what the hell is a hyperbaric chamber?!

They use them to treat people who have been scuba diving and have "the bends". It is a chamber where they increase the air pressure dramatically. The deeper you go under water, the higher the pressure is on you (the weight of all the water above you puts pressure on you). The air you breath in from your scuba tank is under pressure. When coming up from a very deep depth, you have to stop every so often and wait a little while. That way you can exhale all the compressed air in your body, and then move on. If you don't, the nitrogen in the air will expand very quickly, may even boil a bit, and this is a very painful experience known as "the bends".

By putting someone who has come up too fast into a hyperbolic chamber, they can increase the air pressure in the chamber so that the nitrogen will be compressed again. Then they can decrease the pressure slowly.

Over the years, various crack pots have suggested some kind of health benefit to spending some time every day in a hyperbolic chamber. They think you get more oxygen to the brain, etc. - not that this is true. Some people think it helps them to stay "youthful", etc. There frankly isn't a whole lot to do in a hyperbolic chamber (maybe catch up on some reading or your e-mails, etc.), so if you feel the need to spend time in one every day, while you are sleeping would be a good time to do it. So, nut-jobs who think this is a healthy thing to do like to sleep in one.

This particular story, which was reported by some tabloids, was thought to be leaked to the tabloids by Michael Jackson himself - God only knows why? Maybe this whole "there is no such thing as bad publicity" notion? Keeping his name in the headlines keeps him famous, etc. Michael Jackson said that it was not true.

I think the real question here is, why do you care? The man is dead. Does it honestly matter if it is true? A lot of people fall for bogus cures - the famous and the not so famous. So what?

The alternate term is decompression chamber. It's a metal vessel similar to a pressure cooker. It's used to increase atmospheric pressure on the individual(s) inside. Increased atmospheric pressure results in the increased partial pressures of the components that make up "air" such as nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. About 78% of the air we breathe is comprised of nitrogen, 20% is oxygen. It was originally developed to cure decompression sickness (aka caissons disease).
Since it's capable of both increasing and decreasing the partial pressures of oxygen in tissues, it has been used medically to increase oxygenation of tissues in the treatment of necrosis and other problems.
I have no idea what Michael Jackson was doing with one, but with his money it seems he did a lot of frivolous and extravagant things.

Basically its a metal pressure vessel where you can be "blown down" to a an equivalent depth of sea water. used to cure the bends or boost blood oxygen saturation for certain medical conditions.

Also a fun day out for scuba diving clubs, I had a great time getting nitrogen narcosis at 40 metre depth (equivalent) with the South Wales diving society at the DDRC (Fort Bovisand, Plymouth, UK)

Hope this helps you in your quest for knowledge!

Philip

See the

http://www.ddrc.org/
http://ukhealthcare.uky.edu/publications…

A special pressurized oxygen chamber used to treat various medical conditions. Its original purpose was to treat "nitrogen narcosis" more commonly known as "the bends" in deep sea divers. It now has more applications but this is the most common one.

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