Health Update: Health Update: I spent a week at a luxury gut health retreat — here’s what happened – What Experts Say– What Experts Say.
When 28-year-old London-based nutritionist and influencer Stephanie Robinson arrived at a luxury gut health retreat in Austria, she says it felt just like summer camp. She had an itinerary waiting for her, but instead of swimming in the lake, tie-dyeing t-shirts and campside s’mores sessions, she was about to embark on seven days of cryotherapy, hay detoxes and sauna visits — all in the name of learning more about her gut.
Robinson was a patient at Mayrlife Medical Retreat in Altaussee, Austria, one of the new medical spas across Europe offering personalized programs focused on gut health. In the fast-moving, multi-billion-dollar wellness industry, gut health is having a major moment. Social media has amplified awareness of how food is processed in the body, alongside a growing understanding of the microbiome — the complex community of microorganisms living primarily in the large intestine — and how it affects everything from immune function and inflammation to mood and mental wellbeing. Enter the week-long retreat devoted entirely to restoring and rebalancing your gut.
Surrounded by mountains and lakes, Robinson checked into her week-long stay in May 2025, after she was gifted the experience by the clinic, which would typically cost up to $20,000, in exchange for posting about it on social media to her 264,000 followers. The influencer’s getaway included restrictive meal plans without sugar, carbohydrates or gluten, based on a diet plan informed by medical examinations and diagnostic tests when she arrived at the retreat. Mayrlife’s cheapest program, which includes accommodation for seven nights and regular consultations with a doctor, starts at approximately $7,000.
Robinson tells The Independent that her first day at Mayrlife started with a food sensitivity test, which revealed deficiencies in magnesium — vital for regulating nerve and muscle function — and in certain amino acids, the building blocks of protein that help fuel the body. She also learned that coffee, gluten, soy, and dairy were causing digestive issues and inflammation. The discovery led to stark changes to her diet and routine, after receiving a personalized nutrition plan based on her test results.
“It’s pretty intense, your body is going through quite a bit,” she says. “The first few days, I felt like I had the flu.” Soon though, she began feeling lighter and more energetic. It improved her skin, too. “When I started the retreat, I had some spots on my face and was a little puffy. By the end, my skin was really clear,” she says.
The seven-day trip included a meal plan, with set rules of what and when to eat, based on the study of Robinson’s gut. However, one rule that remained true to everyone on the retreat was to chew each bite of food 40 times before swallowing, to improve digestion. Robinson was given a “chewing trainer,” a piece of food to consume before each meal to practice her chewing. She chose buckwheat bread.
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Robinson says her three meals of the day, provided by Mayrlife based on her personalized diet plan, were pretty bland. Per meal, a singular boiled potato was followed by a bowl of plain yogurt, without any added fruit, because she couldn’t have sugar. For lunch, she was served chicken breast and cooked vegetables, while her dinner consisted of soup with chia seed oil, which is rich in nutrients like fiber and protein.
The retreat had a zero-tolerance policy on snacks, and she wasn’t allowed water during her meals. According to nutritionist Dr. Werner Zancolo, who works at VIVAMAYR, another gut health resort in Austria, drinking while we eat should be avoided because water “dilutes the digestive juices in the stomach and impedes the digestion of foods considerably.”
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Robinson’s days were packed with both spa rituals and medical treatments aimed at detoxifying her body. She recalls getting IV drip infusion therapy, where nutrients are delivered directly to the bloodstream, and cryotherapy, which involves standing in a chamber set to -180 degrees for short bursts of time. She says the bursts of intense cold gave her huge amounts of dopamine and energy. She lay on a waterbed, with her body wrapped in hay, as part of the detox, which, according to Mayrlife’s website, stimulates metabolism and liver function. Robinson adds that the doctors were at her “beck and call every day,” available to analyze her test results and discuss her nutrition.
While patients might feel restored at the retreat, it’s very easy to slip back into old habits once participants return to the real world and their busy day-to-day lives. Ontario-based registered dietitian Avery Zenker, with Health for Life Medical Centre and HealthCasa, notes that while the medical treatments and diet plans offered at these retreats are science-backed, the short-term interventions may not produce lasting results.
“There’s no guarantee that your gut health will improve,” she tells The Independent. “Sometimes, people also don’t know how to integrate everything they did on the retreat back into their lives. Or they think that they need to do all those things again, with the mentality of ‘I have to do all of this or else it wasn’t worth doing.’ Which is obviously not true.”
Mayrlife’s marketing director, Branislav Mucina, claims that a seven-day detox has myriad benefits for your gut. “Gut health is actually directing your whole wellbeing and your health,” Mucina says. “The whole retreat is a holistic concept, so it’s not only the gut and nutrition, but it’s also our mental health and movement therapies. The most important thing is that there’s no one-size-fits-all recipe for every guest. Everyone is looked upon individually, with extensive assessments.”
When 26-year-old London-based influencer Matilda Bea Lawlor stayed at Mayrlife for a week in February 2025 with her mother, she ate a simple diet of chicken or pork for breakfast and lunch, and bone broth with vegetables for dinner. Lawlor, who paid around $6,800 for the full experience, says she spent about four hours each day on a mix of spa treatments and medical assessments. These included salt scrubs, spiritual yoga classes, food sensitivity tests, and VO₂ Max testing — where she wore a mask during intense exercise to measure oxygen consumption and assess her cardiovascular endurance.
Her results were more eye-opening than she expected. Robinson discovered she had a parasite in her stomach, which can carry life-threatening diseases and steal the essential nutrients in our digestive systems. She says she took medication for two weeks to flush it out of her system. She also discovered she had a candida overgrowth — a condition in which an excess of Candida albicans, a fungus-like organism in the intestines, can lead to infection. It’s often triggered by a high-sugar diet. “I didn’t even know what candida overgrowth was. I’d never experienced anything like this retreat,” she says.
As the wellness industry continues to evolve, Mayrlife isn’t the only retreat drawing health enthusiasts from around the world. In October, 35-year-old content creator Claire Ezekiel from Michigan sought a fresh perspective on gut health and headed to Konstanz, Germany, for a five-day stay at Buff Medical Resort. While Ezekiel was gifted the experience by the clinic in exchange for posting content, a typical five-night stay with all amenities and treatments costs around $7,723.
According to its website, Buff Medical — located on the shores of Lake Constance with a view of the Swiss Alps — follows FX Mayr’s approach, with “nutritional concepts that are tailor-made and based on precise diagnoses” by the resort’s specialists.
Ezekiel arrived at the retreat with an open mind, diving into a series of medical assessments and spa treatments. The highlight, she says, was a comprehensive heart examination with a cardiologist. Her tests included riding a stationary bike while hooked up to multiple sensors to monitor how her body responded to exertion. The results motivated her to focus on improving her cardiovascular health and overall stamina.
Just like Robinson and Lawlor, Ezekiel’s three daily meals were limited to chicken for lunch and soup for dinner, and she had to chew her food 40 times before swallowing it.
However, when she started documenting her experience at Buff on TikTok, she received backlash from followers who claimed her new diet was glorifying eating disorders. “But it’s not,” she insists. “It’s very doctor-oriented. I didn’t feel deprived of food.”
Similarly, when Robinson wrote a Substack article about what she learned during her time at Mayrlife, readers accused her of being “out of touch.” She says she knows the experience is a luxury and that she’s “not trying to be relatable.” Other readers presumed she was doing it solely for aesthetic reasons. “It’s not about losing weight for me,” she explains. “I want to be healthy, have better digestion, and calm my body down, since it holds on to so much stress.”
How patients treat and monitor their gut health after the retreat is ultimately their own responsibility. Mucina clarifies that guests at Mayrlife “won’t be completely healed within seven days,” nor is that something the resort promotes. “I think the retreat is an itinerary for your health,” he says. “So, you have to dig deep into it, mentally and physically, and question if you’re doing the right stuff for your body and soul. So, we try to guide people towards a long-lasting, healthy lifestyle.”
While Lawlor, Robinson, and Ezekiel are all interested in trying another gut health retreat in the future, none of them have completely overhauled their lives as a result of the retreat — they don’t currently have bone broth for dinner every night or chew their food 40 times before swallowing, for example. They’ve made smaller changes. Robinson says she’s cut out all sparkling beverages, including seltzer and diet sodas, because she discovered at the retreat that they cause bloating and digestive problems for her.
Meanwhile, Lawlor didn’t realize the impact of the retreat on her health until after she got back home. “It was a beautiful location, but I did question if I really needed to be there,” she says. “And when I came back, I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I could do that again.’” But after finding out about her Candida overgrowth, and seeing the inflammation of her body go down two weeks after the trip, she’s remained conscious of her sugar intake and how fast she eats to improve her digestion.
“Maybe I had a slightly pessimistic view, but it wasn’t until two weeks after the trip that I was like, ‘Oh wow, that was quite amazing. It really did make a difference,’” she adds. “I was also more in tune with my body and more aware of the goals and changes I wanted in my life.”