Her kommer et utdrag om DMSO “mirakelmedisinen” som er forbudt, fra boken “DMSO nature`s healer” av Dr Morton Walker. Regner med at det kommer til å pirre nysgjerrigheten din etter å ha lest de tre første linjene:
“The DMSO-water bond is 1.3 times stronger than the water-water bond. This attribute of bonding with water better than water molecules themselves is highly significant. It probably is what makes DMSO an entirely different healing power than anything medical science has known before.
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. And it does many more good things of a therapeutic nature for anyone who is injured or ill.
DMSO is a substance totally strange to medical science. It has a novel mode of action not understood within the context of our current healing concepts. It is an altogether new principle that will possibly revolutionize therapeutics once it is studied in a more exacting way. For now, however, DMSO is not being studied in accordance with the standard double- or single-blind procedures commonly used in the scientific method. This is the present problem. And it is one that has perplexed the medical community ever since DMSO was first discovered to have therapeutic value to counter human injury and heal human disease.
The existence of this new anti-inflammatory painkiller raises the questions: How can it be established with certainty the degree to which DMSO does or does not work for the numerous and varied conditions reported in the medical literature by clinicians using it successfully? Are we able to break the logjam that enables a federal agency to keep this drug from general use because its research studies don’t conform to the regulations laid down by that same federal government for its citizens’ protection? Does DMSO have a history of controversy among pioneering health professionals and bureaucratic medical conservatives alike, because neither group truly comprehends how radically this substance departs from known principles of healing? Must DMSO remain controversial?
«DMSO was first synthesized in 1866 by Russian scientist Alexander Saytzeff in Kazan, on the Volga River in Central Russia. He saw that the substance was colorless, had a garlic-like odor, felt oily to the touch, looked like mineral oil when poured from the test tube, and left an aftertaste similar to clams or oysters. It had laboratory curiosity value for Dr. Saytzeff and his fellow chemists because dimethyl sulfoxide combined with almost any chemical he dropped into the liquid.
It was an excellent solvent, useful as a degreaser, paint thinner, and antifreeze. For about eighty years, the only publication advising scientists about the stuff was a paper Dr. Saytzeff had submitted to an obscure German chemistry journal that printed his article in 1867.
After World War II, chemists started to show active interest in the substance.
A number of papers appeared in chemical literature in 1948, showing DMSO to be an excellent solvent. In 1959, a group in Great Britain demonstrated that the solvent would protect red blood cells and other tissues against freezing conditions.
Dr. H. Harry Szmant, Chairman of the University of Detroit’s chemistry department, explained that the liquid has a tremendous capacity to dissolve substances. It is a reagent that can speed up some chemical reactions a “billionfold.”
The unique capability of DMSO to penetrate living tissues without causing significant damage is most probably related to its relatively polar nature, its capacity to accept hydrogen bonds, and its relatively small and compact structure,” he said. “This combination of properties results in the ability of DMSO to associate with water, proteins, carbohydrates, nucleic acid, ionic substances, and other constituents of living systems. Of foremost importance to our understanding of the possible functions of DMSO in biological systems is its ability to replace some of the water molecules associated with the cellular constituents, or to affect the structure of the omnipresent water.
Controversy began to surround DMSO in 1962 when Dr. Jacob first became interested in how to safely freeze human kidneys and considered the solvent for this purpose. He asked Robert Herschler, a chemical applications supervisor at the Crown Zellerbach Paper Company, for some of the chemical. Crown Zellerbach had plenty to spare, since DMSO is a byproduct of its paper-making process. For five dollars a quart it can be produced commercially in crude form for refining into human medicinal application.
At their first meeting, Robert Herschler mentioned that he had difficulty washing the stain off his hands when both DMSO and dye got on them. Dr. Jacob recalls: “We painted DMSO on our skin and within fifteen minutes noticed an oyster and garlic taste. The skin where the chemical had been was dry.”
The drying effect of dimethyl sulfoxide set off the DMSO explosion. Dryness of a therapeutic agent makes it valuable in the treatment of burns, since moisture tends to promote infection. Jacob and Herschler tried it on burned rats and found those treated were quieter in behavior than the untreated. The drug relieved burn pain. “From that point on, DMSO usage just spread like wildfire,” Dr. Jacob said in an interview.
In the United States DMSO is derived from lignin, the cement substance of trees. In Europe and other places it is synthesized from coal, petroleum, or other organic substances.
Collaborative efforts between Jacob’s staff representing the University of Oregon Medical School and Herschler representing Crown Zellerbach Corporation demonstrated in laboratory tests that DMSO would not only pass through the skin and mucous membranes, but during passage would carry with it a certain number of other substances. For instance, penicillin can be dissolved in DMSO and be carried through the skin without a needle. Local anesthetic can be carried the same way.
In these early studies, DMSO was shown to relieve pain, reduce swelling, slow the growth of bacteria, improve blood supply, soften scar tissue, enhance the effectiveness of other pharmacologic agents, act as a diuretic, and function as a muscle relaxant. It eliminated the pain of sprains, strains, and arthritis, and even the pain of broken bones.
Veterinarians used the substance, by prescription, for arthritic conditions or injuries in animals. In arthritic greyhounds, an injection of either DMSO or corticoid (a substance that has an action like a hormone of the adrenal cortex) will enable the animal to race again. In six months 60 percent of the corticoid-treated dogs will have a recurrence, but less than 20 percent of the dogs treated with DMSO show such recurrence.
People ask, if it is safe enough for internal treatment of interstitial cystitis, why isn’t it safe to paint it on the skin for arthritic joints?
An underground market for supplying the substance has developed.
Pharmacies sell the pure medical grade on a doctor’s prescription at a cost of anywhere from fifteen to twenty dollars for four ounces. Technically, once a drug gets FDA approval for certain uses—such as for interstitial cystitis—it is not illegal in any state for a doctor to prescribe it for other purposes.
The black market in DMSO, pure grade and industrial grade, continues simply because the FDA keeps the drug off the market for any use except the treatment of interstitial cystitis. Arthur Scherbel, former senior physician at the Cleveland Clinic’s Department of Rheumatic Disease and Immunology, declared that the FDA is holding back approval of the drug “for no good reason. People are using it without proper guidance, and that is a mistake. The sooner it is released the better.
The dimethyl sulfoxide molecule is ten-sided with a center occupied by a sulfur atom. Two methyl groups, an oxygen atom, and a nonbinding electron pair are located at the points of the tetrahedron. See Figure 3.1 for a depiction of the molecular formula.
DMSO’s molecular weight is 78.15. The drug is capable of entering into a chemical reaction characterized by the development of heat, and it releases 60 calories (cal) per gram (g) of DMSO when mixed with water. The boiling point at 760 millimeters (mm) mercury (Hg), degrees Celsius (°C) is 189.0; vapor pressure at 20°C, mm Hg is 0.37; specific gravity at 25°C, grams per milliliter (g/ml) is 1.0958; melting point, °C is 18.55; heat of combustion, cal/g is 6,050; flash point in an open vessel, °C is 95; viscosity at 20°C, centipoise (cP) is 2.473; surface tension at 20°C, dyne/centimeter (cm) is 46.2.
Because DMSO has a freezing point of 68°F, one is able to tell its approximate concentration, if a bottle of the liquid solvent is acquired from an unknown source. Put the unopened bottle into the refrigerator (not the freezer).
Within two hours the liquid will turn solid, like ice. You now have 99.5 percent DMSO, the purest and highest concentration made. Leaving the bottle cap on will prevent hydrolyzation (decomposition) so that the liquid will freeze at 68°F or less.
If, when the frozen bottle is turned upside down, little rivulets of water flow through the ice, you probably possess the veterinary grade DMSO. This is a 90 percent concentration. Ten percent is distilled water.
If the DMSO doesn’t freeze while standing in the refrigerator, put it into the freezer compartment. If it does not turn solid even after standing at below 32°F, it probably indicates a 50 percent mix of DMSO and water. If it does turn solid in the freezer, this liquid is not DMSO, or is almost all water with just a small bit of the solvent mixed in. Fifty percent DMSO is an antifreeze; it will work well in automobiles for winter driving.
To reliquify DMSO that has turned to a block of ice in the bottle, merely put it into a pan of warm water. In pure form, the life of the solvent is indefinite. DMSO may be used for years.
Many other physical properties of DMSO could be discussed, but those given here provide enough of a representative sampling, since this is not a text exclusively on the chemical and physical characteristics of the solvent. Almost all the known chemical and physical properties of DMSO are found in Crown Zellerbach’s Dimethyl Sulfoxide Technical Bulletin.
The crystalline structure of this solvent indicates the presence of a weak hydrogen bond that contributes to the molecular forces in DMSO. In liquid state DMSO seems to assume a chainlike structure held together by the alignment of the two sulfur-oxygen poles. 6, 7 This structure is believed to suffer a partial breakdown between 40°C and 60°C since certain properties of the liquid, such as the refractive index, density, and viscosity, exhibit distinct changes in their temperature coefficients in this temperature range.
Chemists find that DMSO’s ability to associate with molecules that have a thick layer of hydrogen ions and with neutral molecules as well as ionic species is a fascinating property. It makes DMSO an excellent solvent and penetrant through organic and some inorganic material.
Interactions between DMSO and other substances increase in proportion to the polarizability of the substance. Solubility of the substance into DMSO is promoted not only by this type of molecular interaction but is also favored by the degree to which the energy of a system or substance is available for work. The greater the packing of spherical molecules in the “free volume” of liquid DMSO, the better solubility of cyclic unsaturated hydrocarbons as compared to that of noncyclic saturated hydrocarbons. The solubility of a substance increases with the decrease in the electronegativity of the atoms that constitute the substance with which the solvent is mixing.
DMSO has a strong hydrogen bonding with hydroxyl groups. The significance of DMSO as a scavenger of hydroxyl radicals is that this chemical ion is dominant in arthritis. Hydroxyl radicals are responsible for breaking down the synovial fluid and the cartilage of the joints. One of the few known substances responsible for detoxifying this radical, DMSO forms a dimethyl sulfone plus water with the 30 hydroxyl ion. These are readily excreted out of the body. Neutralizing this highly toxic free radical causes the reduction of inflammation and the diminishing of pain in arthritis. It is probably the primary mechanism that allows DMSO to work effectively against arthritis.
Incidentally, DMSO acts in a similar therapeutic way against the pathological biochemical changes in cancer, atherosclerosis, and any other set of circumstances where there would be a preponderance of free-radical generation.
If superoxide anions are present in quantity as a result of ecological alteration such as radiation toxicity, water pollution, chemotherapy, or other stressors, the body’s ability to detoxify is affected. Instead, superoxide and superoxide dismutase form hydrogen peroxide. Lipid peroxidation takes place. More hydroxyl radicals develop and bring on cellular damage with degenerative disease. DMSOoffsets these effects and brings the body back to a more normal state.
Free-radical pathology is an intricate part of virtually every metabolic dysfunction you can think of. To illustrate, cancer manufactures prodigious quantities of hydrogen peroxide, which then generate the hydroxyl radical. This is probably part of the reason why DMSO has proved to be valuable in the treatment of cancer. Holistic physicians are using it clandestinely all over the country for that purpose. It is no “magic bullet,” but in the total metabolic program against cancer, DMSO is quite useful as an adjunct.
DMSO also has an effect on proteins and nucleic acids. It has excellent solvent properties for dyes, starch, cellulose and its derivatives, lignin, vinyl polymers and copolymers, polyvinyl alcohol, acetate, halides, and other things too numerous to mention in this cursory description of its pharmacological effects.
Superior to water in associations based on the solvent’s induction of two poles in aromatic rings, DMSO is able to exchange sites with “bound” water molecules in relatively immobile protein structure that results from the replacement of water in the skin.
In a conference call lecture delivered to the semi-annual meeting of the American College of Advancement in Medicine in May 1980, Dr. Jacob said, “DMSO is literally water’s alter ego. It moves through membranes and substitutes for water so that it pulls substances through cells that ordinarily would not move through them. This is its basic mechanism of action. The DMSO-water bond is 1.3 times stronger than the water-water bond.” This attribute of bonding with water better than water molecules themselves is highly significant. It probably is what makes DMSO an entirely different healing power than anything medical science has known before.
The New York Academy of Sciences sponsored a 1967 conference on the forms of water in biological systems and the changes induced in its structure by the presence of different solutions such as DMSO. The participants in the conference were greatly concerned about the biological implications of the different states of water.
DMSO stabilizes ice-like water clusters. It is probably capable of displacing the equilibrium between the less and more highly structured water, in favor of the latter. The chemist Dr. H. Harry Szmant says, Since the hydration of cell constituents and the activity of water in general are not necessarily the same in the different states of water, it follows that DMSO may exert an indirect effect on biological systems by virtue of the changes that it causes in the liquid structure of water.
Among the more important biological consequences of this indirect effect of DMSO, one can mention changes in the conformations and associations of proteins and other molecules. More direct biological effects caused by DMSO, without a profound change in its chemical identity, may include changes in ion-pairing equilibria and in the specific solvation of hydrogen-bond donors.
In brief, Dr. Szmant is saying that the basic therapeutic principle of DMSO is that cellular damage can be altered—the cell healed and restored to near normal— by changing the water structure within the cell. Cell membrane permeability by DMSO also alters what normally goes into and comes out of the cell.
As a unique nutrient substance, DMSO tends to cause a build-up of white blood cells and more immune production of the migration inhibitory factor (MIF) of macrophages. White blood cells surround any foreign particles in the blood thus helping the body to fight infections. Macrophages are large wandering white blood cells that eat and destroy foreign proteins including microorganisms and other cells in the blood and tissues. Thus, the immune system is made more effective by DMSO, which allows macrophages to move around and through the tissues faster.
The MIF, or the factor that holds back macrophages from wandering away from where they are needed, immobilizes and activates bystander macrophages. Such activated macrophages have specific and non specific death-dealing properties against germs and are poisonous to tumor cells. MIF is a kind of natural chemotherapy for cancer present in the body all the time.
By its ability to modulate the lymphocyte form of white blood cell, DMSO potentiates its immune production of MIF. In conjunction with immune stimulation, DMSO can enter the cell to prime or activate the subcellular mechanisms involved in the production and release of MIF. Also, it produces a cofactor that enhances MIF or has MIF-like activity.
DMSO diminishes allergic reactions by unfolding the cell membrane and making more cell receptor sites available to attachment by specific antigens, the substances that stimulate the body’s production of antibodies. When antigens appear in the blood or tissue, antibodies that are produced or are already present move into action against them and neutralize them. This process helps to produce immunity to infectious diseases and prohibit the growth of malignancies.
The modulating effect of DMSO on lymphocytes also tends to increase the production of other lymphokines (stimulators of the circulation of lymph through the vessels) such as interferon and lymphotoxin, as well as enhance the direct toxin diluent effect of sensitive lymphocytes. Such a diluent reduces the potency of a toxin. This activity has application in the control of microbiological infections and tumors. It could be effective in breaking the body’s tolerance that may be associated with cancer, and could also affect the tolerance associated with the acceptance of organ transplants. DMSO may eventually be used as a cancer preventative or as an agent helping to prevent transplant rejection.
DMSO tends to potentiate cell-mediated immunity in diseases reported to be associated with the decrease of cell-mediated responses, such as multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, sarcoidosis, lymphoid thyroiditis, ulcerative colitis, lepromatous leprosy, cancer, and congenital diseases associated with T-cell deficiency or dysfunction. For all these problems, DMSO could be quite effective in healing or useful in their metabolic treatment.
Furthermore, DMSO could also potentiate the cell-mediated immunity that accounts for autoimmune diseases.25
All of this potential activity of DMSO may be due to its property of affecting cell membranes. It is a true therapeutic principle that has yet to be investigated to its full potential. Medical science and biochemical study have hardly begun to penetrate the metabolic mystery of this new healing power.
In a paper published on DMSO’s usefulness in treatment of headache, Dr. Jacob wrote: “DMSO readily crosses all the membranes of the body thus far studied without apparently destroying the integrity of these membranes and permits the passage of a number of compounds across the membrane barriers. The mechanism is not understood. . . . Dimethyl sulfoxide in the laboratory blocks conduction in an isolated nerve when a 25 percent concentration is employed.
Conduction returns when the fiber is washed free of DMSO. This blockade may be an osmotic effect.” Nerve blockage is the way a local anesthetic works and accounts for why DMSO takes away pain.
DMSO, representing a new therapeutic principle, is not a drug in the usual sense. Dr. Jacob told the House Select Committee on Aging: “The difference between a therapeutic principle and a drug is that a drug is useful in treating a disease or a dozen diseases or even one hundred diseases. But a therapeutic principle is an entire new means of treating illness.”
By the end of 1991, the medical literature throughout the world had been enriched by more than 3,000 scientific studies involving approximately 500,000 clinical patients on this new therapeutic principle, carried out in the most important university centers and published in renowned medical journals in the United States, Russia, Germany, Japan, England, Scandinavia, Switzerland, Chile, Argentina, and many other countries in Asia, Europe, South America, and North America.
Setting aside the physical and chemical properties of the DMSO molecule and translating what we know into easily understood language, here is a non-technical summary:
DMSO is a simple, small molecule with truly amazing chemical, biological, and physical characteristics.
One interesting property that all users should be familiar with is the “exothermic reaction.” When DMSO is diluted with water, heat is released. The bottle containing the medication will be warm to the touch. This is a temporary, harmless reaction. Hydroxyl radicals (OH) are ubiquitous and highly injurious to health. DMSO combines with, and thus neutralizes, these dangerous little time bombs that can literally explode your individual cells. The DMSO combines with the hydroxyl radical, adds water, and then the kidneys excrete this chemical complex into the urine.
Numerous drugs dissolved in DMSO retain their therapeutic activity and their specific properties over a long period. 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. Certain drugs dissolved in DMSO, such as insulin, corticoids, antibiotics, pyrazolic derivatives, and cystostatics, may be used in lower dosage than usual without reducing their therapeutic efficacy. Furthermore, their undesirable side effects are greatly diminished when they go into DMSO solution.
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 a therapeutic effect. It passes through cellular membranes and tissues. It is invariably able to penetrate endothelial coatings of the arterial walls, meninges of the brain, healthy skin, mucous membranes, and other tissues.
Intravenous or intramuscular injection of DMSO passes into the fluid of the head and spine. When injected within a sheath such as that surrounding a muscle or nerve, it appears rapidly in the blood stream. The central nervous system has a response to DMSO different from that to other drugs because DMSO passes the blood-brain barrier, easily penetrating it and flowing out again. Other drugs will pass through this usually impenetrable blood-brain barrier along with the solvent when they are molecularly mixed with it.
Basic chemical processes at the nerve cell level are stimulated in the central nervous system by use of DMSO. It permits the transport of amino acids to the brain where they take part in the synthesis of glutamic acid and other elements that, incorporated in the metabolic cycle in the brain, energize the functional activity of the neurons and the brain. This functional stimulation permits the correction of many neurological syndromes characterized by mental deficiency, slower brain activity, loss of memory, and depression and anguish.
On an experimental basis, DMSO has been administered topically, subcutaneously, intramuscularly, intraperitoneally, intravenously, orally, intrathecally, and by inhalation. It has been instilled into the eye, on the mucous membranes, and into the urinary bladder. It has been given to laboratory animals including rabbits, hamsters, rhesus monkeys, chickens, dogs, pigs, guinea pigs, rats, mice, and goldfish, as well as humans.
In the United States DMSO is currently an experimental drug for human use and has been released as a veterinary prescription drug for the treatment of acute musculoskeletal injuries and inflammations of horses. At the time of this writing, DMSO remains approved by the FDA only for use in interstitial cystitis, a relatively rare bladder disease. It has been prescribed for humans by clinics in parts of Europe and South America for three decades.”
