Thierry Malleret, co-founder of The Monthly Barometer – a predictive analysis for private investors and decision makers – spoke at the recent Global Wellness Summit (GWS) in Mexico City about how wellness may become mandatory worldwide.

“The macro world is ‘unwell’ – meaning the global economic, geopolitical, societal and environmental outlooks are all negative,” said Malleret, highlighting that the most prevalent trend affecting the global economy is an ageing population, followed by health spending.

“Adult obesity is increasing in most emerging markets around the world,” he added.

To help people live longer and healthier lives, Malleret says policies are needed to make wellness compulsory worldwide.

In the US, 30 per cent of all federal spending goes to ageing-related costs. Obesity costs US$2trn (€1.9trn, £1.3trn) a year, which is 2.8 per cent of the global GDP – and these are only two of the reasons that pressure is increasing to make the world ‘well’.

Malleret reasoned that there are two ways to fix the over-spending on health and wellbeing. “First, we can increase the global GDP dramatically – 2-3 per cent is not enough,” he said. “We would also need to see a giant increase in productivity for this to work.”

“Second, we can implement preventive health care to reduce costs through wellness.”

Malleret described the first option as uncertain, making the second measure inevitable. “It will be up to different countries to address their health issues and they will each do this differently," he said. "Countries simply have no choice.”

Malleret sees an upcoming convergence between wellness and wellbeing: “Wellbeing has predictive power over wellness: if you are happy, you live a longer life and your immune system is better.”

Malleret also predicts a change in consumer demand, from hedonic wellness treatments and services to eudaimonic wellbeing approaches – focusing on a person’s sense of purpose and self-realisation.