Global Wellness Summit releases 'Eight Wellness Trends for 2018'

NEW YORK, NY – When 600+ wellness experts from 40+ nations gather to debate the future of wellness, a uniquely insightful and global view of trends unfolds. That’s what transpired at the recent Global Wellness Summit (GWS), which brought together leaders from the travel, spa, beauty, fitness, nutrition, technology, medical and architecture worlds. Now, he organization released their top wellness trends for 2018 (and beyond).

“No other trends report is based on the perspectives of so many wellness experts,” said Susie Ellis, GWS chairman & CEO. “And every one of this year’s trends pushes the health and wellness envelope in unexpected ways.”

1. Mushrooms Emerge from Underground
Whether “magic” or medicinal, shrooms’ superpowers come to light

The mysterious underground kingdom of mushrooms is actually the largest set of organisms on the planet – and in 2018 more people will explore the unique medicine they provide our brains and bodies. Thanks to a surge in rather mind-blowing medical evidence, demonstrating that they reset the brain and shake the “snow globe” on rigid neural patterns, magic mushrooms will emerge from the underground, and could prove “better than existing treatments” for anxiety, depression and addiction. And more, bigger studies are ahead, such as tech investor, Peter Thiel’s, Compass Pathways ($20 million!) 2018 European psilocybin trial. There’s also a legalization movement, with pushes to get magic mushrooms on ballots in California, Oregon and Colorado, and with experts predicting they will be legalized medicine within five years. Microdosing psilocybin as a brain booster, a trend straight outta Silicon Valley, will go more global. And a new kind of wellness “trip,” magic mushroom retreats (like Mycomeditations, Jamaica), will keep popping up. This magic mushroom moment bears resemblance to early days in the cannabis wellness trend. Think how lightning-fast attitudes and laws changed there.

The evidence also mounts that so many “regular” mushrooms are magical for health: particularly as stress and inflammation fighters. Playing a starring role in Asia’s centuries-old food-as-medicine philosophy, now the functional mushroom trend is becoming a global reality. We’ll see mushrooms (esp. “adaptogenic” varietals like reishi, cordyceps, chaga) get infused in everything imaginable: powders, lattes, cocoas, chocolate, broths, oils and teas. And with many mushrooms boasting unique skin-boosting powers, mushroom-infused products will keep invading the beauty aisles. Mushrooms…weird, far out? Anything but: this trend is driven by new medical evidence.

2. A New Era of Transformative Wellness Travel
Circuits, sagas and epic storylines

Wellness is, by nature, a journey – an ongoing physical and emotional quest. So why, at even amazing wellness/spa destinations, do classes, treatments and experiences get served up piecemeal? You have that massage, and wonder, what now, the room, the pool? You haven’t been wrapped up in a true wellness “narrative” so you could get…bored. “Transformational travel” is the 2018 buzzword, described as “…travel that challenges people on a deeply personal level, creating emotion through the powerful medium of storytelling…” And we predict more wellness destinations will use the power of wellness circuits and epic storylines to create a “necklace” of linked wellness experiences rather than the disconnected “beads” of programming, amenities, and itineraries.

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