DMSO Recent Revelations
The wonder substance just keeps getting more wonderful
Credit: MAHA’s Wins, DMSO Discoveries, and the Window We Can’t Lose – A MIDWESTERN DOCTOR
There is a molecule sitting quietly in the background of modern science—misnamed, misfiled, misunderstood—that may be doing more work than half the pharmaceutical shelf.
It has been treated as a neutral solvent, a lab helper, a carrier… and yet, when you actually read the studies instead of the conclusions, you begin to notice something odd. The “control” group is healing. The carrier is active. The thing that was supposed to do nothing… keeps doing something.
That molecule is DMSO.
And the deeper you dig, the more it looks less like a simple chemical and more like a biological interface—a bridge between substance and cell, between intention and tissue, between remedy and result.
This past year, a massive review of decades of research—Western, Russian, Chinese, forgotten, buried, ignored—has pulled the curtain back on what DMSO actually is and what it has been quietly doing all along.
What follows are the three biggest revelations that came out of that deep dive.
1. The Solvent That Wasn’t Inert
For decades, DMSO has been used as the default solvent in biomedical research. If you want to dissolve a compound and deliver it into a cell culture, DMSO is what you use. It’s been treated as biologically neutral—an inert background player.
Except it isn’t.
Across thousands of studies, a consistent pattern emerges:
The treatment group receives compound X dissolved in DMSO
The control group receives DMSO alone
The researchers attribute the results to compound X
But when you actually look at the raw data… DMSO alone produces similar effects
Sometimes weaker. Sometimes equal. Sometimes—quietly—the strongest effect in the entire study.
In radiation protection experiments, DMSO alone often reduces cellular damage. In inflammation models, DMSO alone lowers markers. In oxidative stress experiments, DMSO alone scavenges free radicals. Over and over again, the supposed “inert carrier” is acting like a therapy.
And yet, in many papers, this gets buried in the text or brushed aside in the discussion so the headline result can still credit the primary compound being studied.
That pattern matters.
Because if the control group is active, then the entire conclusion of the study is skewed. What’s being measured isn’t just the effect of the drug—it’s the effect of the drug plus a biologically active solvent.
Zoom out far enough and you start to see a bigger implication:
A large swath of modern biomedical research may be built on a hidden variable no one is acknowledging.
DMSO has been sitting in the control group, quietly doing the work, while the spotlight shines elsewhere.
2. The Delivery Amplifier
If you take that first insight seriously, a second pattern becomes obvious.
DMSO doesn’t just have its own effects—it changes how other substances behave.
It penetrates membranes. It carries molecules across barriers. It increases absorption. It alters distribution inside tissues.
In other words, it functions as a delivery amplifier.
This helps explain a long-standing mystery in medicine: why so many compounds look promising in the lab but fail in real-world human use.
In the lab, those compounds are often dissolved in DMSO. In the real world, they are swallowed as pills or injected in standard formulations—without DMSO’s assistance.
Take fenbendazole, for example—a compound often discussed in alternative cancer circles. In cell culture experiments where it is dissolved in DMSO, it shows strong anti-cancer effects. In animal models where it is poorly absorbed, the results become inconsistent or even negative.
Same compound. Different delivery environment.
DMSO appears to be the difference.
Once you start looking for it, this pattern shows up everywhere:
Natural compounds like curcumin or resveratrol demonstrating effects in DMSO-based experiments but not in standard oral use
Drugs with poor bioavailability suddenly working when paired with DMSO
Topical applications showing dramatic local effects due to DMSO’s ability to carry substances through skin and into deeper tissues
This leads to a powerful reframing:
Many therapies don’t fail because the substance is ineffective.
They fail because the delivery system is inadequate.
DMSO changes the delivery system.
It opens pathways. It carries molecules across barriers. It turns “maybe effective” into “actually reaches the target.”
In that sense, DMSO is not just a therapy—it is a force multiplier for therapies.
3. The Parallel Medical System You Were Never Shown
While Western medicine largely sidelined DMSO after early regulatory battles, another part of the world went in the opposite direction.
In 1972, the Soviet Ministry of Health approved DMSO—under the name dimexide—for widespread medical use.
From that point forward, Russian and Eastern European researchers began systematically studying and applying it across a wide range of conditions.
The resulting literature—much of it in Russian or Ukrainian—documents uses for:
Chronic inflammatory conditions
Neurological disorders
Pancreatic disease
Respiratory illnesses like COPD
Toxic exposures such as carbon monoxide poisoning
Lymphatic and circulatory disorders
Complex pain syndromes including arachnoiditis
This body of work is vast. Thousands of studies. Decades of clinical use.
And almost none of it is taught, cited, or even acknowledged in Western medical education.
It’s as if two parallel medical systems developed:
One that pushed DMSO to the margins
One that quietly integrated it into everyday clinical practice
The split is not scientific—it is political, regulatory, and economic.
When you start reading through that Eastern literature, a different picture of DMSO emerges. Not as a fringe compound, not as a curiosity, but as a practical, adaptable therapeutic tool used across multiple systems of the body.
It treats inflammation. It improves circulation. It moves lymph. It protects tissue from damage. It assists in detoxification. It supports nerve recovery.
And it does so with a safety profile that, in many contexts, is broader than most pharmaceutical agents.
That alone should raise eyebrows.
The Mechanistic Pattern
When you synthesize all of the data—from Western experiments, Eastern clinical use, and modern re-analysis—a coherent picture begins to form.
DMSO appears to function as a multi-system interface molecule with several overlapping actions:
Anti-inflammatory
Free radical scavenger
Membrane penetrator
Carrier of other molecules
Circulatory enhancer
Lymphatic mover
Tissue protectant
Neuroprotective agent
Mild epigenetic modulator
It doesn’t act on one pathway. It influences the conditions in which all pathways operate.
That makes it hard to categorize within the standard drug model, which prefers single-target, single-mechanism interventions.
But it makes perfect sense if you think of it as a field modifier—something that improves the environment inside which healing processes occur.
The Replication Crisis Connection
One of the most intriguing implications of all this is what it suggests about the broader scientific landscape.
Modern science is grappling with a replication crisis—studies that show promising results that cannot be reproduced later.
DMSO may be part of that puzzle.
If early-stage experiments used DMSO as a solvent, and later-stage applications removed it, then you are not testing the same conditions.
You are comparing:
A therapy with a membrane-penetrating delivery amplifier
To the same therapy without that amplifier
Of course the results won’t match.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the therapy is ineffective. It means the experimental context was incomplete.
DMSO, in that sense, may be the missing variable sitting quietly in the background of thousands of studies.
Real-World Observations
Beyond the formal research, there are also the case reports and field observations that keep showing up:
Tissue recovery after injury
Reduced swelling and inflammation
Improved joint mobility
Faster healing in certain skin and soft tissue conditions
Neurological improvements in some cases
Rescue from toxic exposures and overdoses in animal and human reports
Individually, each case might be dismissed. Together, they form a pattern that mirrors the mechanisms described in the literature.
The wonder substance keeps acting like a wonder substance.
What This Means Going Forward
We are in a strange moment in history where:
Old knowledge is resurfacing
Suppressed therapies are being re-examined
The public is increasingly questioning centralized medical narratives
And independent researchers are stitching together data that was never meant to be seen as a whole
DMSO sits right in the middle of that moment.
It challenges the assumption that the control group is inert.
It challenges the assumption that delivery doesn’t matter.
It challenges the assumption that Western medicine is the only repository of clinical knowledge.
And it offers something very simple and very powerful:
A tool that interacts directly with the body’s tissues in real time.
The Larger Frame
If you zoom out even further, DMSO points to a broader truth about healing… Health is not just about introducing a specific chemical that targets a specific receptor.
Health is about:
Flow
Communication
Transport
Cellular environment
Energy gradients
Fluid dynamics
Membrane permeability
DMSO influences many of those layers simultaneously.
That’s why it doesn’t fit neatly into the standard pharmaceutical box.
It’s not a single-target bullet. It’s an environmental modifier inside the body.
And when you change the environment, many processes begin to self-correct.
The Window
There is a window right now—a brief period where old ideas are being re-opened, where regulatory structures are shifting, where people are looking again at what was dismissed.
That window does not stay open forever.
DMSO is one of those topics that sits right on the edge of that opening. It has decades of data behind it, real-world use in other parts of the world, and a growing body of re-analysis showing that it was never what it was labeled to be.
The solvent wasn’t inert.
The carrier was active.
The control group was healing.
And the more we look, the more it becomes clear:
The wonder substance just keeps getting more wonderful.
References
Walter Russell — The True Nature of Reality
Clif High — Substack - Woo Essays & Videos
Richard Berry — Consciousness Is Primary
Dimexide (ДМСО) clinical literature from Russia and Eastern Europe
Historical DMSO research archives and biomedical solvent studies









If you are interested in taking an even deeper dive into DMSO, go to the “Forgotten Side of Medicine” Substack by A Midwestern Doctor. They have written extensively about it
My father, long passed, used to go to the local hardware store and buy a bottle of horse ligament rub and apply it to his knees. The smell was worth the pain relief. I later came to learn it was DMSO.
I frequently wake up with leg cramps so bad, I grab my jar of a popular dmso compound and rub it in. The pain usually diminishes in about five minutes. I take magnesium supplements to avoid the night cramps, but sometimes I miss the night dose and will pay for it later with cramping.
There is a substack writer who publishes frequently on the anecdotal evidence his readers send him. I believe his substack is A Midwestern Doctor.
Thanks for your article! Much appreciated!