Matt Stafford’s $159,500 Chamber of Woo

By Ross Pomeroy | August 15, 2025 | 10:00am

Screenshot via the Los Angeles Rams

Sports NFL

Matt Stafford’s 2025 NFL season is not starting how he or Los Angeles Rams fans envisioned. Sure, nobody expected the 37-year-old mainstay at quarterback to play much (or at all) during the preseason, but they did expect him to at least toss some spirals at practice.

But Stafford hasn’t been doing any of that either. An aggravated disk in his back has prevented the star QB from practicing thus far, apparently causing so much pain that he received an epidural, commonly utilized during childbirth.

Most Popular

An epidural isn’t the only eyebrow-raising remedy that Stafford has pursued for his back issues. Rams fans and staff hoped their quarterback would hit the training field this past Monday, but instead, Stafford spent the day inside a portable Ammortal Chamber parked at the practice facility.

What is an Ammortal Chamber? The company touts the device, which resembles a futuristic, zig-zag tanning bed, as the “fastest way to reset, recharge, and rejuvenate the body, mind and spirit.” Users who lay inside the open-sided ‘chamber’ are treated to four different modalities at the same time: pulsed electromagnetic fields, vibroacoustic sound therapy (basically combining calming music with vibration), red-light therapy, and hydrogen gas inhalation.

“Our stacked technologies deliver hours of restorative modalities in just one short 30-minute session that leaves most individuals feeling in a state of calm but “caffeinated like” energy,” the company claims.

You get all this for only $159,500!

If Stafford bought the chamber he used outright, that would only constitute 0.1% of his estimated $150 million net worth. But for any non-professional athlete, that’s quite a sum to pay. Is it worth it?

To their credit, Ammortal cites numerous studies to support the chamber’s effectiveness and rationalize its hefty cost. But I looked through all of them and they were… underwhelming… to say the least. Many were conducted in mice, and the vast majority of findings from mouse studies don’t translate to humans. Others lacked placebo control groups, rendering their conclusions pretty much useless. More clearly were fishing expeditions, in which researchers test a therapy’s effects on a range of variables, then write a paper about whatever variable it positively affected, even if the “success” was purely through chance. One study was almost certainly p-hacked, meaning its statistics were altered to get a positive result. And another wasn’t even related to the claims Ammortal was making.

Overall, it seems like the makers of the Ammortal Chamber tried to cram as many impressive-sounding therapies as possible into a splashy product and sell it to the healthy wealthy at an eye-catching price. It’s a strategy that alternative health companies thrive on.

The fact that Ammortal prominently touts the endorsement of Denise John, the Senior Science Editor of Gwyneth Paltrow’s goop, is another clear signal that the company is selling a chamber of woo. The brand may be the most prolific modern purveyor of (overpriced) pseudoscience.

The Rams currently have the ninth best odds of winning Super Bowl 60, per ESPN Bet. Stafford has a real chance of securing a second ring and cementing his currently borderline case for a spot in the Hall of Fame. But his nagging back ailment could be a real roadblock. Spending time in a scientifically-dubious Ammortal chamber, no matter how relaxing it may be, is unlikely to help.