Health span and longevity are a newfound hobby of mine, so an invitation to spend just over a week at Sha Mexico, right outside Cancún, is like catnip. The wellness clinic opened a little over two years ago as a sister to the original near Benidorm on Spain’s Costa Blanca. Arriving there feels like checking into a stylish wellness prison: a waterfront complex with tall walls and equally high standards. First-timers like me must follow a prescribed protocol, starting at four nights; I’m on the seven-night longevity track, but some stay for months. My fellow guests are largely Lycra-clad and yoga-ready or wearing the resort’s fluffy robes to wander its halls, and more than half will return for a repeat visit within 18 months, one of the staffers tells me. The rhythm of the week is reassuringly regular: breakfast, often out on the restaurant’s terrace, then a mosaic of appointments in both traditional and complementary medicines, before a quiet dinner with a book and an early night.

I’d categorize my experiences there in three ways: life-enhancing, life-prolonging, and life-limiting. The best, and unreservedly life-enhancing, include an IV ozone-therapy treatment where the friendly nurse explains simply: The saline-dissolved ozone will react with my blood in various ways to juice my energy and rejuvenate the body. I’m skeptical until a few hours later, when I hit my usual midafternoon slump—or rather, I don’t. I feel as energetic as when I first wake up, an unfamiliar perkiness that continues for days. Lying on the Human Regenerator machine for one of my several appointments feels like floating on a tingly cloud, as cold atmospheric plasma supposedly rebalances the electromagnetic impulses of my cells; it certainly zaps my stress levels, but that could just be the result of a brief but welcome daytime nap. A yoga nidra session is so soothing that my Oura ring registers it as sleep, and the Icoone lymphatic-drainage device feels like a much-needed deep-tissue massage from Doctor Octopus, albeit while I wear a skinsuit so unflattering I’m glad it is a machine, not a human, that sees me wearing it.

Meals on my Biolight diet are a mixed bag. Breakfast, the best meal of the day, is always capped with a bright cup of miso soup: Clean and semi-clear, it has an irresistible umami flavor that makes me crave extra cups (though I don’t dare ask). However, I find much of the food on my program needlessly stodgy; give me a fresh Mexican avocado instead of a spelt pizza with roasted vegetables for dinner in the Yucatán, please. The hot vichyssoise? It is as strange as it is self-contradicting. At least the nutritionist coaching me on my diet is conciliatory. My appetizer at meals is a briny mix of one part apple-cider vinegar to seven parts water, intended to aid digestion. Unnerving at first, it becomes a ritual I relish.

Other elements of the week are perhaps good for me, but slightly less enjoyable. Cupping is more like bodywork from a hostile Hulk Hogan than the supposedly Zen procedure Gwyneth Paltrow promotes; at least I don’t bruise. Colonic hydrotherapy, which admittedly never promises to be glamorous, is unremarkable with a purpose that remains murky. I am intrigued to hear that stem-cell injections are available to help suppress inflammation—a 15-minute IV infusion that would supercharge my system—but I demur, still foggy on the details.

Sadly, there are several shortfalls in my short stay. Most glaring is the disparity between the top-tier clinical protocols and the logistics, which are more hapless than flawless. Take the scheduling snafu on arrival. I’d explained to my host weeks earlier that I’d be working while on-site—and indeed, I see many fellow guests glued to laptops outside their treatments, so this is clearly a regular request. It is baffling, then, when at check-in I am handed an entirely different schedule to the one I’d seen weeks earlier (and scheduled my conference calls around). It takes hours—and several needlessly energized conversations—to resolve. And kudos to Sha for providing so many longevity-boosting options, whether acupuncture, personal training, or cryotherapy, but the onsite dermaesthetic specialist feels out of place, offering everything from Cryo Slim to Botox to combat what he calls “the stigmas of aging.” The sales pitch felt more opportunistic than holistic.

Do I leave rejuvenated and rested? Yes. Will I return, like more than half of my fellow guests? Maybe. But next time I’ll trust the longevity experts with my biomarkers, just not my calendar. From $9,800 for seven nights on the Advanced Longevity package