Lock into longevity at Lanserhof Sylt, the iconic German wellness retreat

Before there was Michael Pollan and his “intentional eating” MasterClass, before there was “intermittent fasting” and the Wim Hof Method, there was Franz Xaver Mayr, the early-20th-century Austrian physician.His revolutionary Mayr Method was grounded in the belief that the secret to health and beauty starts in the gut.

His cult-like following led to the opening of his own clinic, and, eventually, to Lanserhof, a wellness and longevity retreat at whose fourth outpost I presently find myself.Somehow by my own choosing.Arriving to the remote German island of Sylt, considered by some to be the Teutonic version of the Hamptons, if the Hamptons had fewer beach clubs and more colonics, takes some effort.

Which is, of course, the point.Guests must take a four-hour train ride across the Hindenburg causeway from Hamburg to arrive at the town of List, where, among the waves and heather, Lanserhof Sylt seems to levitate above the dunes.

The whisper-quiet, thatch-roofed structure (the largest of its kind in Europe) designed by architect Christoph Ingenhoven offers no check-in desk, no custom scent, no chipper guide to assuage your fears of eating only 750 calories per day.This, too, is the point.

At Lanserhof, escaping the pressures of the real world, tuning your senses to your body and your environment, is also part of the treatment.I arrived from New York depleted — existentially tired in a way that no spa day or vacation could possibly resolve.Time had no meaning, I was exhausted, unfocused, unable to sleep.

Relentless deadlines, continental moves, the news cycle… it was enough to throw me into a midlife spiral that, I decided, only a week away, alone, could heal.So, no, I hadn’t booked myself into Lanserhof to lose those few winter pounds (as one gentleman guest revealed) or to keep a chronic illness in check (as a sufferer of “leaky gut syndrome” told me).

I was here to sleep without meds and to enlist in Lanserhof’s Longevity Program, one t...