Tips to take away from the latest significant wellbeing report.

If the recent Health & Wellness Futures Forum held by London-based trend forecasting agency The Future Laboratory was anything to go by, then if you could buy shares in the $3.7 trillion (£2.8 trillion) health and fitness market, you’d be assured of #seriousgains: like a bigorexic bodybuilder, it’s only going to grow. Having been granted a glimpse into the healing crystal ball, MR PORTER has picked out a couple of coming-down-the track trends that you can get on board with now – and that aren’t a load of Goop. As prescient sci-fi author Mr William Gibson once noted, “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.”

The mind-belly connection will occupy more of our thoughts as science confirms what we already had a “gut instinct” about: that your intestine, or rather the bacteria therein, is effectively a second brain that influences everything from digestion to weight, immunity and even mood. From at-home tests, the likes of Ixcela and Thryve provide bespoke fitness, nutrition and supplement programmes to give you a clean bowel of health.

Elite sports is abuzz with transcranial direct-current stimulation: stimulating your brain’s motor cortex with, er, electricity to make it temporarily more receptive to learning new movement patterns or reinforcing existing ones. (It tingles, apparently.) Halo Sport headsets, which look like conventional cans, are available at select Equinox clubs in the US and UK, and promise to amp up the results of your workout more than any Beats.

UK brand Sandows – named after Victorian strongman Mr Eugen Sandow – is muscling into the shelf space occupied by the likes of Red Bull with its canned, carbonated cold-brew; alternatively, “clean energy drink” Flyte is made with green coffee beans, maca root and no added sugar. Or switch to decaff: nootropic drink Synapse contains the focus-boosting molecule acetylcholine. (Presumably they rejected “Acetyl-cola”.)

Biophilia – the idea that we can enhance wellbeing via natural environments and materials – is flourishing. Before you dismiss it as hippy-dippy tree-hugging, Nasa has conducted studies on house plants that filter air pollution, while the Japanese art of “forest bathing” (clothes on) is proven to lower heart rate and blood pressure. Thanks to Biofit, gyms that look like overgrown outdoor play areas are sprouting up all over, with wood uprooting iron.

Muscle size doesn’t necessarily indicate how much you can handle; nor does how much you can lift. So it will come as a relief to those of us who aren’t hench, bench-pressing bros that strength is being redefined, with more emphasis on psychological and emotional fortitude. That coincides with a welcome rise in inclusivity. For example, Everybody gym in Los Angeles is for all shapes and sizes, not just the chiselled “beach-ready”.

Read The Future Laboratory’s full Health & Wellness report here