Combe Grove opens Metabolic Health Retreat in Bath

A ground-breaking new approach to health and wellbeing has opened its doors in Bath this January.

The first of its kind in the UK, The Combe Grove Metabolic Health Retreat aims to move the dial on how we perceive, experience and seek to heal ourselves. The process integrates cutting edge medical science with a carefully curated programme designed to rebalance the five key principles of human wellness. Its objective is to quite literally change people’s lives.

Located within 70 acres of mature woodland and meadow in Bath, the Metabolic Health Retreat at Combe Grove has been developed in consultation with GPs and medical professionals to deliver a year-long process that has the potential to radically reshape health experiences and outcomes.

The medical core of the life transforming process is supported by treatments and holistic practices offered by a team of leading in-house therapists and experienced independent practitioners including Acupuncture, Counselling, Cranial Sacral Osteopathy, Emotional Freedom Technique, Homeopathy, Kinesiology, Myofascial Release, Naturopath, Physiotherapy, Psychotherapy, Reflexology and Shiatsu.

The programme begins three weeks prior to a one week residence at Combe Grove, followed by 48 weeks of expert remote guidance and support, enabling sustainable and transformative life changes to occur. This combination of medical research, the restorative power of nature and a supportive community based environment enables clients to reconnect with the primary needs of mind and body and leave with a greater sense of current and future wellness, increased vitality and restored calm.

An ever-increasing body of peer reviewed medical research points to the importance of thriving metabolic health as key to enhancing and extending wellbeing and longevity, in addition to being a cornerstone of preventative healthcare. Many of today’s chronic diseases including prediabetes, type 2 diabetes, dementia, high blood pressure, some cancers, fertility problems, heart disease and strokes have blood sugar inflammation at the core of their origin and progression.

Working with leading medical and nutritional experts, including Dr Campbell Murdoch,
renowned for his work in the field of metabolic health, the Metabolic Health Retreat has been specifically formulated to address the five roots of Metabolic Health - Nutrition, Movement, Sleep, Mindset and Environment. By establishing balance across all five, each of us receives the optimum conditions for quality of life and health to flourish.

Comprehensive health assessments are undertaken by registered GPs upon arrival and at and departure from the Retreat, forming a measurable basis for the immediate and ongoing health benefits derived from the programme. 

The Combe Grove Estate is no stranger to reinvention, this ancient site where Celtic and Roman artefacts have been recovered was gifted by Henry VIII to a local landowner and later built upon in its current form as a Georgian family home. A location for some of Wesley’s rousing speeches evolved into apartments for “ladies and gentlemen who declined to housekeep” including composer Ivor Novello and actor Rex Harrison, before becoming a country house hotel.

Purchased in 2017 by philanthropist Helen Aylward-Smith, the Estate is now home to The Elmhurst Foundation Charitable Trust, established to practice and increase knowledge in the fields of health and wellbeing, to create a centre for work-based learning excellence offering high-quality apprentice positions in a wide variety of disciplines and to share facilities and expertise for the benefit of the local community.