How the Rich Live Longer

Dr Sepp Fegerl makes his living telling the rich and famous where they’ve gone wrong in their lives. Today, though, it’s my turn to be subjected to his analysis. He has his hands around my liver and doesn’t like what he’s found.

‘I should only be able to get two fingers under it, but I can get three,’ he says.

Is that bad?

‘It’s not Wunderbar,’ he mutters, squeezing away like someone trying to make sausages under water.

A few days ago, I was just another cheerful passenger touching down at Salzburg airport, bound for the Vivamayr Clinic on the shores of Lake Altaussee in Austria. Back then, the winter sun made the snow sparkle like diamonds and the pleasurable shock of the fresh Alpine air made your lungs sing.

Now, I’m a woman with a zinc and magnesium deficiency, irritated intestines, a low level of alkaline in my blood and a leaky gut. I also have a lactose intolerance and a problem absorbing fructose as well as cows’ milk, tomatoes, pH Test Strips 120ct -... Buy New $8.11 (as of 05:00 UTC - Details) egg yolk and about a million other things, including soya and wheat. What? Me?

In his all-white, space-age surgery – the kind of place into which you imagine James Bond would abseil to have his bullet wounds dressed – Dr Fegerl moves back behind his desk and shuffles through my case notes.

Like his surroundings, the 36-year-old medical director of the clinic is dressed in white, right down to his immaculate shoes and socks. He is also handsome and kind; a devoted priest tending to his wayward flock.

‘Now,’ he says, clasping his hands together. ‘Frequent bathroom visits?’ I nod.

‘Excellent! Exactly what we want,’ he cries, and scribbles out another prescription to add to the half-dozen medicaments – a baffling array of powders, liquid drops and tablets – which he has already stipulated.

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