DMSO,Nature's Healer,(Excerpted from the book by Dr Morton Walker)

[Guest guest]

http://www.emmessar.com/chemical/company/p1.htm

 

Background

 

DMSO - dimethyl sulfoxide - is a simple by-product of the wood

industry and is a solvent that can be produced in industrial or

pharmaceutical grade. DMSO has variously been called a 'miracle'

compound capable of relieving pain, diminishing swelling, reducing

inflammation, encouraging healing and restoring normal cell function.

One of the most well known and exotic properties of this solvent is

its ability to penetrate living tissue and transport other medicines

in their integral state deep into the body. For this reason, DMSO has

been used by many in the treatment of burns and sprains, sports

injuries, paralysis, arthritis, scleroderma and many of the

degenerative diseases.

 

 

American doctor, Stanley W Jacob has worked with DMSO for many years

and is considered one of the foremost authorities on the substance in

the world. He states the following with regard to the therapeutic

potential of DMSO: " We've barely scratched the surface [of DMSO's

capabilities], for this is a new principle in medicine. We've only

had three new principles in our century - the antibiotic principle,

the cortisone principle, and now the DMSO principle - and the DMSO

principle is the only one of our generation. Despite all the

controversy, my guess is that history will record it this way. "

 

 

When US Governor George Wallace travelled across the country to find

pain relief from DMSO administered by Dr Jacob, the reputation of this

painkilling solvent got a tremendous boost2. Wallace had been

confined to a wheelchair since he was wounded in a 1972 assassination

attempt while campaigning for the Democratic nomination for President

at Laurel, Maryland. Wallace's discomforture was located in his

flank, a condition which reportedly disappeared by faithfully dabbing

DMSO over the affected area.

 

 

DMSO Goes Public

 

On 23rd March 1980 and again on 6th July of that year, the popular

television program 60 Minutes reported on DMSO. In a presentation

entitled " The Riddle of DMSO " , presenter Mike Wallace covered the

anecdotal patient history of the solvent and interviewed its main

critics at the FDA. As a result of the broadcast, which reached the

homes of 70 million viewers, the switchboards at Dr Jacob's office and

others associated with the program were immediately swamped with up to

10,000 people figuratively crying, " Save me! Save me from my pain! "

Pain victims sought out other physicians around the United States who

were known to prescribe DMSO. They arrived in droves. Telephones in

the offices of doctors and pharmacies in Florida, Oregon, Louisiana

and Nevada rang busily for several days following the Sunday evening

broadcast of 60 Minutes. A subsequent wire service report about the

FDA's refusal to approve DMSO appeared around the country in Tuesday's

newspapers. In his program footnote, presenter Mike Wallace stated,

" Tomorrow morning in Washington, the House Committee on Ageing begins

an inquiry into why DMSO is not available to all Americans for any

appropriate ailment, including plain and simple pain. " The numbers of

letters and telephone calls that came into congressional offices

enquiring about the cause of DMSO unavailability were massive. A

sampling of the letters sent to just one congressman, Claude Pepper of

Florida, are found in chapter 4 of my book.

 

 

DMSO - Bane of the Establishment

 

Dimethyl sulfoxide has had a battered thirty-year history completely

out of proportion to its true track record. Officially, DMSO has

never been approved for widespread medicinal use because medical

authorities declare that the quality of medical trials and research on

the substance has not been up to statutory requirements. Dr J Richard

Crout, the chief FDA opponent to DMSO, reported that double-blind

tests3 were mandatory before approval would be forthcoming from his

agency. Yet researchers cannot conduct double-blind tests on DMSO

because of the distinctive odour produced by the product after

application. Within a few minutes of putting it on your skin, you can

taste it on your tongue; it penetrates the skin and runs through the

bloodstream so effectively. The alternative reason for not approving

dimethyl sulfoxide, according to some DMSO proponents, could also be a

simple question of economics: DMSO, painkiller extraordinary, is a

common by-product of the wood industry and cannot be patented to great

profit by the pharmaceutical industry. Ironically, even drug

companies have had their DMSO INDs turned down4.

 

 

The Medical Community Divided

 

Because of the general public outcry about its ban in the United

States, and of course because of Mike Wallace and his 60 Minutes, DMSO

has become a household word and medical-political cause célèbre.

Those doctors among us who have been using the drug for twenty-six to

twenty-eight years never dreamed that it would become a focal point in

the continuing battle between individual freedom and the power of

government. My colleagues and I have been criticized, ridiculed and

even persecuted in some medical circles for promoting and using DMSO.

But I, and others like me, have come to the conclusion, having

observed establishment thinking for forty years, that the only way a

truly revolutionary treatment principle can be brought to the patient

is by appealing to the general population through the information

media. It is for this reason that I wrote the book, DMSO - Nature's

Healer.

 

 

In spite of the rumours, DMSO has not been found unsafe for humans.

Any side effects are merely minor irritations. DMSO stops bacterial

growth. It relieves pain. As a vasodilator, the drug enlarges small

blood vessels, increasing the circulation to an area. It softens scar

tissue and soothes burns. DMSO's anti-inflammatory activity relieves

the swelling and inflammation of arthritis, bursitis, tendinitis, and

other musculoskeletal injuries. DMSO has been found to benefit human

body cells, tissues and organs in ways not yet properly understood by

medical science. For this reason, I believe DMSO is the 21st

century's newest healing principle with a very wide range of

usefulness. It represents an entirely different way of treating

diseases.

 

 

DMSO and Cancer

 

Cancer seems to respond well to DMSO. At Mount Sinai Hospital in New

York City, Charlotte Friend MD has turned cancerous cells into

harmless, normal ones in the test tube by putting them in touch with

the DMSO solutions. DMSO is routinely used by alternative cancer

clinics in Mexico to transport laetrile intravenously into the body.

Because of extremely promising clinical results, research is still

ongoing on a privately funded basis into DMSO's potential role in the

breaking up of tumours and the killing of metastatic cancer cells in

its own right. Yet the United States Food & Drug Administration and

the UK Medicines Control Agency continue to forbid the advertising and

retailing of DMSO for any medicinal purposes save one: for the

treatment of the rare urinary bladder condition, interstitial cystitis.

 

 

As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in November 1988,

twenty cancer patients with extravasation of anthracycline

(destructive secretions from tissues of the toxic chemotherapeutic

agent anthracycline onto the recipient's skin with the potential to

form cancerous ulcers) were treated on a single-arm pilot study with

topically-applied 99% DMSO and observed for three months with regular

examinations and photographs. DMSO was topically applied to

approximately twice the surface area affected by the extravasation and

allowed to air dry. This was repeated every six hours for fourteen

days. In no patient did extravasation progress to cancerous

ulceration or require surgical intervention, as is usual with this

toxic chemotherapeutic agent for cancer. The authors of this report

suggest that ulceration was statistically likely to have occurred in

at least 17% of these patients. The only side effects reported from

DMSO usage included a burning feeling on applications, subsequently

associated with itch, redness, and mild scaling. Six patients

reported a characteristic breath odour associated with oysters. The

oncologists stated that topical DMSO appears to be a safe and

effective treatment for the cancer-related condition, anthracycline

extravasation5.

 

 

Numerous drugs dissolved in DMSO retain their therapeutic activity and

their specific properties over a long period of time. DMSO not only

maintains but strengthens and multiplies the action of the drugs

dissolved in it, thus permitting the administration of lower doses

than normally required to obtain a satisfactory response. In organ

banks around the world, organs and tissues are stored and preserved in

DMSO so that they are available for transplanting and grafting.

Tissues such as red blood corpuscles for transfusions and semen for

artificial insemination are preserved in this manner.

 

 

As a penetrating carrier of drugs, DMSO is unsurpassed. It easily

carries necessary pharmaceuticals to any part of the body for

therapeutic effect. It passes through cellular membranes and tissues.

It is for this reason, among many others, that DMSO is properly

described less as 'a drug' by those intimate with it, more as a new

and little understood therapeutic principle. As Dr Jacobs reported to

an assembly of the American College of Advancement in Medicine, DMSO

is more effective when used in conjunction with other medications

which it can deliver throughout the body with spectacular ease. This

can occur even when DMSO is applied topically, and the other

medication ingested orally or intravenously.

 

 

For instance, DMSO will carry hydrocortisone or hexachlorophene into

the deepest layers of the skin, producing a reservoir that remains for

sixteen days and resists depletion by washing the skin with soap,

water or alcohol. DMSO mixed with hydrogen peroxide 9% solution has

proven highly effective in the treatment of oral and genital herpes

when applied topically to the affected areas. Periodic outbreaks of

the virus have been known in many cases to cease altogether with

regular application.

 

 

An interesting observation is that the application of DMSO to one

affected joint or area often leads to pain relief in some other

location. DMSO has systemic effects. It is a depressant to the

central nervous system and, of course, it reaches all areas of the

body when absorbed through the skin and into the bloodstream.

 

 

Perhaps the effect DMSO has had on the lives of countless thousands

may be summed up by the case of Ruth Lewis of Sarasota, Florida.

Ruth, aged sixty-four, was in so much pain from rheumatoid arthritis

that she couldn't walk without the aid of a four-legged walking

device. Pain had been her constant companion for over twenty years.

When she recently sustained a back injury, she was told by her

physicians to have at least six months total bed rest.

 

 

Realising that this could spell the end of her walking days for ever,

the determined Ruth had her son and husband physically carry her into

the Douglass preventative medicine clinic in Marietta, Georgia to

undergo a course of treatment with DMSO.

 

 

" I had previously experienced many months of severe pain in my hips

and legs, visiting specialists, diagnostic clinics, hospitalisation in

traction and other procedures, " said Ruth. " When I entered the

doctor's office for DMSO treatment, I was unable to put both feet on

the ground. After two-and-a-half weeks of intravenous DMSO treatment,

I walked out of that office without any help whatsoever - no cane - no

support at all.

 

 

" I had not been able to close my right hand completely for over a

year. It even kept me awake at night with severe pain. But after the

IV, topical and oral DMSO treatment, I can now close my hand tightly.

The arthritis has not returned.

 

 

" I cannot put into words what this drug has done for me. I highly

recommend it. I saw many people come and go during my stay; all

walked out well. "