The many roads to feeling fine

Consider badminton. It’s the garden-variety padel, apparently less intense than tennis and more accessible than padel itself, given the state of the booking schedule at a court near you. I am led to believe that 2024 may be the year badminton finally makes its comeback, to be played with vigour and a healthy sense of irony.

It ticks all the boxes for post-Covid community-building and competitive fun with a racket and something resembling a ball. Like the padel revolution, it represents the powerful desire for more social fitness, which has been growing exponentially since the hardship of lockdown. Plus, in the ever-more-opaque world of the wellness-industrial complex, badminton is probably the most lo-fi of interventions to hit your fitness goals — which, according to the recent Forbes Health/One Poll survey, make up the top New Year’s resolution for 2024, pipping mental health at the post.

A total of 48% of respondents want to improve their fitness this year. It’s the ball-game equivalent of rucking, the other under- the-radar wellness trend coming for 2024 (for the uninitiated, it’s walking, but with a weighted pack). It’s also marvellously lo-fi, but soon to be monetised by companies creating weighted packs based on body type and level of fitness.

At the opposite end of the wellness intervention scale is one Bryan Johnson, the tech bro who sold his company 10 years ago for US$800-million and then proceeded to tinker with himself to the tune of millions of those dollars to create Blueprint — an algorithm “that takes better care of me than I can myself”.

He claims to have slowed the ageing process by the equivalent of 31 years and to be accumulating ageing damage slower than 88% of 18-year-olds. His body inflammation is 85% below that of the average 18-year-old and his VO2 max (basically, his cardio fitness) in the top 15% of 18-year-olds.

The eerily waxy- skinned 46-year-old is morphing into his very own 18-year-old son (plasma infusions notwithstanding) and is well on his way to immortality — which is also the primary message on the merch he is selling on his Blueprint website. Here he will give you free access to his protocols developed over the past two years with a team of in-house doctors and access to all the powders, pills, and gloops you can buy into — and purchase, of course — as well as a handy cap with the life-bolstering message “Don’t Die”. In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, when asked if his programme is directed by AI, he says, “A hundred percent...”

The  AI  revolution  is  already happening in a watch on you, tracking your health stats in a much more rigorous and proactive manner. Smart tech is getting smarter. The wearable devices and smartwatches monitoring your daily targets, sending you little messages of encouragement (or just plain disdain), and ratting you out to your health insurer are now starting to screen for health issues, picking up your biomarkers and warning you of real-life developments. It is becoming ubiquitous in medical-health settings, and Mindbody and ClassPass’s 2024 predictions report concludes, “Consumers will expect science-based, performance-proven products and services.” This is borne out by the exponential growth of the market for online therapy, fitness apps, and calorie counters. Of the Forbes poll respondents, 32.6% intend to use meditation apps to stick to their mental-health resolution and 18% plan to use online therapy providers such as BetterHelp and Talkspace — a significant increase from the previous survey in 2022.

Diabetes drug Ozempic and its competitors’ impact on the diet market has been profound, radically altering the conversation about weight loss and creating a profit lottery for the pharmaceutical industry. For those who do not want to commit to a lifelong big-pharma solution and years of Botox and fillers to counteract “Ozempic face”, there is the rise of precision nutrition — using technology to monitor individual diet history, conduct DNA and genetic testing, and evaluate health markers such as data from continuous glucose monitors to determine one’s optimal diet.

Ultimately, it is the desire for long and healthy and skinny lives that is driving 30% of respondents’ wellness regimes in the Mindbody and ClassPass report. One-third say that they do strength training specifically for longevity, with rest and recovery becoming a huge focus. You may have witnessed the multitudes of Wim Hof acolytes taking the cold plunge on the Atlantic seaboard and staving off hypothermia by sunning themselves in Clifton, but a ton of research is going into cutting-edge ways to maximise the effects of training with temperature therapy and other restorative combination treatments using heat and cold to ensure the best outcomes. In this space, sleep is still on the agenda, with “sleep hygiene” now acknowledged terminology that` does not imply a shower before bed and a regular linen change.

While people give R&R as the primary reason why they want to travel, “wellness tourism” is now one` one of the fastest growing  verticals in the travel industry, with yoga retreats, breathing workshops, and stress-free activities becoming the norm. According to Amanda Al-Masri, global vice president of wellness at Hilton Hotels & Resorts, they “anticipate sleep tourism — people seeking out experiences like sleep-focused spa treatments... and trips and accommodation centred around sleep — to gain momentum as a trend”.

Probably because 2024 promises to be quite stressful on the global- and domestic- news front, the fight-or-flight response is also becoming a thing. Which may be why vagus-nerve stimulation has been searched over 55 million times on Tik- Tok. Stimulating the vagus nerve (which connects the brain to the body) through deep breathing, mindfulness, and even laughter can calm the fight-or-flight response once it has been triggered. Bear that in mind as you become inundated with ever-more worrying information, such as Donald Trump winning the Iowa caucus. It’s vagus nerve all the way or, failing that, the Kate Moss route.

Once known as The Tank for her ability to party hard and long, with or without marching powder, she celebrated her 50th birthday on Mustique, stimulating her vagus nerve in a meditation circle on the beach with all the other reformed party girls, fuelled by the profits of her recently launched wellness company called Cosmoss (see what she did there?) and the fumes of her Sacred Mist. The Tank’s Mist was Vogue’s 2023 Beauty Awards winner in the Holistic Wellness Wonder Category. It is a “Holistic Aura Mist for Self, Soul and Space”, which the judges said is the “perfect way to induce a sense of calm”. Indeed.