427. DMSO HEALS THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM

A synopsis of A Midwestern Doctor's neurology book published on Substack

READER RESOURCES: THE APOCALYPSE ALMANAC: Hidden cures in our dystopian age. Check out the “Cure Cancer in Your Kitchen” chapter. FULLSCRIPT SUPPLEMENTS: top quality and economical.

Yoho Introduction

A Midwestern Doctor (AMD) has continued their phenomenal multi-volume series on DMSO with a book-length (53,000 words!) essay on neurology that compiles roughly 2,000 studies and 200 reader testimonials. The original was so long it crashed Substack and had to be shipped in two parts. Part one covered cellular mechanisms, safety, the circulatory model of neurodegeneration, and the named neurodegenerative diseases. Part two added myasthenia gravis, hydrocephalus, psychiatric conditions, sleep, Down Syndrome, sourcing, and dosing protocols.

This is too much for many readers, so I summarized it for you. I encourage you to save the brilliant original linked in the references and read it if you have time.

My other DMSO posts with their links:

• 390. DMSO TRANSFORMS EYE TREATMENT: another summary of AMD’s work.

• 388. DMSO MADE ME STINK SO BAD THAT MY WIFE KICKED ME OUT OF THE HOUSE

• 337. DMSO (dimethylsulfoxide) IS SECOND ONLY TO CHLORINE DIOXIDE FOR HEALING DISEASE

• 307. DMSO IS A HARMLESS NATURAL WONDER DRUG WITH JUST ONE SIDE EFFECT--BAD BREATH

• A DRAMA IN FOUR ACTS: MY AGE-RELATED MACULAR DEGENERATION

• This isn’t mine, but I heavily recommend Unbekoming’s The DMSO Book. It is a detailed and more approachable summary of A Midwestern Doctor’s work.

How to read this

My intent is not to confuse or discourage you with technical data. I want you to quickly scan this essay to understand the depth of scientific support for DMSO. It is my opinion, and probably the opinion of AMD, that DMSO has more supporting studies than any pharma drug. It was so effective for so many diseases that there was a vast wave of enthusiasm for it, but it was squashed by congressional action that almost took it off the market.

My readers realize that corruption like this is a common pattern, but if you are here for the first time, it is shocking. The background history is in the posts linked above.

This essay was written by me using the voice of A Midwestern Doctor, and the inevitable mistakes and misinterpretations are all mine.

Summary

• DMSO scavenges hydroxyl radicals, raises cerebral blood flow, opens the blood-brain barrier (BBB) reversibly, stabilizes misfolded proteins, and clears the blood sludging that obstructs cerebral microcirculation.

• A young-onset Parkinson’s disease (PD) case-control study found DMSO exposure linked to a 10-fold reduction in risk, while insecticides raised risk nearly 6-fold and herbicides over 3-fold.

• Direct or combination evidence supports DMSO in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Huntington’s, multiple sclerosis (MS), prion disease, Niemann-Pick C, myasthenia gravis (MG), hydrocephalus, epilepsy, depression, and schizophrenia.

• Down Syndrome trials in Oregon, Chile, and Argentina showed dose-dependent gains in IQ, motor scores, language, and social function. Three documented children, Melody Clark, Bronwyn Nash, and Billy King, moved from severe disability to near-normal cognition on long-term DMSO with amino acids.

• Reader reports document brain fog clearing, restless leg syndrome resolving, dementia patients speaking again, ALS halted, post-stroke speech and feeding restored, MS trigeminal neuralgia dropping 99 percent, and lucid dreams of unusual vividness.

• AMD’s framework treats most chronic neurological disease as a downstream consequence of impaired cerebral microcirculation. DMSO addresses that root cause.

Cellular protection

DMSO protects cells from stressors that ought to kill them. It made cryopreservation possible by preventing freezing damage, and it has saved fingers, ears, and limbs from frostbite in animals and humans. In hippocampal slices, DMSO neutralized oxidative stress. In cerebellar granule neurons, it prevented apoptosis caused by glutamate toxicity, restoring 66 to 76 percent of normal electrical activity. In rat brain homogenates, it cut hydroxyl radical-induced lipid peroxidation and protein carbonyl formation.

It also blocks damage from chemotherapeutics (cyclophosphamide, cisplatin, doxorubicin, the last with curcumin to prevent “chemobrain”), heavy metals (lead, aluminum, mercury, manganese, cadmium, lithium, arsenic, fluoride), organophosphates including nerve gas, snake venom, and radiation up to lethal doses in mice, rabbits, dogs, and monkeys. In two horses swarmed by African bees, IV DMSO reversed severe neurological impairment within 5 hours. In a comatose dog given a toxic dose of ivermectin paste, IV DMSO restored full neurological function.

Safety

DMSO has an unusually wide therapeutic window. The known issues are skin itching at high topical doses, the sulfur odor some users develop, an allergy in roughly 1 in 2,000, transport of skin contaminants into the body if not washed off after application, potentiation of alcohol and barbiturates, and osmotic hemolysis at high IV doses. Almost every reported severe adverse event from IV DMSO traces to one of three causes: embolic agents administered alongside it, fragile post-chemotherapy cancer patients given high doses, or phthalates leached from IV tubing.

DMSO crosses the skin and enters the bloodstream within 5 minutes, reaches the organs within 30 minutes, and reaches the bones within an hour. It does not accumulate. 85 percent leaves unchanged in urine within 24 hours. Almost none is left a week after administration.

The circulatory model of disease

In the 1940s and 1960s, Melvin Knisely showed that “blood sludging,” red cells clumping together, drove much of what hospitalized patients. He saw it in burns, malaria, and cancer. Thomas Riddick, an industrial chemist who used colloidal dispersion daily, cured his “incurable” heart disease by treating his blood the way he treated industrial colloids: by raising its zeta potential, the electrical repulsion that keeps suspended particles apart. He concluded that aluminum was the most dangerous ion in human biology because of its strong positive charge.

Canadian neurologist Andrew Moulden saw children develop signs of microstrokes after vaccination. He attributed this to aluminum and other zeta-potential-disrupting agents in vaccines, which clump blood cells in cerebral microcirculation, with larger inflammatory white cells then obstructing what flow remains. The damage was too small to show on imaging, which is one reason chronic neurological disease so rarely yields a clean diagnosis.

DMSO does not directly raise red cell zeta potential. What it does is stabilize the gels that keep blood cells dispersed, neutralize the aggregating proteins Knisely identified, and counteract pathologic clumping factors. In a 2009 study in Georgia, heating rat cerebrospinal fluid induced microclotting, loss of cerebral blood flow, and tissue damage; DMSO blocked all three. In rat lymphatic vessels, DMSO doubled the rate of phasic contractions, doubled lymph velocity, and removed staphylococcal toxins’ lymphoconstrictive effect.

Crossing the blood-brain barrier

At concentrations of 10 to 15 percent, DMSO reversibly opens the BBB. This delivers proteins such as horseradish peroxidase, drugs including ketoconazole (brain concentrations up to 9-fold) and L-dopa (with carbidopa), drug-carrying lysosomes, and amino acids to brain tissue at levels they would not otherwise reach. In neonatal chicks, IV DMSO raised brain adrenaline and noradrenaline by 35 to 39 percent. In dogs, CSF DMSO concentrations were half those in plasma. DMSO has been grouped with mannitol as a clinical agent for enhancing brain drug delivery.

A Russian theory of psychiatric disease

The Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences produced what I consider the strongest mechanistic case for circulatory dysfunction underlying psychiatric illness. They induced “neurosis” in animals through three weeks of white noise, light flashes, and electric shocks, then measured cerebral blood flow with biomicroscopy and hydrogen clearance, then dissected the brains.

Chronic stress reduces cerebral blood flow from a normal 50 to below 30 ml per 100 grams per minute, a state that persists for 4 to 6 weeks after the stressor ends. Hypoxia increases lactate, depresses caspase-3 and Na/K-ATPase, impairs mitochondrial respiration, and triggers reactive oxygen species and lipid peroxidation. Cerebral autoregulation breaks down. Hippocampal CA3 cells shrivel; CA1 loses 2.7 to 7.1 percent of its cells, near the threshold for cognitive impairment and dementia.

They tested a long list of agents. The combination that worked best was oral DMSO at 50 mg/kg with vitamin E at 5 mg/kg. The DMSO delivered vitamin E to cell membranes before other reactions in the body neutralized it. The combination raised brain phospholipid content, normalized cholesterol, and ran in government-sanctioned trials at the Moscow Medical Academy by 1999.

Parkinson’s disease

Parkinson’s disease results from progressive loss of dopamine-producing neurons in the substantia nigra. The MPTP-contaminated synthetic heroin episode of the early 1980s revealed that the active metabolite MPP+ targets these neurons, opening the door to reliable animal models. Paraquat is structurally similar to MPP+. Rotenone, organophosphates, and 6-OHDA all produce comparable damage. The herbicides glyphosate replaced are more neurotoxic than glyphosate itself.

A young-onset Parkinson’s case-control study (63 cases, 68 controls) found people with PD were one-tenth as likely to have been exposed to DMSO as healthy controls, a 10-fold inverse association. The same study found insecticide exposure raised risk nearly 6-fold, fumigated housing over 5-fold, and herbicides over 3-fold. Smoking dropped PD risk, consistent with decades of nicotine epidemiology.

DMSO’s mechanisms in PD are direct. In animals, it suppresses hydroxyl radical-induced nigrostriatal injury from MPTP. In rotenone-induced PD rats, DMSO restored hippocampal CA1 and CA3 morphology, with pyramidal cells and Nissl bodies recovering and electrical activity normalizing. DMSO protected astrocytes from MPP+ toxicity, glial glutamine synthetase from MPP+-induced hydroxyl damage, and human SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells from 6-OHDA cytotoxicity. It blocked rotenone’s complete blockade of microtubule assembly from purified tubulin, a finding with direct relevance to PD, since axonal transport depends on intact microtubules.

DMS, DMSO’s odor-producing metabolite, also protected neurons against 6-OHDA and MPP+ apoptosis at near-physiological concentrations. The effect depended on MsrA, the enzyme that converts DMS to DMSO, suggesting an endogenous DMS-DMSO cycle as part of the body’s antioxidant defense against dopaminergic neurodegeneration. This raises a clinical conundrum: some PD patients respond dramatically to DMSO but quit because of the odor, and a low-odor formulation might lose part of the therapeutic effect.

Combination studies show a wide reach. Curcumin protected nigral dopaminergic neurons. Paeoniflorin reduced α-synuclein expression and Lewy body formation. Icariside II differentiated mesenchymal stem cells into dopaminergic neuron-like cells. Ginsenosides Rg1 and Rg3, geniposide, ginkgolide B, ambroxol, polyphenols, and carnosic acid all attenuated dopaminergic loss or α-synuclein accumulation. L-sulforaphane in DMSO activated the NRF2 pathway in patient-derived cells, restoring deficient glutathione.

NAMI-A, a low-toxicity ruthenium-DMSO complex, inhibited α-synuclein aggregation, disassembled pre-formed fibrils, abolished cytotoxicity, and reduced motor impairments in rat PD models. In MPTP models, tanshinone IIA preserved roughly 75 percent of dopaminergic neurons. Tetramethylpyrazine prevented motor deficits via Nrf2. 6-Hydroxy-1H-indazole protected 90-93% of dopaminergic neurons. Baicalein modulates rotational behavior and dopaminergic apoptosis. NBP rescued dopaminergic neurons by 30 percent and striatal dopamine terminals by 49 percent.

Since paraquat and herbicides are among the strongest environmental risk factors for PD, it matters that DMSO scavenges up to 96 percent of the superoxide radicals paraquat generates. DMSO also intercepts paraquat’s hydroxyl radicals via Fenton-like chemistry in rats, protects striatal cells in culture, suppresses paraquat-induced inflammatory signaling, and blocks paraquat’s mutagenic DNA damage. This gives a mechanistic explanation for the 10-fold epidemiologic protection.

A caveat. One in vitro study found DMSO at 0.75 to 1.0 percent, combined with ferric iron, promoted α-synuclein oligomer formation. Oral DMSO in living mice (normal and α-synuclein transgenic) showed no aggregation, no neuronal loss, and no PD-like pathology. DMSO injected directly into the substantia nigra also did no damage. Whatever pro-aggregant effect DMSO has in cell culture at concentrations beyond those that reach the brain clinically does not translate to the living animal.

Reader and physician reports corroborate the experimental data. One PD patient on stem cell therapy in Amsterdam received an IV mannitol-DMSO drip. Within hours, he bounced down a flight of stairs without a handrail, cut his food for a week, opened cab doors, and his speech became fluent. Stem cells take months to act; this was the DMSO. A research scientist diagnosed with PD in 2018 had controlled non-motor symptoms with sulforaphane but kept the full motor symptoms. After systematic testing of oral DMSO, at his optimal dose, bradykinesia was eliminated, pain and dystonia dropped 80 percent, stiffness dropped 50 percent, and energy rose. Doses above his threshold worsened tremor, stiffness, and sleep, with full reversal in two days off.

Yoho comment: DMSO has serious potential for PD treatment. Oral helps. IV helps more. The best results will come from pairing DMSO with a complementary neurotrophic agent. The young-onset case-control finding alone, a 10-fold inverse association in a disease of accelerating prevalence, would in a less captured medical system prompt a national prevention campaign. Instead, it sits on a Substack.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

In ALS model mice, long-term oral 5 percent DMSO treatment raised survival, lowered neurological scores, and improved motor performance. DMSO at low concentrations stabilized SOD1 conformation; SOD1 misfolding is a central cause of ALS. Resveratrol delayed the onset and preserved nearly twice as many motor neurons. Stanley Jacob produced “instant, overnight, and slightly delayed wonders of therapy” in an ALS patient before the patient’s doctor forbade further treatment. A reader with cramping fasciculation syndrome (an early-ALS-like condition) was suicidal from chronic pain and sleep deprivation before oral DMSO restored sleep, eliminated his pain, and gave him back his job. AMD’s experience: IV DMSO halts ALS progression rather than reverses it.

Huntington’s disease

Huntington’s belongs to a family of nine polyglutamine diseases caused by misfolded proteins with abnormally long glutamine repeats. A review of chemical chaperones found DMSO equal to or better than glycerol and TMAO at suppressing polyglutamine toxicity. In Machado-Joseph disease cell models, DMSO stabilized ataxin-3, cutting aggregation, cytotoxicity, and cell death. The only direct Huntington’s study showed that DMSO at 1 to 4 percent partially prevented cell death, increased viability, decreased aggregated huntingtin, and increased the soluble, non-toxic form.

Alzheimer’s disease

DMSO stabilizes proteins and dissolves misfolded amyloid aggregates. Computer modeling shows it inhibits Aβ aggregation by modulating the Lys28-Ala42 salt bridge. Molecular dynamics simulations show DMSO promotes α-helical structure and stabilizes Aβ42. DMSO inhibits acetylcholinesterase, a therapeutic strategy similar to that of donepezil and galantamine. It raises lysosomal alkaline phosphatase activity by 20 percent. It blocks NLRP3 inflammasome and caspase-1 activation, the mediators of chronic AD-driving neuroinflammation.

In rats with intracerebroventricular streptozotocin (a sporadic AD model), IV DMSO daily for two weeks reversed memory impairment. Chronic 10 percent intracerebroventricular DMSO attenuated spatial memory deficits in the Morris water maze. In transgenic AD mice, DMSO, region-specifically, raised spine density, improved spatial memory, and produced an anti-anxiety effect, all without reducing oligomeric Aβ. The authors concluded DMSO should be considered a true bioactive compound, not a vehicle.

Eighteen Alzheimer’s patients in Moldova on DMSO showed substantial gains in memory, concentration, communication, and time-and-space orientation by three months. Jack De La Torre, the leading researcher on DMSO’s neurological applications, wrote that DMSO improved cognitive function and stabilized protein enzymes in AD patients after six months of treatment.

Reader reports cluster around dementia and stroke recoveries. An uncle’s wife, mute for over a year, talked again after two weeks of oral DMSO. A 93-year-old with 15 years of dementia had her sundowning resolve and her personality return. A stroke patient regained speech, strength, eating, and use of his affected hand over eight weeks of oral DMSO with galactose. A 75-year-old with an inoperable 8 cm glioblastoma and a 3-week prognosis recovered motor function within 24 hours of topical 99 percent DMSO, walked with a walker by week 4, and on a day-55 CT scan showed no brain bleed and reduced tumor metrics.

Multiple sclerosis

DMSO crosses the BBB, dampens harmful immune activity, cuts inflammation, improves circulation to white matter, and stabilizes proteins. It also blocks the clotting that myelin debris triggers, a secondary mechanism of MS neurodegeneration that no current anticoagulant targets. The chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI) theory of MS holds that impaired jugular drainage, often due to chronic endothelial infections (Borrelia, Rickettsia, Chlamydia pneumoniae, Babesia), traps inflammatory toxins and pathological proteins. Dietrich Klinghardt found CCSVI in 100 percent of his MS, autism, Parkinson’s, ALS, and Lyme patients.

Stanley Jacob’s most famous case was a 29-year-old paralyzed from MS with kidney failure, given oral DMSO. “Her improvement was dramatic, as dramatic as any benefit I have ever seen,” he wrote. Six years later, she walked, drove, and cared for her family. A 1984 Russian study of 34 MS patients found broad benefit, with the greatest effect in remitting MS, with DMSO causing remyelination, reducing edema, improving nerve cell communication, and raising immunity. Reader reports include MS trigeminal neuralgia of 18 months dropping 99.9 percent in a day, MS hugs going to a standstill, and MS with fibromyalgia, liver fibrosis, complex regional pain syndrome, and lymphedema responding to oral and topical DMSO as “a godsend.”

Niemann-Pick C and prion disease

DMSO is one of the best-studied chemical chaperones. In Niemann-Pick C fibroblasts, 2 percent DMSO raised sphingomyelinase activity by 480 percent, correcting the deficiency. In NPC mice, oral DMSO doubled survival and delayed the onset of tremor. In a Japanese case of an 8-year-old girl with severe NPC psychomotor deterioration, frequent seizures, cortical atrophy, and hepatosplenomegaly, two years of oral DMSO normalized sphingomyelinase activity, decreased her seizures enough to taper her anticonvulsant, normalized her EEG theta waves and spindles, halted cortical atrophy, and shrank her spleen and liver to normal.

In prion disease, DMSO stabilized the alpha-helical structure of newly synthesized prion protein in infected neuroblastoma cells, blocking conversion to the pathogenic form. In yeast prion models, DMSO cured multiple variants better than guanidine hydrochloride. One reader’s cousin with CJD improved after a month of IV DMSO infusions and was alive years later.

Cognitive impairment, dementia, and memory

In rats with surgically reduced cerebral blood flow, DMSO blocked the neuronal damage and spatial memory loss that followed. In Lurcher mice (a model of cerebellar disorder), DMSO prevented age-related deterioration in memory and spatial learning. 104 elderly patients with cerebrovascular disease, head injury, senility, or degenerative disease (PD, hyperthyroidism, epilepsy) received Merinex (DMSO with amino acids) and Ipran (DMSO with vasoactive substances), with striking improvements. A Chilean study of 100 patients with cerebrovascular disease used oral and intramuscular DMSO over 50 days; coronary disease and hypertension improved well in 74.35 percent. In 127 patients aged 75 to 85 with cerebrovascular disorders, bitemporal Neuromidin-DMSO electrophoresis produced clinical improvement in 86% of patients by the fifth procedure.

For anesthesia-induced cognitive impairment, resveratrol with DMSO blocked sevoflurane-induced cognitive deficits in aged and neonatal rats via the SIRT1 pathway. Arctigenin, honokiol, SAHA, curcumin, and dexmedetomidine each protected against neurotoxicity induced by sevoflurane, propofol, isoflurane, etomidate, ropivacaine, and ketamine.

Reader reports include a series of small strokes resolved on 1 teaspoon oral DMSO twice daily, post-hip-replacement brain fog cleared in a week of 2 teaspoons in water, and a 3.5-year Moderna injury patient with gastroparesis, brain fog, edema, small fiber neuropathy, mast cell activation, postural orthostatic tachycardia, tinnitus, and insomnia improving for the first time.

Movement disorders, seizures, and epilepsy

DMSO’s anticonvulsant effects are biphasic. Low doses suppress seizures; high doses provoke them. Low-dose DMSO at 1.65 mg/kg cut seizures in genetically epileptic rats. High-dose DMSO at 1651 mg/kg prolonged seizure latency by 32 percent and shortened seizure duration by 34 percent in temporal lobe epilepsy via NMDA/AMPA suppression. In chronic temporal lobe epileptic mice, 100 percent DMSO cut seizure number and duration by 19 to 41 percent. Reader reports describe topical DMSO dramatically improving restless leg syndrome, essential tremor, vaccine-induced Stiff Person Syndrome (the only treatment that touched 22 months of muscle spasm), and vestibular episodes in dogs.

Encephalitis, MG, and hydrocephalus

DMSO has been used for viral encephalitis (West Nile, herpes, Japanese encephalitis), bacterial meningitis, sepsis-associated encephalopathy, and parasitic encephalitides. In equine leukoencephalomalacia from Fusarium mycotoxins, a DMSO regimen halved death rates from 66 to 33 percent.

For myasthenia gravis, DMSO drops anti-acetylcholine-receptor antibodies by 53 to 76 percent in rats, regardless of route. In tubocurarine-paralyzed nerve-muscle preparations, 0.75 percent DMSO restored complete twitch force for over 150 minutes. The 1980 New York Times covered the discovery, and the researchers were eager to test in humans. No human MG study has ever been done. One reader with generalized MG who started oral and topical DMSO in 2022 has had no myasthenic crisis since, with dramatically reduced muscle fatigue, restored cognition, and near-normal vision, better, she said, “than the pyridostigmine I used to take 6x/day.” Another reader with generalized MG and multiple autoimmune conditions came off nearly all 30 of her prescription medications.

For hydrocephalus, a Shih Tzu with severe acute neurological symptoms had its seizures suppressed and consciousness restored by IV 10 percent DMSO. One reader’s brother, with syringomyelia, cervical astrocytoma, paralysis, and hydrocephalus, given a fatal prognosis, instead lived 30 more years after Stanley Jacob put him on experimental DMSO.

Psychiatric conditions

In a 1967 Peruvian psychiatric trial, 42 patients (25 schizophrenics, 4 manic-depressives, 4 alcoholic psychotics, 4 obsessive-compulsives, 5 with severe anxiety) were taken off all medication and given 2 to 5 daily intramuscular DMSO injections. Of the 14 acute schizophrenics, all had rapid, dramatic improvement. All 14 were discharged within 45 days, three at full recovery within 15 days. Of 11 chronic schizophrenics, some hospitalized for over 6 years, 4 went into full remission. The 4 manic-depressives in the manic phase rapidly calmed and lost their mania. The 4 alcoholic psychotics responded within days. The OCD and anxiety patients calmed and stopped acting on their compulsions. The authors noted DMSO’s action differed from that of tranquilizers in that little sedation or central depression was produced.

In 17 patients with chronic depression of 5 to 20 years, refractory to antidepressants, oral DMSO with their existing antidepressant resolved 14 of 17 (82.3 percent), with the remission persisting through 1 to 4 years of follow-up. Two Chilean studies of depressive neuroses on DMSO with amino acids showed similar benefit.

For PTSD, stress, depression, and anxiety, dozens of natural compounds and pharmaceuticals delivered in DMSO showed benefit in rodent models. In one chronic emotional-painful stress study, DMSO alone before the stressor blocked gastric ulcers, prevented anxiety behaviors, normalized cardiovascular responses, and raised brain superoxide dismutase. Sedation at higher doses traces to DMSO’s parasympathetic effect via acetylcholinesterase inhibition, which also explains its psychiatric reach: excessive sympathetic tone drives anxiety, mania, and psychosis.

Sleep

DMSO is not a sleeping pill. In 6,000 reader reports, only a handful describe direct sedation. What DMSO does is treat the conditions that prevent sleep. Most often, this was musculoskeletal pain, including shoulder bursitis, low back pain, arthritis, knee pain, neck pain, jaw pain, peripheral neuropathy, headaches, restless leg syndrome, and trigeminal neuralgia. Reader after reader reported that dropping pain meant getting their first full night of sleep in years. Many also reported an unusual increase in dream vividness and lucid dreaming, plausibly from DMSO’s acetylcholinesterase inhibition, the same mechanism behind galantamine.

Down Syndrome and developmental disabilities

The Down Syndrome data is what nearly cost AMD their credibility, then the testimonials came in. In Oregon, 67 moderately or severely disabled children with Down Syndrome (4 to 17) were randomized to high or low DMSO and compared to 23 untreated controls; a dose-dependent improvement was observed with no side effects. In Chile, 55 children with severe Down Syndrome got DMSO with GABA, GABOB, and acetylglutamine by injection, and their Gesell scores rose markedly across motor, adaptive, language, and social domains. In Argentina, 13 disabled children on the same DMSO-amino-acid protocol over 180 days showed parallel gains.

Melody Clark started on DMSO at 11 months when her legs were “like a rag doll’s” and her eyes failed to focus, and she moved over seven years from “practically a vegetable state of existence” to mild developmental delay. She read phonetically, did math, jumped rope, did somersaults, played on a trampoline, used full sentences, and was popular with classmates. Her dentist testified that her palate, jaw, and tongue had returned to normal.

Bronwyn Nash, who started at 10 months while failing to gain weight, became alert, cheerful, and steadily improving by 28 months. Billy King, who at 14 had the cognitive function of a 10-month-old, was given oral DMSO daily and within two years had the function of a 7-year-old. He continued to improve, lost the characteristic features of Down Syndrome, and eventually held a job at a Portland bookstore.

A 1969 study of 44 severely delayed children on DMSO-amino acids showed over 70 percent had favorable responses, including IQ gains, accelerated reading, writing, and math, improved coordination, reduced behavioral problems, lessened anger, and better psychomotor control. A 1980 Congressional hearing convened to pressure the FDA to lift its DMSO embargo failed in that goal, but produced these testimonies on the record. The German DMSO community has refined the amino-acid-DMSO formulations and uses them for learning disabilities, developmental delays, mood and anxiety disorders, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Autism

The most frequent question AMD receives is whether DMSO helps autism. He has only vague second-hand parent reports, no direct human evidence to weigh. The mouse model data are substantial. In autism-modified mice, Epothilone D (a microtubule-stabilizing agent) improved repetitive behaviors, increased the number of excitatory synapses, and enhanced myelin basic protein expression in the cortex across multiple studies. Curcumin enhanced sociability, reduced repetitive behaviors, and restored hippocampal neurogenesis. Prenatal resveratrol blocked valproic-acid-induced autism features in offspring. Melatonin, in combination with the PI3K inhibitor Wortmannin, improved synapse-associated protein synthesis and dendritic spine development. A 5-HT2A receptor antagonist attenuated repetitive self-grooming. Estradiol restored empathy and social affection in ovariectomized mice. Baicalin dose-dependently improved recognition and spatial memory while raising BDNF in the hippocampus.

Almost all these studies used DMSO as the delivery vehicle without a saline placebo arm, so the design cannot prove DMSO’s independent contribution. AMD reads the consistent benefit across mechanistically diverse agents as suggestive that DMSO itself contributes.

Other developmental disorders

Cerebral palsy. Direct human data is sparse. DMSO with verteporfin partially restored muscle satellite cell differentiation in vitro. Veterinary literature reports DMSO treats neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy in foals, and Jack Metcalf documented foals born too disabled to nurse regaining the ability after IV DMSO three times daily. Russian researchers patented an ultrasound-assisted topical mixture of DMSO, sodium oxybutyrate (GHB), and lidocaine for the treatment of severe spasticity associated with arachnoiditis, with the patent extending its use to poliomyelitis and cerebral palsy. One reader with a cognitively intact nine-year-old daughter who has cerebral palsy reported that topical DMSO relaxed her tight muscles enough to improve mobility.

Cleft palate. DMSO prevented phenytoin-induced cleft palate in animal models. Phenytoin causes a constellation of birth defects (flat nasal bridge, epicanthal folds) that resemble features of Down Syndrome.

ACBD6-related neurodevelopmental syndrome. This rare disease produces cognitive impairment and Down-Syndrome-like birth defects from defective N-myristoyltransferase activity. DMSO has been shown in vitro to upregulate that same enzyme.

Krabbe disease. Stanley Jacob developed an oral DMSO protocol for this lysosomal storage disease that causes severe early-life neurodegeneration. The clinical outcome was not formally published.

Tourette syndrome. In disease-model rats, vitamin D in DMSO at 1.0 μg/kg/day decreased locomotor scores from 0.92 to 1.33, down to 0.43 to 0.69, and reversed the striatal dopamine deficit.

Muscular dystrophy. Epicatechin in DMSO reduced dystrophic fiber pathology and promoted muscle regeneration in MD mice, but did not address the underlying disease mechanism.

A new model of neurology

AMD’s framework: many “incurable” neurological diseases are downstream of impaired cerebral and lymphatic microcirculation. Once circulation drops, neurons trapped in a dormant penumbra state never wake. DMSO clears the sludging, opens the BBB, scavenges hydroxyls, stabilizes misfolded proteins, drains lymphatics, and resets the autonomic balance. The therapy is cheap, off-patent, broadly applicable, and competes with branded products that bring in billions, which is why it stays buried.

AMD has also flagged that the original article was split into multiple parts. Forthcoming pieces will cover spinal injuries (paralysis, cord injuries, disc disease, radiculopathies, arachnoiditis), peripheral nerve conditions (regeneration, palsies, neuropathies, neuropathic pain), and acute cerebrovascular events (strokes, brain bleeds, traumatic brain injuries, concussions). The current article closes with practical guidance: how to source pharmaceutical-grade DMSO, dosing by route and concentration, IV protocols, and condition-specific regimens for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, strokes, anesthesia toxicity, brain fog, chronic stress, and developmental disorders.

Yoho comment:

AMD’s practical-guidance section is behind a Substack paywall. Their work merits the subscription, and reproducing their protocols here would be unethical. What follows are my observations on DMSO therapeutic dosing, drawn from my experience.

The critical part of all decisions is to sort truth from nonsense. With any source, even AMD, you must repeat the analysis yourself.

We live in a time when the cost of intravenous DMSO has purposefully been rendered outrageous, and its accessibility is behind a wall of corrupt licensure. I find it hard, from a mechanistic standpoint, to see how intravenous DMSO is any better than oral DMSO, which is immediately absorbed into every part of the body. I know you will remind me that I am known for worshiping empiricism at the expense of mechanism, and that AMD’s document is built around case reports. You are right.

The following is my current approach to DMSO dosing. If you want the entire literature examination, go past the paywall and read the thrilling conclusion of AMD’s book.

DMSO is a non-toxic tree product that produces remarkable anti-inflammatory and other beneficial effects on health. An early study gave a group of convicts a cup of it every day for three months, and they were none the worse for wear.

I increased my consumption after reading AMD’s article. I have recently gotten to the point where I don’t even measure what I take carefully. Instead, I pour an inch of full-strength DMSO in the bottom of a 12-oz glass water bottle, then fill it to the top and drink it throughout the day. This is about ten tablespoons. I have not seen side effects to date.

My use of high doses is a short-term experiment and unknown territory. Since paradoxical negative effects of DMSO have been observed at higher doses, I recommend that you analyze this and decide on your dose yourself. The smart approach is to start low and go slow. A teaspoon to three tablespoons in water or juice is more prudent than my methods.

I buy all my DMSO in gallon plastic bottles from DMSOstore.com on Amazon and dilute it as needed, depending on the purpose. They also sell it in glass bottles, but I assume that the people who sell the most DMSO have the sense to use a plastic that doesn’t dissolve it.

To treat my macular degeneration, I look into a red light daily and put 50% DMSO on my palm and then on the outside of my eyelids several times a day. This penetrates the retina, corrects my dry eyes, destroys floaters, and has other beneficial effects. Eye drops are also an option, but unless you dilute them heavily, they sting. The sting does no harm, but it is irritating. For more about that, see my summary of AMD’s eye/DMSO post linked in the introductory paragraph of this essay. My original post about how I was treating my macular degeneration is A DRAMA IN FOUR ACTS: MY AGE-RELATED MACULAR DEGENERATION.

Topical DMSO is not complicated. It sometimes produces skin irritation, but generally, all you have to do if that happens is dilute the stuff further. Everyone is different; you have to experiment.

Selected references

“How DMSO Heals the Brain and Transforms Neurology” (Part 1) by A Midwestern Doctor, The Forgotten Side of Medicine, 2026.

“DMSO and Neurology Part 2”, A Midwestern Doctor.

“Forgotten Discoveries About Resolving the Root Causes of Disease (Zeta Potential)”, A Midwestern Doctor.

Stanley Jacob, MD on DMSO and the 1980 Congressional hearings, historical archive.

Stanley Jacob, MD, on DMSO and the 1980 Congressional Hearings

The cleanest replacement is the original primary-source PDF:

• https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/73bf25b2/files/uploaded/dmso-the-persecuted-drug-cm.pdf (Pat McGrady’s The Persecuted Drug — The Story of DMSO, the 1973 book that documents the FDA suppression and Jacob’s Senate testimony)

• Alternatively, the Washington Post archive coverage: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/08/01/fda-aides-probed-in-testing-of-dmso-miracle-medicine/4a1c5e35-213e-4167-ad24-b60ab94cb28e/

The McGrady PDF is the better link — it’s the primary historical document, hosts on a stable CDN, and gives the reader the full story. The Washington Post archive is a good backup if you prefer mainstream-source corroboration.

Andrew Moulden, M.D., P.H.D., on vaccine micro-strokes:

• https://archive.org/details/every-vaccine-produces-harm-dr-andrew-moulden (the Internet Archive ebook of Dr. Andrew Moulden: Every Vaccine Produces Harm)

• Or the Lies are Unbekoming Substack profile:

Interview with Dr. Andrew Moulden

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