Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, July 13, 2022; Commentary by Tom Taylor; OMNS (July 13, 2022) OK, so I did something let’s just say not very bright. I was testing a bad looking board on a boat dock, when the board broke and I fell straight into the hole plunging down three feet into the slot where the board had been. During the plunge both bare legs scraped hard against the adjacent boards. My thighs were instantly red like a belt sander had been run across them. Although blood red, there were no splinters, embedded dirt, or blood to complicate the injury.
Accessing the situation, I went swimming to flood the injury with clean (fresh not salt) water. Upon returning to the house my wife insisted on a shower with soap. The injury looked like I would be in for several days of misery as it healed. That path was not attractive. I recalled that DMSO is a rapid healing agent. So, for the next four hours I kept the injury bathed in a solution of 50% DMSO and 50% distilled water. In addition, I started taking about 2 grams an hour of vitamin C for my waking hours over the next twenty-four-hour period. The following day I reapplied the DMSO a several times.
Initially, the injury looked like a bad bicycle fall pavement scrape that would take days or weeks to heal. It was truly blood red over the back of much of the left thigh. However, by using the DMSO and vitamin C combo, at 24 hours, the severe back of left leg injury was barely noticeable to the casual observer. The milder front of right thigh injury was not noticeable at all. At the thirty-six-hour mark (second morning), most of the red had disappeared, the area felt bruised, but without any bruised skin discoloration. Initial pain was mostly stinging sensation common with such injuries but was mild overall and not continuous. I slept that first night with no discomfort. For a sixty-nine-year-old guy, I thought that was remarkably fast healing.
About DMSO
Page 9 excerpt from The DMSO Handbook: [1] “DMSO (DiMethyl SulfOxide) has mainly become known as a fast-acting well-tolerated treatment for acute inflammation and for traumatic injuries. It has an anti-inflammatory effect, relieves pain immediately, accelerates the swift resorption of swellings and hemorrhages, and supports wound healing.”
DMSO [(CH3)2SO] is a liquid, natural product that absorbs directly through the skin. I applied it every fifteen minutes or so for maximum effect. I am glad to report that stray drops did not stain our newly upholstered furniture.
If you are not familiar with DMSO, may I recommend buying some and using it in a non-urgent situation so you will be comfortable using it on short notice. It is widely recommended for common joint and back pain. It is the best product I have found for minor lower back pain. That is why I had it on hand.
DMSO Books
These three books give an excellent perspective on DMSO:
- “The DMSO Handbook” by Fischer is thorough and written at the clinician level. [1] It has an excellent biochemistry section. It even has a section on DMSO plus hydrogen peroxide.
- “DMSO: Nature’s Healer” by Morton Walker is very thorough and a good medical review. [2] Excellent book, and although published in 1993, it is still current. The author states he believes DMSO was one of four great medical innovations of the 20th century, antibiotics being one of the others. Everyone knows antibiotics; few know DMSO. Most antibiotics were patentable; DMSO was not.
- “Healing with DMSO” by Amanda Vollmer is an easy read and very informative. [3] Lots of tips on a wide variety of applications. It explains the science and history in quick and easy terms.
About Vitamin C
Readers of the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service well know the numerous benefits to healing processes that vitamin C provides. Here is a paper entitled “Vitamin C and human wound healing” that supports this use. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7038579
Vitamin C at two grams an hour (2000 mg an hour) sounds a bit extreme to the unfamiliar. I assure you it is not. Vitamin C pioneer Dr. Robert F. Cathcart advised patients to take up to 200 grams (200,000 mg) per day for bad colds and flu. [4-6]
Then there is the alternative solution of going late in the evening to some emergency medical facility to see some exhausted junior doctor who would likely write an ointment prescription and send me on the way with a $200 invoice.
About Magnesium
It is very common for a senior citizen like me to have numerous aches and pains after such a fall. I had none really. I attribute this to regularly consuming 600 to 800 mg/day of magnesium (in the magnesium citrate form). As Dr. Carolyn Dean likes to say, “the relaxing mineral”. Dr. Dean and Dr. Thomas Levy have both written excellent books on magnesium. [7,8] Note that Levy’s book title contains the words “Reversing Disease.” He is serious about that. I believe their advice on taking magnesium kept me relatively free of agonizing pain and pulled muscles resulting from the accident.
Using DMSO, Vitamin C, and Magnesium
In reading books on DMSO, vitamin C, and magnesium, the “other uses” list for each seems so long as to be suspect. In my experience the lists are correct. The other issue that people encounter is we are all familiar with medicines that need one or two tiny pills a day for effect. Medicines often have the word like “anti” in them e.g. antibiotics, for at the end of the day, many are precision poisons that must be carefully controlled. Alternatively, these supplements typically require several large pills (vitamin C, magnesium) or frequent application (DMSO) to be effective. To some, that is discouraging as it is very different from the prescription medicine trade.
Examples of Other DMSO Uses
I did use DMSO for several months for a lower “stiff back” pain. I felt it was the only treatment that made a difference. Eventually, I got tired of waiting for it to soak in and quit the procedure. The back pain has been substantially less since. The solid form of DMSO is Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM), an over-the-counter supplement. MSM [(CH3)2SO2] is DMSO plus one additional oxygen. Now I supplement with MSM most mornings, on the speculation it is a convenient maintenance dose that helps keep the back pain minimized, so far, so good.
One reviewer of this article asked about DMSO helping in sports performance. I believe DMSO to be definitely helpful for sore muscles, but probably too inconvenient for general after-workout use. The negatives are mostly convenience issues. The smell of DMSO is annoying to some. Also, after application one must wait 10-15 minutes for it to soak in before putting cloth over it.
I have always thought DMSO would be good for poor lower leg circulation issues, but I have no experience to go on. “The DMSO Handbook” has a long list of beneficial uses; one of them is as a vasodilator.
Thoughts for Medical Professionals
I have been very impressed how taking supplements of vitamin C, magnesium and DMSO has kept me relatively disease and pain free. However, most friends think I am a bit unusual for advocating these and never read the books I recommend. Normally, if these people already have a condition that requires regular doctor visits, they hang on every word the doctor says, and any comments not from their doctor go out the window.
As the above items, vitamin C, magnesium, and DMSO, do a really good job of taking care of most minor ailments, I imagine that a doctor-patient relationship that is mostly telemedicine could be developed largely based on these and resolving deficiencies of essential nutrients. Most people, I have come to realize, are trained to hang on every word from the doctor. Some run to the doc for almost any anomaly. When it comes to supplements (if it ever does), patients typically want to know the exact brand, they want a prescription, and they want insurance to pay for it. How valuable it would be for a physician to become more of a health educator and less of a pill pusher.
Summary
Instead of several days of agony, I reduced major healing time down to really one evening by quickly and decisively using DMSO and vitamin C. This use of these products is widely documented and safe but not widely known. In addition, having both on hand to start immediate treatment was the key to the rapid recovery.
References
1. Fischer HPA (2015 translation from German) The DMSO Handbook, A new paradigm in healthcare. ISBN-13: 978-3981525557
2. Walker M (1993) DMSO: Nature’s Healer. ISBN-13: 978-089529548
3. Vollmer AD (2021) Healing with DMSO: The Complete Guide to Safe and Natural Treatments for Managing Pain, Inflammation, and Other Chronic Ailments with Dimethyl Sulfoxide. ISBN-13: 978-1646040025
4. Cathcart R: YouTube lecture to the Silicon Valley Health Institute, 26 minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkkWDDSti_s
5. Hickey S, Saul AW (2015) Vitamin C: The Real Story, the Remarkable and Controversial Healing Factor. ISBN-13: ?978-1591202233
6. Levy TE (2011) Curing the Incurable: Vitamin C, Infectious Diseases, and Toxins, 3rd Edition. ISBN-13: 978-0983772859
7. Dean C (2017) The Magnesium Miracle. ISBN-13: 978-0399594441
8. Levy TE (2019) Magnesium: Reversing Disease. ISBN-13: 978-0983772897
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