YOLO Journal Issue 12 - Flipbook - Page 103
we moved into the 10-day fasting phase,
which begins with graubersalz to clean
out the system. Meals are tea and raw
honey for breakfast, and very light soups
for lunch and dinner. The soups are
served in the salon, where a pianist plays
and you hear conversations in French,
German, Greek, Spanish, Arabic…the
clinic attracts guests from all over the
world. Many people come alone, and it’s
lovely to see how little groups naturally
form. We’re always saying how lively it
is in the evening—you’d almost think
there was a bar!
The medical vigilance is amazing.
Every morning we’d wake up around
7am and immediately see the nurse,
who’d take our blood pressure, pulse and
weight, and tell us what to anticipate for
the day—doctors, treatments, enemas,
liver packs. She writes everything in a
daily chart, which you bring to every
medical appointment, and if there
is anything that is off, like low blood
pressure, she has the kitchen deliver
black tea and pfiffikus, a salty broth that
helps to raise it (this has happened to
me twice!). After growing up in the
U.S. medical system, it is such a luxury
to have so many issues dealt with at
once; to not have to wait weeks for an
appointment, and to feel such sincere
interest and care from the nurses and
doctors. And while we have our regular
doctors in New York, we consider
Buchinger to be where we get our
annual exams–which is the case with
many of the guests.
Which is why we came back again
one year later. Staying at Buchinger
Wilhelmi is hard to explain—it’s more
hospital than spa. You get used to
nurses walking in after one quick ring
of the room bell to administer your
liver compress (a warm washcloth
and hot-water bottle that is swaddled
around your middle to help detoxify
your liver) and then pull up the bed
covers for you to nap.
Did we ever get hungry? It is hard
to understand how anyone can go with
fewer than 250 calories a day without
starving. But Buchinger has had over 100
years to perfect their method of fasting.
It all started with Dr. Otto Buchinger,
who suffered from severe rheumatism,
and in 1919 did a 19-day water fast to see
if it would cure him. After its success,
he worked to develop a medically sound
fasting therapy, and in 1920 opened his
first clinic in Witzenhausen. The clinic in
Überlingen opened in 1953, and Marbella
followed in 1973. Because science and
research are at the core of what they
do, there is such a deep understanding
of how our bodies and brains work, and
they have really cracked the code on
making fasting painless. There’s enough
mouth distraction, from the tea and
honey and soups to afternoon apple tea
with lemon slices, that we never found
ourselves starving, even when we’d pass
the tempting food-market stalls on our
regular walks to town. The organized
daily walks are also a great distraction.
Every afternoon, a bus with three guides •
103
