As the first drops of freshly cleaned blood reenter my veins, I am tugged into a vivid out-of-body experience. It’s as if I’m floating above the room: I see myself lying on a hospital bed, an IV plugged into each arm. I’m chatting with my nurse—a modelesque former fashion publicist who saw the light and switched to a career in health care—as she adjusts my blood-pressure cuff and supervises the process. Inuspheresis—colloquially known as blood washing—is the newest therapy available at Lanserhof Tegernsee, selected for its ability to filter a wide range of unwanted substances from your plasma. And I am watching myself become its latest convert.
Thanks to the three minutes it has spent outside of my venous system, though, the newly washed blood feels cold. So acute is the temperature, it shocks me back into a more corporeal form of awareness—and forces me to reflect not only on this experience but on everything I’ve learned about my health over the past eight days.
I wanted to come to Lanserhof’s high-touch medical retreats because I’d heard so many fascinating things about them. In addition to the original location in Austria, opened in 1984, there are two sites in Germany and another slated to open in Marbella next year. I chose Tegernsee, about an hour’s drive from Munich, because its mountainous setting—complete with vegetable and herb gardens, grazing livestock, and a beautiful lake—is famously peaceful.
Room sizes vary, but for ultimate privacy, request one of the suites on the second floor—or the single stand-alone villa.
Lanserhof Tegernsee
Every detail is engineered to keep your pulse low and your tranquility high. Even the views from the hotel rooms are framed to make you feel better. My suite, called the Elysium Loft, has three balconies and its own sauna.
Less comfortable but equally effective is the program’s fasting protocol, based on physician F. X. Mayr’s pioneering method developed in the early 20th century. His theory was that modern diets damage the gut and undermine the various systems connected to it. As a remedy, he prescribed his patients restrictive diets and plenty of rest. Clinicians here expanded on his work to create the Lanserhof Concept. After a detailed intake questionnaire, a meeting with a dedicated physician, and a battery of diagnostics, your doctor will devise a bespoke roster of treatments that can incorporate everything from physical therapy to facials to sessions with a psychiatrist.
As it turns out, I’ve got a lot that needs fixing. My heart and arteries look healthy during an ultrasound exam, but other test results reveal a genetic predisposition to high cholesterol. I’m told I should avoid gluten and dairy. I wonder why my primary-care physician in New York never told me any of this, and I make a note to interrogate her upon return. Over the course of the week, I sweat through four personal-training sessions; get my spine realigned by a chiropractor twice; endure three minutes of viciously frigid cryotherapy; undergo a lymphatic-drainage massage; and have my skin covered in various algae-rich muds before being lowered, dim-sum style, into a steam bath. All in the name of detoxification.
Lanserhof’s healing architecture extends to its treatment rooms, so even the Quo totaspi phlebotomy centers (where you can also enjoy IV drips) are beautiful.
Alexander Haiden
The pace of this schedule might be enough to distract you from what many food lovers struggle with here: the menu. The food in the modernist dining hall is delicious, but sparse. At the lowest level, Phase 0, you get as few as 100 calories a day—mostly vegetable broth. The highest, Phase 4, is about 1,700 calories of vegetables, whole grains, and lean protein. For what it’s worth, I spend most of my time on a Phase 2 regimen—roughly 750 calories a day—and somehow never really feel hungry. Part of that is because you are encouraged to chew each mouthful of food 30 to 40 times in order to aid digestion. On day two, one of the servers tells me earnestly that a bowl of vegetable soup, consumed properly, should take about half an hour to finish.
The company also helps. Visit Lanserhof with a partner or family member, and you’ll dine together. Travel solo, and you’ll be paired with strangers. My table includes a young mother with an Ivy League law degree, a political consultant from the Carolinas, an expat Moroccan businessman, a creative from a famed Spanish fashion house, and a jewelry dealer from the American Northeast. (They tell me I missed an effervescently charming African beauty queen by just one day.)
Fortunately, if you do get your blood washed, you’re served a substantial dinner the night before and a relatively big breakfast prior to the procedure. It’s an invasive treatment, so you need the calories. Despite this, after two hours of Inuspherisis, I’m so woozy that my nurse asks the kitchen to make me a protein shake. I’m even exhausted enough to take a nap, which I never do under normal circumstances.
The cryotherapy protocol involves three minutes in temperatures that descend to minus 110 degrees Fahrenheit (about minus 166 degrees Celsius).
Martin Morrell
When I wake up and look in the mirror, I notice that my skin looks positively backlit.
But the real win is the absence of mental static I experience not the next day, but the day after. After a week of rest and relaxation in the hills of southern Germany, I realize I’ve been so overstimulated for so long that being calm feels almost like being drunk. For once, the hangover never arrives.
A few weeks after returning home, I get a good reason to go back. The fashionable Spaniard emails me after completing her own detox, asking about my reentry into the real world. In her sign off, she asks, “P.S. Did you pet the sheep on the farm?” I didn’t. But she was right about one thing: It was exactly what I needed. From about $4,500 per night for the Elysium Loft suite, medical expenses not included
