artificial sweeteners or preservatives and no gluten has entered my bloodstream. Instead I have ingested a cornucopia of foaming potions and moussed nutrients.
On my first day at CLP I was put on a liquid diet. Not the one I’m used to. Strictly juice. Curcuma Healing; Moringa Booster; Antioxidant Flare. These were supplemented by further boosters. And morning and afternoon drops, which I am still obediently adding to my herbal infusions. Each night before bed I was given two “neutracenical” pills to help me sleep.
I have chewed and swallowed “edamame chawan mushi with shiitake, ginger, radish and buckwheat”; “Paimpol coco bean fricassee with fine herbs and tomatoes”; and, my favourite, “iced plant salad crystallinum with salicornia and iodin tofu cloud.” All this washed down with CLP’s signature hydrogen water.
On my third night I was subjected to a “non-invasive internal cleansing of the intestine”. Meaning I drank a large bottle of laxative. It worked.
I also had a “chi nei tsang” massage, in which my internal organs were rearranged by a woman kneading my stomach like dough.
I have been stretched and pummelled. Rubbed and smoothed. Chilled and heated. Peeled and exfoliated. I have had consultations with a doctor, a nutritionist, an aesthetician, a dentist, a trainer and a breathing teacher. I have submitted to a “body composition analysis” and two fitness assessments. I have practised aerial yoga.
I have given blood, urine and stool samples.
You’re not paying £18,000-plus just to be told to put down your sausage sandwich and get back on the treadmill. Gibertoni stressed the fact that a week in Montreux was not a cure-all. Some visitors have serious long-term health issues – it’s a hospital, after all – while others are here for spoiling spa treatments in a picturesque setting. Some come – he was looking at me here, but in a kindly way – for an annual purge and imagine they can return to their sybaritic lifestyles safe in the knowledge that they’ve done their bit for better health. That’s not how it works. (Damn.)
Read the full story: My year-long quest to live forever (FT)
Related:
Inside the Swiss clinic that promises to help you live longer
Clinique La Prairie pioneered the concept that has become the wellness industry’s latest obsession — the dogged pursuit of ‘longevity’
Some months ago, in writing an article about one of the largest frauds in Swiss history, I had snarkily mentioned Clinique La Prairie in passing: an executive’s wife had used company funds to pay for a stay ($250,000). Soon after publication, the clinic got in touch: perhaps I would like to visit?
Full story: Inside the Swiss clinic that promises to help you live longer (FT)
No grass fed yogurt enemas ?