“My name is Teresa and I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for 120 years.” If longevity enthusiasts have their way, we could someday be making such a pronouncement in 12-step meetings. So I learned while attending the Global Wellness Summit in Dubai last November. The theme was “longevity through a wellness lens,” and leading doctors and longevity researchers from around the world were there to add their two cents.
Or, well, a lot more than two cents. Longevity still has a high price tag. And so does Dubai.
I had a fascinating eight nights in Dubai—learning about the United Arab Emirates, listening to talks by leading wellness experts and dealing with lots of feelings that came up, especially around global distribution of wealth, and my place in it.
Longevity, wellness and scientific advances
Attending the Global Wellness Summit was an amazing opportunity to meet brilliant doctors and researchers, people who run and/or own exclusive spas and resorts and others who shape the industry. The four-day summit is by invitation only and costs more than $5,000 to attend. I managed to wrangle my way into a media delegate spot, which meant I had to get myself to Dubai and book a place to stay, but I didn’t have to pay the conference fee. I was hoping to learn the latest in health trends and connect with others who include nondrinking in their wellness prescriptions.
The term “wellness” is slippery, meaning different things to different people. I especially noticed this after Oregon legalized marijuana and suddenly weed shops were huddling under the wellness umbrella. Not my definition!
The Global Wellness Institute, the entity that puts on the summit, defines wellness as “the active pursuit of activities, choices and lifestyles that lead to a state of holistic health.” Holistically, the GWI encompasses social, mental, spiritual, emotional, social and environmental aspects. The institute distinguishes wellness from terms like happiness or wellbeing as “an active process of being aware and making choices that lead toward an outcome of optimal holistic health and wellbeing.”
And how does wellness relate to longevity? According to Dr. Michael Roizen, former chief wellness officer at the Cleveland Clinic, you must prioritize wellness to attain longevity. “Wellness is slowing your rate of disability and risk of death,” he said at the summit. “That is, wellness is slowing the aging of your cells. That is, as opposed to longevity, which is actually reversing the aging of your cells and making your cells and organs younger.”
The summit delved into some trippy medical science, including growing miniature organs on a chip that mimic your own individual heart or kidney. About the size of a flash drive, doctors could test how a drug would interact with your chip organ before trying it on your internal organ, thus offering extremely personalized medicine.
Entrepreneur and father of biohacking, Dave Asprey prowled the stage, exhorting us to take control of our bodies and live to be 180. “Who’s your health daddy?” he asked. “You’re your health daddy!” His sci-fi-sounding company, Unlimited Life, offers an annual membership for $125,000 that covers medical tests, a retreat, quarterly consultations with the founders, and monthly coaching sessions focused on mental health.
Longevity and wealth
Okay, I’ll admit I came into the conference biased. I applied before the theme was announced, and probably wouldn’t have applied if I’d known it would be about longevity.
What’s my problem with longevity? Don’t I want people to live long? My mother lived 96 years, and I’m grateful for that. But the world’s population is 8.2 billion. Is longevity only for the rich? If so, it’s elitist bullshit. But if it’s for the poor, how can Earth’s resources sustain an increasing population living to 180? Even if it’s just for rich people, the wealthiest people use the most resources, so Earth doesn’t want them to live to be 180.
Also, I don’t love going to the doctor and getting MRIs and blood tests and brain scans and having people mess with my gut biome—so unappealing. But if you want to live to be 180, you’ll need to do all this stuff and more.
I spent four days in Dubai before the summit started, and I met workers from many countries. I especially got to know some drivers, because the traffic is hellacious. One day, I spent seven hours sitting beside a Pakistani driver. From him and others I met, I heard intense stories of war, corruption, hard work, loneliness and sending money home to families.
If you visit Dubai, you’re unlikely to see many Emirati citizens—they make up only 8% of the population. The vast majority are foreign workers—mostly male—from Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. The people I interacted with spoke English, so they weren’t the lowest-tier employees. Those would be the construction workers, who earn as little as $300 a month. And it’s still a lot better than at home, which is why they migrate. I watched workers building a giant skyscraper from my apartment in downtown Dubai, then got on a rickety old bus to be transported back to their hovels outside of town. These guys will never be citizens of Dubai. And nobody is going to biohack them and help them live to be 180.
I felt oddly stranded between worlds in Dubai. I was a white American with no experience of living in a war-torn country. Still, I found my Pakistani drivers much easier to talk to and more relatable than the resort founders and doctors at the summit.
Low-tech longevity and spirituality
My mom made it to 96, primarily through low-tech longevity strategies. Of course, she had the advantages of 20th- and 21st-century Western medicine, including antibiotics and surgery. And she had luck—avoiding gunshots, fatal accidents and the like. But the things she did for herself included exercise, tai chi, reasonable eating, no more than one gimlet a day (she wasn’t an alcoholic, so could stop at one, or even a half, if you can imagine such a thing!), social connection, caring for others, meaningful work, prayer and meditation.
My favorite speaker at the summit was Anna Bjurstam, a wellness pioneer and strategic advisor to the Six Senses resort chain. She stressed the connection between spirituality and longevity. She also talked about childhood trauma, which affects many addicts. Anna led us through the 10-question ACEs test, which assesses the extent of an individual’s childhood trauma through questions about verbal, sexual and physical abuse.
“Why is this important?” she asked after we had a minute to take the test. “You see, if it’s left untreated, and you have over six, you will die 20 years earlier. That is longevity, my friends.” Four or more yeses on the ACEs test? That makes you 1,000% more likely to attempt suicide or suffer from alcoholism. But healing is possible, she said, especially with somatic therapies that release trauma from the body.
While Bjurstam embraces science and measuring biomarkers and is especially big on hyperbaric chambers (which increase oxygen to the body), she emphasizes the importance of love, meditation, connection and other less tangible aspects. “Spirituality isn’t an add-on,” she told us. “It’s not optional. It is essential for longevity infrastructure. The science is catching up, but the soul has always known.” Clinics shouldn’t just extend years, but deepen interpersonal connections. “Because without that, we’re just lengthening the runway without ever taking off.”
Being uncomfortable and sober and doing things anyway
Please don’t get me wrong—the Global Wellness Summit offers a fantastic opportunity to hear from a ton of impressive leaders from around the world. I especially liked the snappy format, with each person speaking for 10 or 20 minutes. The summit packed in so many viewpoints and so much info in four days.
But it was a lot to ask of my introverted self to go that far across the world and try to interact with 500 prestigious people I’d never met for four days. As somebody who writes about sober travel strategies, I had to follow my own advice.
I always stress the importance of having a good support system when you’re staying sober and sane, especially when stretching your comfort zone. So I sought pep talks from my husband and sister. My husband assured me that he and our cat already thought I was enough of a success and didn’t care whether I made important new connections in Dubai. And our illustrious Sober Curator founder Alysse took time out of her packed schedule for an email morale boost: “What helps me in times like that is to remember I’m just trying to help one person,” she wrote. “I believe in you!”
I also gave myself permission to skip some events. Okay, I ditched one morning and rented a kayak to go for a quick paddle and swim at a Dubai beach. That’s wellness to me.
World economics in a pastry
Because the summit hotel costs about a thousand bucks a night, I’d found a studio apartment through Booking.com to rent at a tenth of the cost. Google Maps told me it would only take about 35 minutes to walk between my temporary home at the Burj Al Najoom and the conference at the Mandarin Oriental. Unfortunately, walking in downtown Dubai turned out to be more difficult than I expected, what with the hazardous amount of unruly traffic.
My Google Maps route took me through the massive Dubai Mall—1.1 million square feet, 219,000 daily visitors, 1200 shops—and by the adjacent Burj Khalifa—the world’s tallest structure at 2,717 feet and 163 floors. Of course, I got totally lost. I stopped in a plant-based café called Wild Souls to ask for directions. A young worker warned me not to walk the treacherous streets, but to follow a series of glass tubes that connected to the subway and ran high above the roads. His tip probably saved me from being roadkill. I was also mesmerized by the array of vegan treats and vowed to return later.
On my way back from the first long day of the summit, I lugged a heavy bag of skin cream samples, economic reports, virtual reality glasses I didn’t understand, and other freebies through the space-age glass tubes. I hadn’t forgotten those vegan treats. So I stopped by and got into a long chat with the young guy, who turned out to be from Syria. He’s in his twenties, handsome, studying marketing in Dubai, and wants to specialize in Facebook ads. Syria is in bad shape, and God only knows what his family is going through. But he was upbeat and ready to make the most of getting educated in Dubai.
The dessert case held treats like vegan cheesecakes, halvah, and croissants. Did I want chocolate hazelnut or pistachio? I settled on a piece of pistachio cheesecake and an obscenely large croissant, covered with chocolate and stuffed with a creamy pistachio filling.
I felt like a rich monster buying these ridiculously expensive pastries, 55 dirhams each, which is about $15. For a croissant! I was especially embarrassed to buy these treats from a man whose country is in shambles. Then again, the Dubai Mall has flagship stores for Dior, Gucci, Prada, etc., so I’m sure my Syrian friend has seen people spend their money on plenty of stupid things. He offered me a bag but I didn’t want to waste one, so I set my pink pastry box on top of my collection of skincare samples and set off home. The Burj Khalifa was putting on its nightly light show as I passed, the enormous mall fountain spraying jets of water that danced in time to loud music.
Back in my apartment, I set down my heavy bag and discovered one pink end of my pastry box had sprung open. My pistachio cheesecake had been jettisoned somewhere between the Burj Khalifa and the Burj Al Najoom! I stood in my little kitchen staring down at the box. I wasn’t even very disappointed. I felt like I deserved to lose that pastry, that I lived a life of waste and excess anyway. It was as if all the discrepancies in the global population had been concentrated in Dubai, then boiled down to a piece of cheesecake.
Over the next two days, I kept thinking of that stupid cheesecake. I was strangely embarrassed by it.
On my last night, I returned to Wild Souls. I told the Syrian guy about losing my expensive pastry on the streets of Dubai. “I’m a loser!” I proclaimed. He laughed and said he’d write loser on my forehead.
“You should have taken the bag,” he said. “I told you to take the bag. You should always listen to your Syrian friend.”
I bought another slice of cheesecake. I took the bag. The cheesecake was pretty good, if a little bland.
It’s What You Do with What You’ve Got
Are you a bad person if you buy a $15 croissant? How about if you pay $125,000 a year in hopes of living to be 180? What if you have a healthy body but you start feeding it a steady diet of alcohol or other drugs? We are born in whatever circumstances we are, whether rich, poor, or in the middle. What defines us is the choices we make with what we have.
My mom was a good role model for sharing. She took care of herself while never forgetting others in the world—from the inner circle of family and friends to the far-flung charities she supported.
I hope that richer people, organizations and countries will choose to spread the goodness around. Instead of raising the billionaire lifespan to 180, maybe they could settle for 160 and do a little something for the rest of us. What if we could settle for living to 160 and give the other 20 years to those in greater need? And remember that a $15 croissant is a special treat, not a way of life.
WHAT A TRIP! Meet Teresa Bergen: Our Sober Travel Whisperer (and the Woman Bringing a Handbook to the Airport Bar Fight)
SOBER TRAVEL – WHAT A TRIP! is The Sober Curator’s guide to exploring the world alcohol-free. From insider travel tips and honest destination reviews to our curated Sober Retreats Calendar, we help you plan trips that are fun, fulfilling, and booze-free. Whether your jet-setting overseas or planning a weekend getaway, our stories and resources prove that sober travel is anything but boring. Looking for a sober getaway? We’ve got your back with our Sober Retreat Calendar. Need a night out on the town? Check out our Sober Events Calendar.
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