Effects of the Forgotten Remedy DMSO

Do-it-yourself medicine with DMSO & Co.

Dr. Peter F. Mayer, tkp.at (German)

DMSO is a highly potent solvent but is just as effective and successful against a range of diseases. It is easy to use and helps with many illnesses or small problems where you would never have expected it.

I have so far reported on DMSO in three articles. Dimethyl sulfoxide (abbreviated DMSO) is an organic, highly effective solvent and belongs to the class of compounds known as sulfoxides. Industrially, dimethyl sulfoxide is produced from dimethyl sulfide, e.g. by catalytic oxidation with dinitrogen tetroxide in the presence of oxygen. Biochemically, it occurs in many reactions in the body. As the name suggests, dimethyl sulfoxide consists of two methyl groups and an oxygen atom bound to sulphur. This simple chemical and its breakdown products occur in nature (e.g. they are contained in small amounts in milk, tomatoes, tea, coffee, beer, clams and cooked corn, while the salty smell of the sea is partly due to microalgae near the surface that produce dimethyl sulfoxide, some of which also ends up in rain.

Experiences with DMSO

I first became aware of DMSO a year ago over lunch with some friends from the German community in Namibia. The full potential and the many effects of DMSO then became clear to me through a detailed article by A Midwestern Doctor (AMD), which led to this article in October 2024 (German). An article in Trialsite News by Mary Beth Pfeiffer documented some truly astonishing successful treatments of injuries and diseases considered incurable, which led to this TKP article (German). I found particularly interesting another article in Trialsite News by the same author about astonishing treatment successes with old, unhealed injuries and interesting tips on application, which led to this article. What is interesting is that it describes experiences with topical treatment, i.e. simply applying DMSO gel mixtures to the skin, such as DMSO mixed with aloe vera. Since I had suffered a small injury to my spine after a fall from my road bike and repeatedly had more or less severe pain, I tried the topical application according to Dr James Miller reported in the Trialsite News article. For this I mixed DMSO with a gel containing arnica and mountain pine, which was applied to my back. The effect was astonishing. Not only was my back completely fine within a few days, other small problems also improved, such as shrinking lipomas or skin problems. Then there is A Midwestern Doctor, who had dug up many of the hundreds or even thousands of earlier medical studies on DMSO. He explains how DMSO works:

• It spreads rapidly throughout the body as soon as it comes into contact with the skin (or is ingested), and when it is mixed with something, that also gets into the body. This is why it acts systemically, even though it is applied to the skin on only a small area of the body.
• It protects cells from a wide range of otherwise lethal stressors (e.g. burns, frostbite, loss of blood supply, radiation and sound waves). This and other properties make it a miraculous therapeutic for otherwise crippling injuries of the central nervous system (e.g. strokes and spinal cord injuries).
• DMSO is a remarkably effective painkiller that in many cases can give people who were disabled by their pain for years (e.g. after failed spinal surgery or severe arthritis – the most common use of DMSO) their lives back. It can also treat many kinds of pain where other therapies do not work (e.g. complex regional pain syndrome).
• DMSO is a highly effective therapy for wound healing and the formation of healthy scars, which makes it particularly helpful for recovery after surgery.
• DMSO is incredibly effective at healing a wide range of acute and chronic musculoskeletal injuries (e.g. arthritis, headaches, neck and back tension, restless legs syndrome, sprained ankles, trigeminal neuralgia and numerous traumatic injuries). The success rate is typically 80–90%, and there is often an immediate and dramatic effect. This application was particularly popular with professional athletes, as it allowed many of them to return to the field quickly instead of being out for the rest of the season.
• It is incredibly safe (the primary side effects are a temporary, concentration-dependent irritation when applied to the skin and, in certain people, an unpleasant garlic-like odour lasting a few hours, while the most serious side effect is a 1-in-2,000 chance of an allergic reaction).
• It considerably increases blood flow throughout the body while removing oedema and excess fluid from where it does not belong. This is particularly important for the joints, as their structure predisposes them to a restricted blood supply (especially when they are damaged and need this blood to heal).

These examples explain why DMSO can be used almost universally for a wide range of conditions – and they are only some of its remarkable properties. Its ability to heal injuries quickly and eliminate pain is due to the fact that it is strongly anti-inflammatory, restores critical blood flow, is an effective muscle relaxant, protects cells from dying and blocks the transmission of problematic pain signals.

Forgotten and fought against

I am currently on a Canary Island and tried to get hold of DMSO here. Enquiries at two larger pharmacies showed that nobody had ever heard of DMSO or even knew the name.

Where we live it can be bought cheaply from specialist chemical suppliers, or of course on Amazon.

AMD is also aware of this ignorance and writes: should DMSO become the standard of medical care because of its remarkably high success rate in treating a wide range of common conditions, it would completely change medical practice in the United States and would probably make many existing approaches superfluous.

• It quickly heals a wide range of musculoskeletal injuries (e.g. those that regularly occur in professional athletes, or a chronic back injury leading to partial disability).
• It effectively treats a wide range of joint diseases (e.g. rheumatoid arthritis).
• It is an extremely effective and very safe painkiller.
• For this reason it was a miracle for many people with chronic pain and disabilities (e.g. from osteoarthritis or failed spinal surgery), especially since all other pain-relieving drugs have significant (and often fatal) side effects and, even worse, often do not even work.

How DMSO relieves pain

Several mechanisms have been identified that explain how DMSO relieves pain (many of them are probably also responsible for DMSO’s remarkable ability to heal musculoskeletal injuries).

Conduction block

Note: the five most common symptoms of Covid vaccine injuries are, in order: fatigue, post-exertional malaise, brain fog (explained in more detail here), small fibre neuropathy and dysautonomia.

DMSO selectively blocks the conductivity of these smaller fibres and thus stops the pain without significantly harming the rest of the body or causing the body to develop a tolerance to it (rather, DMSO usually becomes more effective over time).

Note: alpha-delta fibres (Aδ) are responsible for perceiving superficial, fast and sharp pain, while C fibres (especially when triggered repeatedly) transmit stronger somatic signals covering temperature, touch and muscle and joint pain – essentially many common facets of chronic pain.

This is supported by the following data:

A study examined the sural nerves of cats. It found that 5% DMSO slowed conduction and reduced the amplitude of nerve impulses in the C fibres, while higher doses (9%) blocked them (at 15% the block occurred immediately), and that these effects disappeared as soon as the DMSO was washed off. Another study on the radial nerves of cats found that at lower concentrations DMSO blocked conduction in small nerve fibres (first C and then Aδ), while at high concentrations it blocked conduction in larger fibres (alpha-beta [Aβ] and alpha-gamma [Aγ]).

Note: this block is attributed in part to the fact that DMSO lowers the resting membrane potential by changing the membrane’s permeability to chloride and potassium (e.g. by blocking the leak channels).

Anti-inflammatory

Many doctors who used DMSO in practice used it mainly for inflammation. In this respect it was incredibly effective, and unlike the other, dangerous options (e.g. steroids or NSAIDs), DMSO is very safe. Since inflammation is a key component of both pain and musculoskeletal injuries (e.g. “chronic inflammatory pain” is widely known), this property is probably the key to DMSO’s benefit in these conditions.

Evidence (such as this study) shows how DMSO can protect injured tissue from dying (and heal non-healing brain or spinal cord tissue). DMSO:

• reduces pathological inflammatory responses to tissue injury
• reduces inflammatory cytokines
• reduces the production of inflammatory prostaglandins and increases the production of anti-inflammatory prostaglandins
• neutralises (scavenges) free radicals, which are both a cause and a consequence of chronic inflammation and a common cause of tissue injury, degenerative diseases and chronic pain.

DMSO and cancer

So far little is known about how DMSO changes the paradigm of cancer. For example (click on the points to follow the links):

• There are hundreds of studies showing that DMSO routinely transforms cancer cells into non-cancerous cells.
• DMSO directly inhibits the growth of a wide range of cancers.
• DMSO enables the immune system to regain the ability to attack cancer cells that have evaded it, which can not only eliminate cancer but also create lasting immunity to cancer.
• DMSO makes many conventional cancer therapies much more effective, making a cure more likely and requiring a much lower (and therefore less toxic) dose to achieve it.
• Many natural therapies become significantly more effective in combination with DMSO (e.g. a DMSO combination is among the most effective cancer treatments)

Moreover, DMSO can not only eliminate cancers directly but also make difficult cancers far more treatable through its remarkable ability to heal and protect the body. The suppression of DMSO as an accompanying cancer therapy is the most outrageous aspect of this story, because in these cases it does not even compete with cancer treatments – it merely reduces the suffering they cause (which should actually be good for the cancer business).

Pain in cancer

Many cancer patients suffer from severe pain (which increases when the cancer becomes incurable), and in 10–20% of cases they do not respond to standard treatment with opioids. In many cases, however, they do respond to DMSO. For example (click on the points to follow the links):

• In one study, two elderly cancer patients were given DMSO; one responded excellently and one well to the treatment.
• Another study found that in 7 patients with metastatic cancer pain, DMSO led to complete remission of the pain in 2 patients and partial remission in 2.
• One of the best-known examples was Otis Bowen, MD (a popular governor of Indiana in his second term), who “illegally” used topical DMSO to treat his wife’s pain from terminal multiple myeloma and then publicly denounced the FDA’s absurd embargo on DMSO at the AMA’s national meeting in 1981. Remarkably, Bowen became Reagan’s Secretary of Health and Human Services a few years later, but even then, with this highly ethical doctor at the head of the department, DMSO could not overcome the FDA ban.

The most comprehensive wealth of knowledge, however, is provided by the book pictured above, “Medizin zum Selbermachen mit DMSO & Co.: Ihr Gesundheitswerkzeugkasten für zu Hause oder in der Praxis” (Do-it-yourself medicine with DMSO & Co.: your health toolkit for home or practice):

To the book (German)

Original article on tkp.at (German)

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