If your back has hurt for months, you have probably already been handed a long list of things to try. This page is about one item on that list — biofeedback — and about being clear on what it is, what it is not, and where a system like Oberon actually sits.
What a large survey found about opioids and back pain
At the ANESTHESIOLOGY 2016 annual meeting, researchers presented survey data from 2,030 people living with low back pain. It is not a new study — it is a decade old now — but it remains one of the larger surveys that asked people directly how well their medication was working for them.
Of the 941 respondents taking opioids at the time, only 13% called them “very successful” at relieving their pain. Another 44% said “somewhat successful” and 31% “moderately successful,” while 12% said they were not successful at all.
Three quarters reported side effects: constipation (65%), sleepiness (37%), cognitive difficulties (32%) and dependence (29%). And 41% said they felt judged for taking them — notably higher than the 19% who reported feeling any stigma about taking antidepressants. The researchers also pointed to a lack of solid evidence on how well opioids perform for back pain beyond twelve weeks.
The study’s lead author was Asokumar Buvanendran, M.D., director of orthopedic anesthesia and vice chair for research at Rush University in Chicago. “Patients are increasingly aware that opioids are problematic, but don’t know there are alternative treatment options,” he said.
His recommendation was not that anyone stop their medication. “While some patients may benefit from opioids for severe pain for a few days after an injury, physicians need to wean their patients off them and use multi-modal therapies instead,” he said. For pain lasting more than three months, he recommended seeing a pain medicine specialist who combines several approaches rather than relying on one.
Source: American Society of Anesthesiologists, research presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY 2016 annual meeting (October 2016). The findings were presented as a meeting abstract.
Where biofeedback comes into it
The approaches he listed included physical therapy, bracing, interventional procedures such as nerve blocks or nerve ablation, implantable devices, anti-inflammatory medication — and, among complementary options, biofeedback and massage.
That last point deserves precision, because “biofeedback” covers more than one thing.
Biofeedback for muscle tension
The version that appears in clinical guidance is about awareness and control. Equipment measures something your body is doing that you cannot normally sense precisely — muscle tension in the lower back, breathing rate, skin temperature — and shows it to you in real time. Over a series of sessions, the goal is to learn to notice tension as it builds, and to let it go.
The link to back pain is stress. Pain makes you tense, tension makes pain worse, and the loop feeds itself. Learning to interrupt that loop does nothing about whatever may be structurally wrong with a spine, and it does not replace treatment. But as a skill to have alongside everything else, many people find it worth the time.
Bioresonance, and how it differs
Bioresonance — the approach the Oberon system is built around — starts from a different idea. The proposal is that tissues and cells give off faint electromagnetic activity at characteristic frequencies, that those patterns shift along with the state of the body, and that presenting selected frequencies back may encourage a shift toward a more settled pattern.
We would rather be straightforward about this than sell it hard. That is a theory, not established science. Bioresonance is not part of mainstream medicine, the mechanism described above has not been demonstrated the way a clinical treatment would have to be, and unlike muscle-tension biofeedback it does not appear in clinical guidance for back pain. People use it as a complementary wellness practice, and that is how we describe it.
What Oberon does not do
- It is not a medical device, it is not FDA-approved, and it is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any condition.
- It does not find anything earlier than medical testing does, and it is not an alternative to an examination, imaging or laboratory work. If something is wrong with your back, that is what finds it.
- It does not replace medication. Never stop, reduce or change a prescription because of an Oberon session — that decision belongs to the person who prescribed it.
- Experiences differ from one person to the next, and we make no promises about results.
A sensible order of operations
If your back has hurt for more than three months, the first useful step is the one the researchers themselves recommended: see a pain medicine specialist who will look at the whole picture instead of reaching for a single fix. Ask specifically about combining approaches — that is where complementary practices like biofeedback have a place, and it is the only place we would claim for them.
If you are curious how an Oberon session actually works, our walkthrough of the scanning process covers it step by step, and the product page has the full specification and pricing.
