Sleeping In An Altitude Chamber For Recovery?

[Evidence]

In the movie Bigger, Stronger, Faster by Chris Bell they talk to Floyd Landis who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France Victory as accused of taking testosterone. He shows the camera an altitude chamber in the back of his house in which he made himself out of pipe from a construction site that was laying around, in which he sets it at 13,000 ft. Sleeping in an altitude chamber increases the number of red blood cells, which increases the amount of oxygen in your system and that can lead to increased endurance for athletes like cyclists and long distance runners. How in the world can you set your own chamber at x amount feet above sea level? It seems so simple in the movie like you're laying in a pipe. Anyone have any more info on such a thing? Seems absolutely fascinating.

[sassy69]

I know people who have used portable decompression chambers if there's something similar there (i.e. like for treating decompression sickness aka "the bends" from scuba diving). I'm not sure how you create the pressure change and then regulate it in a homegrown thing tho.

[thedreamthief]

vacuum pumps and altimeters? I'll see what I can dig up. I thought it was interesting too.

[ire]

I saw that BJ Penn also uses one and his setup wasnt even a tube but like a tent.

[rsync]

The theory behind this is that at altitude your body has to work harder to get the oxygen to your muscles that you need. By doing this you're making your body get more efficient at using oxygen.

Great example of this is runners from Kenya. They train at like 10,000 feet above sea level. so when they come down they feel like supermen. I've experienced this my self, spend a couple weeks in Denver or Aspen, I then went back to St.Louis. For a good week I felt AWESOME.