Global leader in travel and leisure time, TimeOut recently voted Cape Town in South Africa as the world’s leading travel destinations. It’s a crown well earned. The mother city as it is known to locals has attracted visitors from all over the world for decades. It makes sense then too that the longevity travel market is also growing in this region. But it’s not just in Cape Town. South Africa’s economic capital Johannesburg has also seen a surge in longevity focussed lifestyle centers and destinations. Here’s a quick peak at what’s happening.
From Cape Town with love and longevity wellness
In the Cape Winelands, between Franschhoek and Paarl, Santé Wellness Retreat & Spa offers guests a selection of wellness packages in a high-tech and high-touch way.
This center was one of the first in South Africa to recognize the need to offer longevity led medical solutions. In addition to a health-optimizing clinic, a bio-energy centre and a fully equipped fitness centre, there is a world-class spa, luxury accommodation and healthy cuisine. In 2023, Santé won the Les Nouvelles Unique Spa Concept award.
Santé Wellness Retreat & Spa embraces the healing and balancing attributes of magnetic fields, colour, light and crystals, while utilizing what modern science has allowed us to develop and understand. Both these aspects are combined and introduced through the latest in innovative products and devices. These are available to clients in the Bio-Energy Centre.
Healing takes place through energetic intervention using electromagnetic waveforms to stimulate the body’s own healing capabilities. When the body is provided with a healthy energy resonance, distressing patterns are neutralized, reducing their disruptive effects and facilitating the natural healing processes.
Photo:Santé Wellness Retreat & Spa
The spa’s fully inclusive longevity focussed wellness programs draw from several different longevity focussed health-optimizing high-tech treatments and methodologies to ensure guests achieve their specific goals, with long-lasting effects.
Innovative Immersive wellness meets longevity solutions
Back in the mother city, Dr Kamlen Pillay, a plastic surgeon who launched SCINMed, the first medi-spa in the country, has assembled a team of specialists to create a unique approach to wellness and longevity.
In 2023 the company officially launched InUWell, at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. InUWell is part of the InuVersal group, home to a collection of companies that include retail, day hospitals, medi-spas, health technology and a research foundation.
Destinations of the future focussing on prevention, not cure
Pillay believes “prevention is (better than) the only reasonable cure.” That every individual should have the opportunity for a more personalized and precision-based wellness program, to enable them to live their best lives. The group’s focus is on a combination of digital and physical solutions. It’s a unique concept and new to the African continent.
InuWell at the V&A Waterfront Rendition: Photo Credit – Visual Citizens
The group has taken 21 500 ft of space in southern Africa’s largest shopping mall to bring innovative AI-driven healthcare solutions to the public, underpinned by medical research. Part of the center’s offerings includes gene testing, diabetes management programs, wearable technologies, and in-person wellness experiences.
“Our state-of-the-art Phygital Institute of Universal Wellcare offers a holistic approach to physical, mental, and social health and wellbeing, all within a warm and welcoming retail environment,” Pillay says.
The walk-in destination hosts regular immersive experiences, educational talks, breathwork, yoga and even silent discos, all through AR-projected imagery. The group is also developing a personalized Wellcare app, so individuals who sign up for Wellcare have complete agency over health data and management.
According to Pillay, the vision for the group extends well beyond Cape Town, to become a phygital destination for precision medicine and wellcare across the country.
An on-the-go longevity focussed therapy center for day visitors in Cape Town
Not too far from the Waterfront, in Sea Point, you’ll find Expand Health. A new longevity oriented center. The center was founded by entrepreneurs Emilian Popa and Dr Duncan Carmichael. Popa is the CEO of Ilara Health, a company that has worked to improve healthcare accessibility to over 500 million people in Africa. Carmichael is the author of the book Living Younger for Longer, which focuses on preventive healthcare.
Expand Health with Infra Red Sauna. Photo credit: Expand Health
This unique center offers visitors the opportunity to experience a variety of precision-based wellness therapies.
Here, you can order a genetic test, get a consult with an aging specialist, and take advantage of the therapy rooms. Expand Health also offers its clientele cryotherapy, red light therapy and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, among others.
You don’t have to have a health ailment to benefit from the centre. Popa says some visitors are biohackers or individuals who just want productivity in their health. Essentially, they want to see if anything is wrong and if they can improve anything. Carmichael would like to see centers such as this become a regular part of people’s routines, similar to going to the gym.
You can read and watch our interview with Emilian Popa and Dr Duncan Carmichael here: How Expand Health is Helping People Obtain Optimum Health
A Medical Tourism First in South Africa
In Johannesburg, Vivari Hotel and Spa, with Vivari Aesthetics onsite, offers a variety of options where medicine meets wellness and longevity. When Vivari Hotel and Spa was launched it was heralded as is an African first for medical tourism. Today the destination has settled into providing a unique quality offering to travelers from all over the world. This is specifically a longevity solution focussed on both non-invasive and surgical aesthetics, along with dietary and lifestyle after care support.
The hotel offers accommodation to the highest standard, and the property has a hospital license so surgery is done on site. Guests can recover in comfort with world class medical care on tap.
Guests can choose from pre-surgery treatments, which prepare them for surgery, and post-surgery therapies, to assist with recovery and prolong the long-term effects of procedures.
A recently appointed onsite dietitian provides consultations and individualized diet plans for patients looking for a lifestyle change. She offers DNA and food sensitivity testing to assist patients in their weight-loss journey.
Vivari also offers non-surgical bariatric procedures, including endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty and the temporary gastric balloon procedure.
Photo courtesy of Vivari Hotel and Spa
At the spa, guests can enjoy an array of experiences, including red light therapy and steam rooms. According to Karen Lusse, Vivari’s somatologist, patients travel to escape the stresses of their environment, and coming to Vivari for a relaxed breakaway coupled with private on-site procedures.
“Most of these patients opt for the plastic-surgery procedures, considering that Vivari Aesthetics is a discreet location. We [also] have a number of travel packages and exciting new collaborations in the pipeline.”
In 2023, the hotel and spa was nominated for the World Travel Luxury Hotel Awards.
You can read more about the Vivari Spa and hotel here; Vivari Hotel And Spa: A Medical Tourism First For Africa
On the go longevity oriented therapies in Johannesburg
Johannesburg is also seeing a burst in on-the-go therapies. With stores in Cape Town’s Bree Street and Johannesburg’s Melrose Arch, visitors to Coco Collective can pop in for a cryotherapy session that gets the job done in less than 10 minutes.
Photo credit: Coco Collective Cryotherapy
Whole body cryotherapy (WBC) entails the patient entering a container blasting frigid air, which stimulates the body’s natural healing abilities, inducing responses from the circulatory and nervous systems, and the energy meridians. Benefits include accelerating the body’s repair process, bringing nutrients to the muscles and tissues, reducing inflammation, and treating various conditions, from skin problems to rheumatoid arthritis.
Thrive labs expands its biohacking offering
Thrive Labs in Chartwell a suburb just North of Johannesburg is the vision of Mark de Gouveia who launched pre-Covid and has been building a sanctuary for those seeking innovative longevity wellness solutions. His business provides a wide range of treatments, from red light therapy (which promotes wound healing and improved skin complexion) and ozone therapy (for treating diabetes and cancer), to hyperbaric oxygen therapy, a hot topic in healthcare.
Photo: Thrive Labs and Hbot therapy
According to De Gouveia, 20 mild sessions of hyperbaric oxygen therapy can increase stem cell reproduction by 300%, and mitochondrial function by 200%.
Thrive Labs understands that healthcare is individual-driven, and De Gouveia emphasizes the importance of doing the research before your treatment.
This research must consider your personal health restrictions and needs, ensuring that you know what precautions must be taken before treatment.
De Gouveia was the first out the starting blocks in Johannesburg to offer Biohacking therapies and has a lot of experience under his belt.
“Thrive Labs knows biohacking therapy. For the latest biohacking treatments and advancements, Thrive Labs is your go-to solution. We hit the ground running early with biohacking therapy, partnering with experts to ensure that you get the best care by licensed and trained technicians who can get you the best possible results.”
Longevity focused destinations are growing in South Africa
It’s important to note, that in this article we have only listed those destinations and centers that offer clear longevity, biohacking related therapies and services and importantly have been in existence for a few years already and some much longer. There are a multitude of amazing retreats and destinations offering a myriad of services. These however are those that have breakthrough strategies for longevity.
As the growth in longevity, biohacking and wellness surges more centers will emerge. Some will thrive, others won’t. What is certain is that South Africa will no doubt see more expansion in time to come. Watch this space.
Main photo credit: , Santé Wellness Retreat & Spa
Read more about longevity
This article was extracted from a longer feature on Living Beyond 100, published in the 2024/25 print and digital edition of Longevity and updated. The issue is produced annually. You can purchase a digital copy by clicking on this link to Zinio: https://www.zinio.com/za/publications/longevity-magazine/5133
