A new book claims to have found the alternative therapist who gives the president his stamina

Matthew Campbell, Paris

A FRENCH author claims to have unlocked the secret of Nicolas Sarkozy’s boundless energy. The “hyper-président” secretly consults a specialist in alternative medicine who massages his back and sends him “positive energy waves”.

Sarkozy’s tirelessness – they call him the Duracell Bunny – has long been a subject of speculation. In political circles he is regularly accused of being “on something”, with theories ranging from amphetamines to cocaine.

In reality, he is addicted only to chocolate and the secret of his dynamism is not drugs but a long-haired “etiopath” called Jean-Paul Moureau, according to Patrice Machuret, a political journalist and author of a book on Sarkozy published last week.

“Moureau the guru”, as patients call him, has been treating Sarkozy for 15 years with his special technique of “manual therapy”. The two have developed a close relationship and Moureau has become a sort of unofficial adviser, says the author.

Since his election as president in May 2007, Sarkozy, who used to turn up at Moureau’s practice in the chic 16th arrondissement, has arranged for visits in the Elysée Palace at least once a week.

The president, 53, who last week visited Israel, Egypt and Lebanon in a failed effort to broker a ceasefire in Gaza, apparently likes a “general revision” session with Moureau before each overseas mission.

Moureau, the owner of a property in the Camargue region of southern France where he breeds horses, is said to have converted Sarkozy to the cause of saving its pristine regional park from developers.

“He [Moureau] has lobbied the president actively, and effectively, for the Camargue,” said Machuret.

Moureau, 60, declined to comment last week but, according to Machuret, he compares himself to an artist “like Picasso”. He calls his technique a “unique physical and spiritual method”.

According to the French Institute of Etiopathy, the practice was pioneered by a Frenchman in the 1960s and is dedicated to pinpointing “the real cause of an illness” and treating it with manual therapy.

It can be effective, says the institute, in treating conditions from migraine to conjunctivitis. Sarkozy, who is known to suffer from migraines and who has a slight limp because one leg is shorter than the other, apparently swears by it.

When François Fillon, his prime minister, was stricken by sciatica last year, Sarkozy advised him to see Moureau, who got him back on his feet.

“His love of horses, which he cares for himself, gives him a serene, reassuring and warm image,” says Machuret, who signed up for a course of treatment with the guru. “Often, in the middle of a treatment, when he is pressing tension zones in the back, for example, he establishes a parallel between human and equine pathologies. To be physically compared to a Camargue horse is quite flattering, whether you are a president or not.”

According to Machuret, however, Moureau, who charges £100 a session, was never a GP, as he has claimed. Even so, he is highly regarded by other etiopaths and tends to a star-studded clientele which, besides Sarkozy, includes Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmon-do, the actors. “He has unquestionable talent and charisma,” says the author.

Whether or not Moureau can take credit for it, Sarkozy’s extraordinary vitality is a are used to older, more sedentary presidential figures: in his last years in office, Jacques Chirac, the former president, seldom left the palace. An ailing François Mitterrand used to spend all morning in bed.

Sarkozy’s perpetual activity and reluctance to relinquish his role of European Union com-mander-in-chief, even though the Czechs took over the rotating presidency on January 1, has become a source of amusement at home.

A cartoon last week showed Carla Bruni, the Italian singer he married last year, saying: “Already back from Gaza? I thought you would stop off in Ukraine to sort out the gas crisis!” To which Sarkozy replies, slapping his forehead: “I completely forgot.”

His aversion to immobility is exemplified in his passion for jogging. He has also hired a personal trainer, on the advice of his wife, to help to tone up his muscles. But in other ways he has not lived up to his promise of “rupture” with France’s bad old ways of the past.

During his election campaign he insisted that unlike Mitterrand, who kept his cancer secret from the public, he would always be transparent about the state of his health.

However, when he was briefly hospitalised in 2007 to have an abscess removed from his throat, he sacked a presidential physician suspected of leaking details to the press.

He has certainly kept quiet about his sessions with Moureau. “This guru nickname is embarrassing in association with the president of the republic in command of the nuclear arsenal,” says Machuret. “Could a man unknown to the general public be in a position to influence him [the president]? The very idea seems aberrant.”