DMSO : fights inflammation, pain, acts as an agent for other topicals, softens scar tissue, and much more.

Despite decades of research and thousands of studies attesting to its health-promoting properties, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) remains virtually unknown to the medical establishment and the public. For more than 40 years, Dr. Stanley Jacob has been battling the establishment over DMSO.  Dr. Jacob reveals new data showing the potential of DMSO in treating brain trauma injuries that afflict more than 50,000 Americans each year. I met Dr. Jacob years ago when our children attended the same middle school in Portland, Or. I’ve been using DMSO ever since, mostly for bruises and aches and pains, but there are many other applications.

Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) is an anti-inflammatory and analgesic compound that holds promise in managing a wide range of debilitating health conditions. DMSO is an approved pharmacological agent in more than 125 countries, and its safety and therapeutic effects are backed by nearly 50 years of research and more than 10,000 scientific articles on its biological implications.

Unfortunately, the vast health-promoting potential of DMSO has gone unfulfilled in America, suppressed by a combination of bureaucratic ineptitude and pharmaceutical industry lobbying. In the United States today, DMSO is approved to treat only one medical condition: interstitial cystitis, or chronic inflammation of the bladder wall. Recent findings on DMSO’s ability to help manage the effects of head injury have renewed interest in the many potential therapeutic applications of this versatile compound.

According to Dr. Jacob, “DMSO is a potent free-radical scavenger and diuretic that reduces swelling and improves blood supply to the brain. This improves blood oxygenation to brain tissue. Injured brain cells often aren’t dead. When these cells get increased blood supply and more oxygen, and when the free radicals are scavenged, dying cells can recover, and brain swelling is reduced very rapidly.”

Dr. Jacob notes that in studies conducted from 1978 to 1982, “we observed that when the human brain was treated with intravenously administered DMSO after a head injury, the swelling could be reduced within five minutes. No other treatment comes close to acting that quickly. In patients given other commonly used therapeutic agents such as intravenous barbiturates, the brain continued to swell. We’ve known about DMSO’s efficacy for this type of injury for a long time.”

Astonishingly, however, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved any new pharmacological agent of significance for the treatment of traumatic brain injury in more than three decades. With so much attention focused on the plight of severely injured soldiers returning home from war, Dr. Jacob is leading the charge to gain FDA approval of DMSO to treat this type of injury. He believes that DMSO would be more effective than some current therapies such as removing parts of the brain to reduce swelling.

“In my opinion, DMSO has the potential to be the pharmacologic treatment of choice for traumatic brain injuries from combat,” says Dr. Jacob. “There’s nothing that comes close to it in efficacy.”

DMSO has a long list of primary pharmacological actions, including fighting inflammation, relieving pain, improving blood supply, scavenging free radicals, softening scar tissue, and effects that may benefit autoimmune conditions.

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