In an interview with Greg Prato of AllMusic, Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson discussed his health: “I went to a clinic in January in Austria, in southern Austria, called the Vivamayr Clinic. It is a wellness clinic that focuses on digestive system. As well as many other things, they have many cancer patients there, and they provide so many different therapies. And it’s very calm and quiet — no phones, no music. It’s just about almost zenning out and diving into this — drinking a lot of water, tea, there’s no coffee, there’s obviously no alcohol. And I went because I had surgery in 2023 on my stomach, and it left me with gastroparesis, which is slow motility. So, food stays in my stomach for ten or twelve hours rather than two or three hours.”
“So, I really have to eat very carefully, and I have to be very selective about how I eat and not cross that line, because it’s hard for me to get back over,” he explained. “Y’know, one mistake costs me two or three days of discomfort. I was nauseous for a year. I was miserable for pretty much a year and a half…until I went to Vivamayr, and they just taught me how to take control of how I’m eating, what to eat, when to eat. And it’s just remarkable.”
“Because I’m not normally that type of person. I’m lazy and I just don’t work hard when it comes to things I don’t want to do,” he continued. “But this, for the first time in my life, just changed everything, and it’s been life-changing for me. Since I went to see them, I’ve lost about 23 pounds, and I lost another I think 15 or 20 pounds before that. So I’m down close to 40 pounds in a year and a half.
“And if I’m careful and I eat properly, I can live a happy, relatively normal life,” Alex added. If I don’t, then I suffer. So, you don’t want to feel crappy I’ve come to realize. You sort of take it day to day, but now I don’t want to feel crappy anymore, ever again. So, I’ve become very, very strict about it. I don’t drink anymore, I don’t smoke, I don’t eat junk. Absolutely no junk. Gluten free, lactose free. Like, all of that stuff — because that’s me. That’s what I have to do. It’s not a choice. This is what I have to do to maintain a decent, comfortable life.”
