Switzerland, the Fountain of Youth? Health, Longevity and the Swiss Spa Tradition

27 January 2019, updated 8 October 2026

Switzerland's reputation as the proverbial fountain of youth is far older than longevity medicine. One part of it began in the mountains: the first guesthouse for spa guests opened in Davos in 1860, and patients with tuberculosis were soon travelling there from all over the world for the high-altitude climate. Spa towns such as Bad Ragaz and Baden stand for an older tradition, bathing in warm thermal water. Today the reputation also rests on statistics: in 2025, life expectancy at birth in Switzerland was 86.3 years for women and 82.7 years for men, according to provisional figures from the Federal Statistical Office.

None of this makes mountain air or a thermal bath a treatment for ageing. What the history does explain is why Switzerland has been a destination for rest and recovery for more than a century and a half.

How did Davos become a health resort?

Davos became a health resort because of one doctor's observation. According to Destination Davos Klosters, the German physician Alexander Spengler noticed that the villagers did not suffer from tuberculosis, and he attributed this to the high-altitude climate. Davos had its first guesthouse for spa guests by 1860, and in the years that followed tuberculosis patients arrived from all over the world.

The sanatorium era also left its mark on literature. Thomas Mann was inspired to write The Magic Mountain, which he completed in 1924, when he visited his wife Katia at the Davos forest sanatorium in the spring of 1912, according to the destination's page on the novel.

Davos has kept its medical side to this day. The destination's health pages list a clinic in Clavadel for pulmonary rehabilitation, and Spital Davos, which provides care 365 days a year.

Which Swiss spa towns are known for their thermal water?

Bad Ragaz and Baden are the two Swiss spa towns in this overview, and both still centre on their thermal water. In Bad Ragaz, the Grand Resort gives 1242 as the start of its tradition, and the thermal water of its Tamina Therme has a temperature of 36.5 °C. Tamina Health, part of the same resort, combines medicine with prevention, which is where a spa stay and a medical appointment begin to meet.

In Baden, the thermal bath FORTYSEVEN opened in 2021 and celebrates its fifth anniversary from 16 to 22 November 2026. The table sets the three places side by side.

Switzerland has other spa towns and mountain resorts. This overview includes only the places whose details could be checked at the source.

What is life expectancy in Switzerland?

Life expectancy at birth in Switzerland was 86.3 years for women and 82.7 years for men in 2025, according to provisional figures that the Federal Statistical Office published on 2 April 2026. Compared with 2024, that is an increase of 0.4 years for women and 0.3 years for men.

The same release records a turning point: in 2025, for the first time, more people in Switzerland were aged 65 and over than under 20. Figures like these are averages for a whole country, shaped by many things at once. They describe a population, not the effect of any place, habit or treatment on one person.

Longevity medicine: a concept, not a promise

Longevity medicine is a concept rather than a promise of a longer life. As Veltracon Medical, the group's medical brand, understands it, it combines an annual check-up and expert advice in a personal prevention and treatment plan that is updated regularly. Whether it extends life is another matter. Our sister site Switzerland Clinics, in its guide to what longevity clinics in Switzerland cost and include, notes plainly that the effectiveness of longevity measures has not been proven.

Clinics, programmes and their prices are covered in detail on our specialty website, Switzerland Clinics, rather than here. In medical matters we work together with the group's medical brand, Veltracon Medical. We are not a medical practice and we do not give medical advice.

Planning a stay around a medical appointment

Most of the medical requests we receive come from abroad, for access to Swiss private medicine, with travel, accommodation and interpreting arranged around the appointment. For health and well-being, the choice of clinic and of specialist is the whole decision. Switzerland has no shortage of excellent private clinics, and which one is right depends on the specific treatment and the specific specialist, which is the part that is hard to judge from the outside.

Everything else is built around the appointment. Accommodation, transport, translation and the family who came along are arranged in the same conversation, so nobody is organising logistics from a hospital corridor. Health is the most private thing a client shares with us, and arrangements are handled by as few people as the situation allows.

The rest of the stay can follow the season. In winter it may include the mountains, which we look at in Skiing in the Alps; in the city, a hotel can be the quiet base, and Suite Dreams in Switzerland describes a hotel suite in Zurich.

How we work with clinics, specialists and the stay around them is described on our page on private medical coordination in Switzerland. If a stay turns into a move, Relocating to Switzerland sets out residence, home, schools and private medicine in the order we work in.