There isnt a third person in our marriage but there is a rival. My husband is passionate about a family-run fasting clinic in Uberlingen, overlooking Lake Constance, Germany. He goes alone twice a year and was there at the beginning of lockdown. He happily remained there for six weeks unable to get home. Buchinger Wilhelmi was founded seventy years ago by Otto Buchinger, a medical officer in the navy who cured himself of paralysis caused by rheumatic fever by fasting for 19 days in 1918. Now one of the worlds leading therapeutic fasting centres, Buchinger is run by Ottos great-grandson, Leonard Wilhelmi.
The German government demanded that the clinic remain open during lockdown, concerned that hospital over-crowding would necessitate patients being moved there. This proved unnecessary. But after Easter, having taken the requisite health and hygiene precautions, they encouraged guests. They are currently full with a completely different clientele, according to owner, Raimund Wilhelmi (Ottos grandson.) Normally, two-thirds of our guests are repeat guests. Now, fifty percent have come for the first time and they are much younger. There is a significant difference in the demographic because people are waking up to a new awareness about health as Covid affects everybody. His son, Leonard, adds: The medical community agree that the main causes in violent reactions to Covid are diabetes, high blood pressure and being over-weight. We have been treating these conditions for decades and our goal is now to equip people with a better immune system to fight Covid.
The minute my husband heard about their new immune-boosting programme, he signed us up for atwo weeks' holiday in August. This was an extravagance at a cost of over two thousand pounds a person. Health is our most valuable commodity, he reassured me. After an hour in this sleek minimalist medical centre, my sixteen-year-old daughter burst into tears. All her boarding school issues were ignited. My inner rebel similarly baulked at the first 24 hours that we had to spend eating in our rooms, until the results of our Covid tests, taken on arrival, came through. (Thankfully they were negative or we would have been quarantined in our rooms for our entire stay.)
There was something convict-like about dining on trays in our monastically simple rooms. Thank goodness the clinic do not advise couples share rooms 80 per centof guests go alone so we each had our own room. As Andrew was doing the full ten-day fast of 250 liquid calories a day, which I couldnt stomach(I was on 800 solid calories a day and Daisy, 1800,) a shared room would have destroyed our marriage. Not because Andrew had an enema on the bed every other day but because his preternatural joy freaked us out. His pious enthusiasm for the regime initially made us hate it. Until we were fully institutionalised, (or as Daisy said indoctrinated) the stricture wore us out.
Read more:
What I learnt from checking in to the 'Immunity Hotel' - Telegraph.co.uk
