Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber, Airplane Travel and Lyme Disease

A hyperbaric oxygen chamber is an alternative method I have read about that is sometimes used to help alleviate lyme disease symptoms. From How Stuff Works, "hyperbaric oxygen therapy uses a special chamber, sometimes called a pressure chamber, to allow a person to get high levels of oxygen in the blood. This means that the air inside the pressurized chamber is typically 2 1/2 times greater than normal atmospheric pressure. This leads to your blood carrying larger amounts of oxygen, and bringing this oxygen to organs and tissues in the body. By doing so, wounds, particularly infected wounds, can heal more readily." In terms of lyme disease, often people have a "herx," in which their symptoms are exacerbated following treatment. As the bacteria die off the immune system is aggravated and thus the symptoms worsen before they get better.

My theory is this...every time I was on an airplane in the last couple years I got very sick about 1 or 2 days after traveling. No matter where I was leaving from or going to, I got sick upon arrival. I traveled many times between Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Ireland and usually spent a day or two after arrival vomiting, headachy, and in bed with a very bad, painful, flu-like illness all over. I forever thought this was because I had a "weakened" immune system, and I assumed each time I traveled I had caught something on the plane. However, in retrospect, I had the same symptoms every time, and now knowing that I have lyme disease, I wonder if being on an airplane, with the cabin pressure changes when ascending and descending my lyme disease was somehow effected? Could it be that if it is correct that hyperbaric oxygen chamber treatment can effect the lyme spirochetes in one's system, that the pressure changes in an airplane's cabin could do the same?

It just seems odd to me that I never felt sick when traveling by car, or train or changing locations that didn't involve an airplane. I used to travel often by airplane before I was aware of any "lyme disease" in my life, and never got sick like that when I traveled. In fact, I often traveled for TV production which involved high amounts of stress, little sleep and long work days. I still didn't get sick like I have in the recent past. So, I'm just putting it out there that I feel like there could be some correlation between hyperbaric pressure chambers and how they cause lyme spirochetes to react in the body and airplane travel. Something to think about.