Alkalising Food and the Way of Eating at MayrLife
Hey everyone!
At my recent stay at MayrLife, I was introduced to the diet outline with supplementary ‘medication’ which is part of the process called ‘The Cure’. Now I was none the wiser about this when I originally booked this, I wanted more of a psychological refresh and a physio course, but I was really interested in learning about the programme and how they have formulated things.
I didn’t have an introductory meeting before lunch, so I ate and then I met with the head of medical reception who then broke down a little bit more about what was happening. I then had a lecture later that evening that explained the programme, to create an alkaline environment in your body, to promote homeostasis and regeneration.
I was told to have a kinesiology test which basically tests the force of your body whilst you’re holding an item of food, if you have a strong resistance to the force you’re fine with it, if you have a weak resistance you’re intolerant, and your diet and supplements are given based on these results. The doctor was lovely and I really appreciated his insight, it was medical but it had a slight spiritual element to it and we tested the variety of things that I felt I may have an intolerance to. Gluten, Coffee, Mushrooms were the key ones that caused a reaction, which I felt was correct.
I also was sent to have a blood test and urine test, to show any underlying issues and deficiencies.
The goals are: Cleansing the gut, alkalising the body which aids in the reset experience, and eating in a particular style of chewing each bite for 40-60 chews, and pacing your food out so that you do not drink with food, and dilute the stomachs digestion process, and you eat more in the breakfast and lunch than at dinner, where you have a smaller and lighter meal. This is stuff I’ve been looking at for years and Barbara O’Neil has become a TikTok sensation covering the same type of process, so I was familiar. As I mentioned, the programme is called ‘The Cure’ and the aim is to complete a 10 day to 21 day process. The first three days you get a headache and day four you pass through it feeling energised, but you start with brain fog. Your taste will also change and become more detailed? Intense ? This I noted in the lecture from the hotel manager on the first day.
Further notes: First meal is alkaline and you have to eat the broth with the coffee spoon, you have to chew each bite 40 times. Then medical analysis, optional bloods can be brought. Intolerances test are done. Intolerances can create inflammation in the gut. I missed the first stage because I arrived midday. The kitchen cuts out all the intolerances. The doctor decides what you eat. Doctor does a gut massage and an observation to see that the food is working. You need to rest. I’ve had coffee on my first day but we’ve gotta stop to alkaline. Post care is 2-3 weeks after this of continued care, they also offer a refresher onsite of three days and online support. New clinic in london for day clinic for infusions, ask to do that. Everything is shared via the app.
They don’t have room service, they want all guests to be in the restaurant together as a sense of community. You have to follow the chewing rules. Don’t use mobile devices or chat. Mindful eating. The chewing process allows the stomach to signal that you’ve eaten enough and therefore decrease the portion size. Do not drink water as it dilutes the digestion fluids. Wine can be digested with meals so can be accompanied but not water. Onions and garlic is difficult to digest. Fennel instead of onions. Four hours minimal between meals. If you fast for 8/9 hours between meals you trigger the cell renewal process. No raw food after 4pm because it won’t digest. No sushi and salad. Only cooked food past 4pm. They offer lectures and cooking lessons. Check the apps online shop for supplements. Must drink 3 litres of water today, the tap is perfectly drinkable and is higher quality than bottled water. The lake altaissee contains 100% drinking water. 24hr medical emergency
Oil pulling first thing, removes bacteria built up during the night. It should be a daily routine for first thing.
Intestine cleansing according to the doctor. Glauber salt, butter salt or magnesium. I’ve been prescribed magnesium powder first thing which is Epsom salt. Do not go back to sleep after having Epsom salt because it can have a laxative effect of 1 and a half hours after. The teas are only one minute brewing as can be too strong. Liver tea is great.
You only do the intestine cleansing during the cure mode with guidance of a doctor. Two weeks of this for a proper detox. The process is basically like a body reset. They offer programmes and not packages because the aim is to see where and what are the individuals needs. They adapt the programme to the guests needs.
There are multiple fasting teas and specialist teas that you can customise your experience with, from liver tea which are bitter, and green tea, bladder tea, stomach tea, if you feel like you’re a bit overwhelmed by the process you can customise the experience. They were noted to be higher strength than normal so don’t stew them for longer than a minute.
My prescribed supplements were as follows:
Mouth care Oil - Used for 5 minutes of Oil Pulling, which pulls out the toxins from the night before. This oil has a mix of different oils, flax seed oil, cannabis seed oil, tea tree oil, safflower oil, peppermint oil, clove oil. You do this first thing in the morning and it pulls out from your gums any bacterial issues.
Magnesium Citrate - Magnesium salts. 1-2 teaspoons into 200ml of warm water, you drink this 30 minutes before breakfast. This is like epsum salts, now I have seen detoxes where they do cherry and then epsum salts and it like forces your gallblader to express gallstones that have been stuck, I think it would do a few things like relax your colon and alkalise things.
Basepowder 5 - 1tsp in 250ml cold water. It contains calcium, carbonate, citrate which is magnesium again, natrium which is another word for sodium. You take these 30 minutes before or 60 minute after meals.
Bitterdrops - 5 drops with each meal. They have wormwood, centaury oil, which is antiseptic, pericarp which is used for diarrhoea, orange oil, gentian, ceylon cinnamon, yarrow.
Potassium and Magnesium capsules
Rescue Remedy for anxiety.
So what do I think?
So to give some insight, I’m vegan whilst I’m at home, I occasionally eat dairy when I’m travelling and the options are limited but I don’t cook that way as I’ve outlined in the lifestyle section of JHournal. I don’t eat sugar, I do not eat white carbs, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the carbs I do eat are great as some brown bread is shit too. I don’t eat eggs, but I don’t oppose them if they’re from a kindly chicken. I try and eat gluten free as my family are slightly intolerant, and I eat less carbs than protein and fats.
I have coffee because I love it, and I suffer from migraines, I drink it sparingly during the first quarter of the day and I use it with medication to increase the potency when I suffer a migraine. I have a lot of understanding of how my body works and I tend to avoid things that are too complex in their composition so what I mean by that, vegetarian alternatives to burgers are often a meat substitute which is an entirely processed thing to resemble meat, maybe made of mushrooms which I’m intolerant to according to the test at ML, or they’re hydrogenated. The bean burgers and things like that are too much of a mix of different carbs for me to love, so I try and go for simpler patties made from one type of legume or burger like falafel. It wasn’t my goal to come here to lose weight or be healed, I just wanted to support the process of my body repairing through physiotherapy.
I felt sick for the first two days, like I was eating things that were causing a stomach upset, and I felt dizzy after the magnesium tablets. I wasn’t comfortable taking the base powders as I think you need a 10 day programme to see any benefits, so I stuck to the bitters which I take anyway. I think there was too many different combinations of food for me to adjust for a four d ay, and what I would have hoped is to question what I eat normally, and what I could eat during those four days and not been given a rule book which did not apply to me at all. I didn’t think the foods were correct for me and the doctor noted my stomach felt tense in the large intestine, which I felt gross about. The first three days I felt like I was full of mud.
I have to be totally honest, I was not impressed with the food and the brothy, bubbly elements were not to my taste. I think they’re palatable but when they do offer meats and fish for people who eat that protein, the vegetarian options need to be thought out as equally. You can achieve an alkaline diet from a South Asian meal plan which is balanced and delicious, but alas, I was in Austria. Yes it was all cooked correctly and simplistic to the point where it would be great for someone needing a gut reset. The spacing out of the meals and the education around chewing, not drinking water near meals, all of that is fantastic. All of this information is substantiated by dieticians. Lack of sugar and acid forming food is fantastic. But I eat like that normally so I know what I’m doing, I guess I wasn’t there specifically for that but I appreciate how it can be used for those who eat more of a Western diet.
I also met with a nutritionist who gave me a plan of action and we discussed what I eat, we did several tests that said I was super muscly which freaked me out, and that since my injury my left side and right side were imbalanced. I was told that I needed to increase my carbohydrates because my body was more in HIT digestion mode, I had just been doing a protein week to help repair my muscles and I chose to do it like that, so it gave me again the information I knew back. I’m actively building the strength up in my foot that was injured, and that was why I was there. The customisation process is limited and I feel like if you have a physical ailment, you need enough sustenance within that guideline to repair muscle, which this didn’t. I had protein one day which involved 2 quarters of a hard boiled egg white. It wasn’t the most delicious concept and I didn’t have any explanation as to why each meal was served with an oil of your choice. Like literally a question at each meal, would you like some oil? .
What I would imagine the oil is for is because we don’t eat enough high quality fats in our diets, and we need to rebalance the levels of digestion enzymes that start off in the mouth, trigger the stomach to start preparing to get some fat digested, and has an impact on how you burn unnecessary fat your body had stored. It also is nutritious, aids in digestion and is delicious in some occasions. But no-one really explained how to eat it. The staff were lovely, dressed in traditional garbs and that part was fabulous, but I didn’t love the experience of the food and I developed a really bad fatigue headache by Wednesday.
By day three I had such a sustained cluster headache I could not make breakfast, and I asked the reception to prepare something easy like a yogurt so I could just have something protein that’s easy to digest and cooling. This was refused and I was asked to wait til Lunch for the kitchen to open, so I became very frustrated.
I had to go out of the facility and buy some from a shop and I found the experience to be really odd. I also spoke to the medical team about my blood results. They said I had the best results in the facility which was assuring to me, because I take a specific range of magnesium, one for sleep, citrate for digestion, and a salt with magnesium in that truly effects my mood. I take vitamin C in various formats, I take vitamin B, I consume specific amounts of protein to compensate for what I’ve done that week and my muscle repair. I take liver supplements and drops like gentian and dandelion, fibre with pectin and inulin, and I got the tea with what I do. But I didn’t have anything for digestion and because the food was so different than what I would arrange myself, I wasn’t getting on with it and nothing they identified had something for digestion in mind. I was told not to try the Glauber Saltz which are a drink in a vial near the tea bars that are a laxative, which you kind of start before starting the supplements because it cleans you out. But I could have fixed things at home because I understand my body.
Within the general agreement with MayrLife, the outline states you should deposit £500 that will be taken for your medication and infusions, drips that I assumed were medication administered in an IV. If you have no medication, that fee is refunded. Absolutely fine, but when I arrived I wasn’t actually asked to cover this cost so I thought that it would be specific to the other guests who needed specific medicines. When speaking to the doctor, I also had clearly stated I did not need medication. Medication in my imagination was prescription anti anxiety medicine, heavy painkillers or even cosmetic treatments like botox. What MayrLife actually means by medications is the complimentary supplements. The supplements they gave me were charged as medication, and that to me is a big no.
If you are unaware of your health and how bioavailability works with products like supplements, I think this can be a very slippery slope to misinforming people about what they’re taking. Most people are deficient in some ways, especially if they’re recovering from an illness like cancer. One guest confided in me that she was in remission and staying for that reason so I believe this to be commonplace. I am not in that boat thank goodness and I do not have an ailment that needs a reset, but I felt uncomfortable. I think you’ve got to differentiate clearly that these are things you can buy in a modern supermarket. They’re not medication. The oil pulling method that includes a mix of teatree is also not fantastic, you can’t digest teatree and there wasn’t a specification of how much you used to oil pull, you could accidentally swallow some and I don’t know how that would end up. You have to be incredibly careful around this because oil pulling with coconut oil does mechanically the same as this mix does without the nasties, and you just spit it out at the end with no toxicity risk.
I was also confused by the lack of autonomy when choosing your own diet, I don’t think people that are signed on to restore physical strength should be on a weight loss style diet that alkalises your body. I could have chosen to have something that suited me much better like more of the yogurt, the egg options or an alternative. I am in two minds about it because there are so many benefits of eating as I was instructed, but I didn’t receive those benefits. Does the combination of supplements and diet help your body to regenerate and heal? Absolutely, there’s no dispute in that. Did it help me? No because I wasn’t there long enough to benefit from the soluble powders. I don’t like the medication label and although there is accredited doctors and the best of the best, I think there should be a clear distinction.
So my review of the food and programme called ‘The Cure’, I feel like it should be called ‘The Reset’, and I feel like it should be clearly relabelled as supplementary minerals and you should be able to pick your own food through the app as approved by the doctor, to get the results that you want. That would would be my feedback, but overall, the quality for what it is works for those than need it. It can be a fantastic way to reset, increase homeostasis, give the digestion process a break and even lose weight. It does all of that, but it wasn’t why I was there.
