First things first: Elon Musk has absolutely nothing to do with these beds. Zero. None. The “Tesla beds” that have been making the rounds in wellness circles, social media, and hushed conversations at biohacking conferences are named after Nikola Tesla — the Serbian-American inventor of alternating current, the transformer, and the radio, who died in 1943, thirty years before Elon Musk was born. The company operating the MedBed Centres and Wellness Hotel in the US is called Tesla BioHealing, and the “Tesla” in the name refers entirely to Nikola Tesla’s pioneering work on electromagnetic energy and frequency. It has no connection to Tesla the car company and no connection to its CEO. Now that that’s settled, let’s talk about what these beds actually are — because the real story is considerably more interesting than the rumour.

There is a bed making the rounds in wellness circles that you lie down in, close your eyes, and emerge from — 25 minutes later — feeling, as one user put it, “like I’d had a week’s sleep.” It doesn’t look like much from the outside: a reclined pod, a motorised hood, a soft ambient hum. But inside, five distinct therapies are happening simultaneously — pulsed electromagnetic fields, multi-wavelength red and near-infrared light, vibroacoustic sound resonance, molecular hydrogen inhalation, and guided breathwork — each one individually studied and clinically validated, all stacked into a single session that fits in a lunch break.

Understanding why people are quietly filling these pods — and paying handsomely to do it — requires understanding what each of the technologies actually does.

PEMF: The Technology at the Centre of It All

Pulsed Electromagnetic Field therapy — PEMF — is the oldest and most clinically established technology in the biohacking recovery bed category. It has been FDA-cleared since 1979 for the treatment of non-union bone fractures, and there are now more than 10,000 peer-reviewed studies and over 2,000 clinical trials documenting its effects. The mechanism is measurable: PEMF induces micro-currents in cells, up-regulating gene expression for anti-inflammatory cytokines and growth factors, improving mitochondrial function, and enhancing circulation at the cellular level. The practical effects reported in clinical literature include significant pain reduction in osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia patients, accelerated post-surgical recovery, improved sleep architecture, reduced depression scores, and enhanced bone density regeneration.

The Tesla BioHealing system uses what it calls “Biophoton Life Force Energy” — a proprietary framework for generating electromagnetic field energy inspired by Nikola Tesla’s original work on electromagnetic resonance. The company operates MedBed Centres across multiple US states, as well as the Tesla BioHealing Wellness Hotel in Butler, Pennsylvania — a converted Ramada by Wyndham where every guest room is equipped with MedBed Generators designed to bathe occupants in continuous biophoton energy while they sleep. Six-hour cellular recharge sessions are bookable, as are overnight stays and 14-day immersive protocols.

Red and Near-Infrared Light Therapy

Photobiomodulation — the technical name for red and near-infrared light therapy — uses specific wavelengths (630–670 nm red and 810–850 nm near-infrared) that penetrate the skin and are absorbed by cytochrome c oxidase in the mitochondria, triggering a cascade that boosts ATP production, reduces oxidative stress, and decreases inflammation. The practical results documented in research include accelerated wound healing and collagen synthesis, reduced joint pain and muscle soreness, improved skin texture and reduction of fine lines, enhanced sleep quality, and mood improvement through increased serotonin production.

High-end recovery pods like the Ammortal Chamber combine full-spectrum red and near-infrared light across the entire body simultaneously via a motorised hood that brings the light source into close proximity for maximum penetration depth. Single sessions run around 25 minutes; most users report peak benefit from three to five sessions per week. Standalone red light panels are also available for home use, from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy — HBOT — involves breathing pure or high-concentration oxygen inside a pressurised chamber, typically at 1.5 to 3 atmospheres. At elevated pressure, oxygen dissolves directly into the blood plasma, dramatically increasing oxygen delivery to tissues throughout the body — including areas with compromised circulation where healing has stalled.

HBOT has long-established FDA approval for conditions including decompression sickness, carbon monoxide poisoning, non-healing diabetic foot ulcers, and radiation tissue damage. More recently, a compelling 2020 study from Tel Aviv University demonstrated that a 60-session HBOT protocol produced measurable lengthening of telomeres — the protective caps on chromosomes that shorten with ageing — and a significant reduction in senescent cells, two biomarkers directly associated with cellular ageing. Sessions are widely available at wellness and sports recovery clinics; a typical single session runs 60 to 90 minutes at $150 to $300.

Float Tanks: The Oldest Biohack

Before PEMF pods and red light chambers, there was the isolation tank. Invented in 1954 by American physician and neuroscientist John C. Lilly, the flotation tank — filled with water so saturated with Epsom salt that the human body floats effortlessly at the surface, in complete darkness and silence — was originally designed to study the origins of consciousness by cutting off all external stimuli. What Lilly and subsequent researchers found was that restricting sensory input had profound and measurable effects on the nervous system, far beyond simple relaxation.

The technical name is floatation-REST: Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy. A systematic review published in 2023 synthesising the accumulated research found that floatation-REST produces significant reductions in anxiety, depression, and chronic pain; lowers blood pressure and cortisol; improves sleep quality; and in athletic populations reduces perceived muscle soreness and accelerates recovery between training sessions. By removing gravity (via buoyancy), light, sound, and all tactile reference points, the brain is essentially given nothing to process. With no incoming data to handle, the nervous system shifts dramatically from sympathetic (fight-or-flight) to parasympathetic (rest and repair) dominance. Float centres are now found in most major cities worldwide. A standard 60-minute session costs $60 to $100.

The Stacked Protocol

The most sophisticated practitioners don’t use these technologies in isolation — they stack them in sequence. The “Superhuman Protocol” popularised by biohacker Gary Brecka runs PEMF first (to charge cells electromagnetically), followed by HBOT or Exercise With Oxygen Therapy (to flood the newly activated cells with high-concentration oxygen), followed by photobiomodulation (to stimulate mitochondrial ATP production in the primed cells). Each technology amplifies the next. The argument is that sequential stacking produces synergistic effects that are non-additive — the whole considerably more than the sum of the parts.

Who Uses These and Why

The early adopter profile runs strongly toward high-performance athletes, executives managing chronic stress loads, and people dealing with conditions that haven’t responded adequately to conventional treatment. But there is also a quieter population: chronic pain patients, long-COVID sufferers, people with treatment-resistant depression, and older adults managing the accumulated physical costs of decades of high output, all of whom have arrived at these technologies through desperation rather than optimisation.

What they share is a willingness to experience something rather than wait for a clinical consensus that, in some of these areas, may still be decades away. The individual technologies are not new or unproven. The delivery mechanisms, the stacking, and the commercial wellness format are new. And the anecdotal evidence accumulating in float centres, PEMF studios, and red light clinics around the world suggests that something real is happening — whether the specific framing around “biophoton energy” or “cellular resonance” is the precise mechanism or a convenient narrative the underlying science doesn’t actually require.

Sessions at Tesla BioHealing centres are bookable at teslabiohealing.com. For HBOT, float therapy, and red light therapy, search for practitioners in your city — the category has expanded significantly across Australia, the UK, Europe, and the US.