How DMSO Heals the Brain and Transforms Neurology

A google search tells us that dosing levels is poorly understood.  Yet 80% resolution is indicated for neurological conditions.  so you are on your own

DMS is also indicated. Not the Same

All this impacts fraxitine biochemistry.  We Think.

My interest arises from been a carrier of Friedreichs Ataxia whch is a DNA disorder.  Trying to support my mitrocandria.

How DMSO Heals the Brain and Transforms Neurology

The extensive evidence behind DMSO's ability to treat 'incurable' neurological diseases — and how to use it

By A Midwestern Doctor

The Forgotten Side of Medicine

April 27, 2026

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2026/04/no_author/how-dmso-heals-the-brain-and-transforms-neurology/

DMSO has remarkable therapeutic utility across a wide range of challenging conditions yet is largely unknown. Recognizing this, I spent the last two years compiling the data which shows DMSO treats a wide array of conditions including lung issues (e.g. COPD and Asthma), skin issues (including hair loss), many different types of pain, arthritis, tissue injury (e.g., sprains or burns), eye issues (e.g., vision loss or dry eyes), autoimmune disorders, dental issues, gastrointestinal diseases, infections, and cancers (along with how DMSO’s efficacy can be further enhanced by combining it with pharmaceuticals or natural therapies).

As each of the above articles, drawing upon thousands of forgotten research studies, made a convincing case to try DMSO, they collectively received millions of views, and thousands of readers (currently over 6000) reported to me that improvements happened across a vast swathe of conditions they were dealing with, many of which were life-changing or match those in this 1980 news program:

More importantly, much in the same way Mike Wallace successfully revived interest in DMSO in 1980 after the FDA successfully spent two decades largely burying it, this series has again created a renewed interest in one of the most accessible and effective remedies available to us.

Since DMSO is particularly well-suited to treating neurological diseases (which often “nothing can be done about”), some of the most profound stories I’ve received related to neurological diseases. Likewise, consider this conversation I had a few days ago with James Miller MD, a physician, who inspired by the results reported here, began using it in a large number of his patients, and frequently seeing astonishing results he was initially left in disbelief by.

JM: Hope you are doing well. Just checking in, haven’t seen a lot of your postings lately.

Me: Sorry, I turned into a ghost. I have been working as hard as I can on getting the DMSO neurology article done; there’s just so much to unpack.

JM: It is my impression, with no hard data, that ~80% of everything people see neurologists for goes away with DMSO. That is what my patients reflect back to me who choose to trial DMSO for their neurological problems.

Me: That’s basically why I’ve been working so hard on this.

Likewise, I recently received a remarkable testimonial from an ALS patient (the horrible terminal disease we’ve seen decades of research fundraisers for) that shows there may be real hope for this incurable disease.

Note: if any of you have profound DMSO stories you would like to share, please share them here and consider reaching out to Rebecca so she can document them.

Lastly, for those of you seeking DMSO protocols and recommendations, they can be found at the end of this article (which I advise reading first to better understand those instructions).

Cellular Protection

DMSO is well-known for protecting cells from many otherwise deadly stressors. For example, it prevents freezing damage to cells, which made modern cryopreservation (cryomedicine) possible, and extensive research shows that this protective effect works across nearly every type of tissue (along with repeatedly saving human fingers and animal ears or limbs1,2,3 from being lost to frostbite). As the cells of the nervous system are particularly sensitive to injury (and often unable to heal from it), DMSO’s protective qualities are particularly useful for it. Core mechanisms of protection include:

• Reducing oxidative stress1,2,3,4 and neutralizing harmful free radicals1,2,3 (e.g., those caused by radiation like hydroxyl) through scavenging charged ions (e.g., H+) and forming protective DMSO radicals (along with decreasing lipofuscin formation in human glial cells, reducing the cumulative oxidative damage that drives cellular aging). In hippocampal slices DMSO also counteracted this oxidative stress,1,2 and in cerebellar granule neurons, this prevented oxidative stress-induced apoptosis and cell death by reducing early mitochondrial impairment and DNA fragmentation1,2 (with similar benefits also being seen when DMSO was combined with CDK and G9a inhibitors1,2). Trace amounts of DMSO also protect plants from ozone gas injury and counteract reactive hypochlorous acid, superoxide, and hydrogen peroxide (while simultaneously working synergistically with oxidative therapies and not impairing neutrophil viability).

• Increasing the production of ATP in cells, and facilitating producing it when energy production has been compromised (e.g., minute concentrations of DMSO, as low as 0.000025–0.25%, have been shown to increase cellular metabolism such as by shunting metabolites from glycolysis to the mitochondrial Krebs cycle or to make a part of the mitochondria able to synthesize ATP without the rest of the mitochondria being present1,2,3,4,5). DMSO also prevented hydroxyl radical-induced mitochondrial aconitase inactivation, ATP depletion, and neuronal damage. Furthermore, DMSO increased the metabolism of pyruvate and glucose in brain slices, protected mice from otherwise lethal nitrogen asphyxiation, and in a study where mice were decapitated, DMSO prolonged how long the mice continued to gasp (breathe) and hence how long brain function continued.

Note: many animal studies are exceedingly cruel and not something I support; however, as they have been done, I felt it was important to share the knowledge certain DMSO ones provided so it would not be necessary to repeat them to acquire that data.

• Protecting cells from dying once the blood supply is cut off (a key reason why so many readers have been able to avoid permanent disability from a stroke), including by preventing the rapid influx of calcium or sodium ions that frequently triggers apoptosis (cell death), and reducing the activity of caspase proteins (which trigger cell death) in the liver, heart, and airway epithelial cells.

Note: ⬖ designates natural substances used in conjunction with DMSO.

These properties hence allow DMSO to:

• Protect neurons throughout the brain (e.g., in the hippocampus) from a wide range of excitotoxins—which are well-recognized as a common cause of neurodegeneration,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 (e.g., in one study DMSO restored 66.7-76.1% of normal electrical activity following glutamate toxicity), and to enhance the protective effects of other protective agents (e.g., syringaresinol,⬖ isoquinolinesulfonamides, curcumin⬖ and ginkgo biloba⬖).1,2,3,4,5,6

Note: DMSO is routinely combined with other neuroprotective agents such as curcumin⬖, melatonin,⬖ baicalin,⬖ butein,⬖ icariin,⬖ naringin,⬖ 4-PBA, and BPV(phen) , various Chinese medicinals, nitrone compounds, and capsaicin derivatives⬖ (i.e., in the studies just listed, these combinations reduced neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, ER stress, and apoptosis while enhancing mitochondrial function and autophagy in neuronal cells).

• In carbon monoxide poisoned rats, reducing cerebral neuronal alteration and degenerative rate, along with total cardiac injury score (and also reducing liver injury if combined with ethyl pyruvate).1,2 Glibenclamide further improved neurological deficit scores, reduced neural cell breakdown (NSE and S-100β) and reduced inflammatory TNF-α and IL-8 levels. Lastly, DMSO’s antioxidant properties have been proposed to confer a potential neuroprotective role in carbon monoxide poisoning.1,2

• Protect normal cells against chemotherapies such as preventing brain injury, oxidative stress, inflammation and neuronal death from cyclophosphamide (in combination with Scenedesmus obliquus⬖), cisplatin (alone or in combination with DMFM)1,2,3 and doxorubicin (where in combination with curcumin⬖ prevented “chemobrain”).

• Prevent neural cell damage and death from a variety of metals such as lead (alone or in combination with thymoquinone⬖)1,2,3 aluminum (alone or in combination with GSK-3β, 3MA or dantrolene)1,2,3,4 cadmium, mercury (in combination with melatonin⬖ or curcumin⬖),1,2 the toxic form of manganese (alone or in combination with NAC or PAS-Na or a FTO inhibitor),1,2,3,4 toxic doses of lithium (in combination with curcumin⬖) along with arsenic (in combination with 3-MA), zinc nanoparticles (in combination with quercetin⬖) cobalt chloride (in combination with curcumin⬖) and fluoride (in combination with M3OMG), and thioacetamide.

Note: neuroprotective effects from DMSO in those studies included reductions in oxidative stress, neuronal cell death, calcium dysregulation, intracellular calcium release, birth defects, and histopathological brain damage.

• Protect animals from organophosphates, including otherwise lethal doses of nerve gas1,2,3,4,5,6 (or to enhance the efficacy of antidotes and reduce brain damage1,2,3) and to treat snakebites and their associated swelling in humans, cats, horses and dogs.1,2,3,4,5,6 Similarly, in two horses swarmed by African bees, IV DMSO as part of a combination protocol was able to reverse the severe neurological impairment created by the bee venom within five hours.

• In mice and rats, oxidative stress and neurotoxicity (e.g., in the hippocampus) from a variety of agents has been counteracted by DMSO in combination with another therapeutic agent: ethanol (nimodipine, DAPT or MSM),1,2,3 methamphetamine (curcumin⬖) mold aflatoxin (in combination with extracts of Chelidonium majus⬖ or artichokes⬖),1,2 liquid petroleum gas poisoning (a p38MAPK inhibitor), diethyl phthalate and bisphenol S (vanillic acid⬖), thrombin (estrogen), trimethyltin (carvacrol⬖), tunicamycin (4-PBA) chlorpyrifos (niosomal hesperidin⬖ or taxifolin⬖), calyculin A (melatonin⬖) fipronil (malvidin hydrochloride⬖), thapsigargin (Activin A). Likewise, melatonin⬖ mitigated PBDE-47 (fire retardant) neurotoxicity in PC12 cells.

Note: high-dose ivermectin causes neurotoxicity, limiting its use at higher doses. In one reported case, IV DMSO facilitated a full neurologic recovery in a comatose dog that had ingested a toxic dose of ivermectin paste.

Likewise DMSO also protects cells from a variety of harmful non-chemical stressors by:

• Protecting cells (including in a prophylactic manner) from being damaged by (often otherwise fatal) radiation exposures.1,2,3,4,5 For example, DMSO prevented X-ray and gamma ray DNA damage to hamster ovary cells, fruit flies and cerebral organoids (e.g., by accelerating DNA repair),1,2,3,4 and to prevent the harmful (bystander) signals irradiated cells emit in their vicinity from damaging non-radiated cells along with protecting certain bacteria from x-ray exposure.1,2,3 Likewise, DMSO has been repeatedly shown to reduce chromosome damage from radiation1,2 and prevent radiation from creating harmful free radicals. As such, DMSO has been shown to protect animals (e.g., mice, rabbits, dogs and monkeys) from often otherwise lethal doses of radiation, and prevent radiation tissue damage (e.g., to the bone marrow, intestinal lining, stem cells, eyes or skin),1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and, due to it preventing radiation damage in non-cancerous cells, DMSO has been extensively used as complementary cancer treatment.Garden of Life Once Da...

Note: DMSO has been combined with many other substances to protect animals from radiation damage such as astragaloside-IV⬖ (preventing neuronal senescence), rapamycin (repeatedly preventing X-ray induced malformations of cortical development in rat offspring)1,2 thymoquinone⬖ (reducing brain peroxynitrite) or a glycogen synthase kinase-3β inhibitor (preventing brain tissue necrosis).

• Preserving the function of nerve fibers exposed to UV radiation.

• Treating a wide variety of burns (detailed here) and protecting the brain from heat damage (along with the previously mentioned cold injuries).

• Protecting cells from osmotic stress and dehydration (and in combination with nimodipine, protect neural cells from osmotic shock while inducing neurite growth).

• Protecting glial cells from being destroyed by sonic disruption via an ultrasonic vibrator (78% vs. 13% survival), and in conjunction with a TRPV4 antagonist, protect hippocampal neurons and microglia from infrasound-induced (16Hz/130dB) apoptosis.

• Preventing the dramatic increase in germ cell death, lifespan shortening, and oxidative stress caused by strong static magnetic fields and likewise preventing similar harm from continual exposure to electrically generated air ions.

• In combination with curcumin,⬖ protect fetal brain, kidney, and liver from damage caused by low-frequency electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure during pregnancy.

DMSO Safety

Every substance has an effective dose (how much elicits a therapeutic effect) and a toxic dose (how much elicits a harmful effect) with the balance between these two often deciding the value of a therapy (e.g., mercury partially treated syphilis but for centuries caused far more harm than good due to its severe neurotoxicity, and while often effective, certain modern therapies such as chemotherapy cause a lot of issues due to their toxic doses being so close to the therapeutic doses they are routinely prescribed for). Further complicating this, there is often no “correct” dose for everyone, so standardized ones are chosen which work for the majority of the population (which leads to sensitive patients those doses are too high for being routinely injured and then gaslighted by the medical system).

For this reason, I try to utilize therapies with a very wide therapeutic window (meaning the effective dose is much lower than the toxic one), but even in those cases, I still sometimes encounter patients who react to these “safe” doses and need much lower ones.

In the case of DMSO, what has been striking to me is how wide its therapeutic window is (demonstrated by the fact it has an extremely high, “practically non-toxic” LD50 and that rather than harm cells, it will protect them from a wide range of otherwise lethal stressors). Given this and how rapidly DMSO distributes and dilutes in the body, outside of animal experiments where large amounts of DMSO are injected, it is extremely unlikely DMSO can reach a toxic dose (so even in a human safety study where extreme doses were used for a prolonged period, no issues occurred).BIOptimizers Magnesium...

That said, with (clean) DMSO, the following issues do exist:Excessive DMSO commonly creates temporary itching and irritation on the skin. This can be avoided by using lower topical concentrations or a natural agent which prevents DMSO’s irritation—but nonetheless still routinely happens due to users using excessive doses.

In some individuals, DMSO will create an unpleasant odor (which often can be addressed through one of the methods detailed here).

A small number of people (one estimate pegged it at 1 in 2000) are allergic to DMSO. For this reason, it is advised to use topical DMSO first, ascertain if you are having an allergic reaction (rather than a typical skin irritation) and if so, back off, and absolutely avoid systemic applications (e.g., oral).

DMSO can bring toxic substances into the body, and in the early days of DMSO, there were rare reports of people becoming ill for a few days after having both DMSO and (now banned) pesticides contact their skin (along with one person who had a nicotine overdose). For this reason, it is generally advised to always wash your skin (with water) after applying DMSO (that has had time to dry), and in modern times, I have not come across reports of this being an issue.

DMSO will effectively transport allergens into the skin (leading to it being periodically used to patch test allergens). As some people are allergic to seemingly safe natural substances, this can occasionally cause issues (e.g., in the one report I received, hives followed a DMSO arnica preparation—as a surprising number of people are allergic to arnica).

All anti-coagulants carry the risk of excessive bleeding. Since DMSO uses a different method of anti-coagulation, this risk is much smaller, but still possible (e.g., three readers shared it seemed like their nosebleeds increased, and I’ve found one serious reaction in a case report).

One of DMSO’s greatest uses is it potentiating medications, but this also means it can increase their toxicity (even though, as the previous section shows, DMSO frequently counteracts toxicity). This has primarily been observed with alcohol, barbiturates, and to a lesser extent benzodiazepines (e.g., one cat study found adding diazepam to harmless IV DMSO caused fatal hypotension and ventricular fibrillation) but modern reports also exist of it increasing the frequency of side effects from more toxic medications (e.g., chemotherapy and fluoroquinolones). A major question is if this is also an issue with anticoagulants, as limited data and a lack of adverse reports suggest it is not, but simultaneously, due to the theoretical risk, we always advise patients to carefully monitor their blood coagulation (which is typically done for anticoagulant regimens). For all of these reasons, it is typically advised to take DMSO at least two hours away from pharmaceutical medications as this minimizes the potential for adverse potentiation.

Note: the issues with DMSO and alcohol are discussed in more detail here.

In sensitive patients, temporary reactions to DMSO (e.g., headaches) can occur with excessive doses. I have also received two reports of extraordinarily sensitive patients (due to longstanding toxicity burdens) who became worse after DMSO due to it mobilizing stored toxins.

Over weeks, inhaling high doses of DMSO was found to harm rabbits, so for this reason, DMSO researchers (except for one successful ARDS study) avoided studying nebulized DMSO. Modern DMSO users, however, made the logical extrapolation to start nebulizing DMSO, and found significant benefit from it (e.g., remarkable results with COPD). Those who investigated this concluded a theoretical risk (they’d never observed) existed of nebulized DMSO neutralizing surfactant and collapsing the lung, so they cautioned against higher doses (which will also leach plastic from most nebulizers). Presently, one person (patient of a colleague) has had this happen to them (who due to their body type was already at high risk of a pneumothorax), but outside of that, a lot of people have successfully nebulized DMSO at much higher doses than we’d use without issue.

Similar concerns also existed with pregnancy as after injecting high doses of DMSO into or near fetuses was seen to cause developmental damage, very little research was conducted in this area (despite those doses being impossible to reach with standard DMSO uses). Fortunately, large numbers of pregnant and breast feeding parents having used DMSO without issue.

Note: in a future article I will compile all the research which has been done. Presently, the most definitive (but still not definitive) study showing DMSO safety in pregnant mothers is this one.

When cells are exposed to high concentrations of DMSO for prolonged periods (which are impossible to reach in the body), cellular and microcellular injury will occur. Of note, the toxic DMSO thresholds for cancer cells are much lower than normal cells, which is likely one reason why DMSO is an excellent tool for cancer.

Because of the previous, virtually every study I’ve read which utilized DMSO did not report adverse effects from DMSO, serious adverse reports from DMSO are extraordinarily rare, and in almost all instances, those resulted from IV DMSO which was given in conjunction with an embolization agent or stem cells (whereas the much rarer ones from IV DMSO alone typically reversed once the infusion stopped1,2). As some of these were quite concerning, and did not match what we’d ever seen from IV DMSO (such as in this comprehensive safety study in monkeys or what I’d seen reported by countless practitioners using IV DMSO), I spent a while looking into this and concluded:

• The liquid embolic agents have independent toxicity and may sometimes travel and accidentally obstruct other parts of the circulation (as many of the reports seem to indicate this had happened, and once I checked, product warning labels acknowledged this).

• Many of the patients who receive IV DMSO stem cells are extremely fragile cancer patients (who went through high dose chemo), and hence are more likely to react to therapies, especially a higher doses. Likewise, one study found while dogs generally did not have issues with DMSO, those with chronic kidney disease did from higher IV doses.

• Due to DMSO’s safety, very high IV doses are used. These are often sufficient to create an osmotic shock which will rupture the weakest membranes (e.g., hemolysis is a common complication of higher IV DMSO doses, and in this horse study, was seen alongside significant—but temporary—symptoms when 40% DMSO at ten times the normal dose was rapidly infused into horses).

• The concentrations used for the previous applications are sufficient to leach phthalates from IV tubing. Phalates in turn can cause heart arrhythmias and one DMSO doctor found this was an issue with DMSO injected into the bladder until he switched to different tubing.

• Since DMSO increases parasympathetic activity through cholinesterase inhibition, it can slow the heart rate, particularly if a large amount of it suddenly reaches the heart, so while it typically does not alter cardiac rhythm and has been observed to normalize the reactivity of the autonomic nervous system, at high doses it can be arrhythmic (e.g., a 1-3% DMSO slightly increased the heart rate,1,2 while 6-10% significantly decreased it but could be reversed with atropine1,2).

• While practitioners (in recent days and throughout the DMSO literature) using much higher IV DMSO doses than we do do not appear to have run into issues, significant care in identifying appropriate IV DMSO dosing is likely warranted.

Lastly, due to DMSO’s widely recognized safety and negligible toxicity and ability to rapidly transport substances throughout the body, it is often used as an “inert” ingredient to deliver other pharmaceuticals and as a solvent or vehicle to facilitate evaluating the biological effects of large numbers of substances (as without being dissolved or transported, it is often impossible to test them).

Note: in addition to testing therapeutic effects, DMSO will also be used to deliver a harmful agent to trigger a disease1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 (which makes it very time consuming to filter out therapeutically relevant DMSO studies) or to evaluate a therapy’s mechanism of action by seeing if the specific inhibitor DMSO delivers blocks the therapy’s efficacy (e.g., many Chinese acupuncture studies like this exist1,2,3,4,5,6,7).

As similar benefits are seen with many different therapies combined with DMSO (that DMSO alone would cause), this has led me to conclude:

• The toxicity of many toxins has been underestimated due to DMSO’s protective effects counteracting them (something also recognized by a few neurology researchers).

• A key reason benefits seen in pre-clinical studies do not appear in clinical ones (an extraordinarily common problem in scientific research) is because DMSO is no longer being used—particularly since I occasionally find studies where DMSO alone, rather than simply being the control, is also tested against saline, and in a significant number of those DMSO alone had a therapeutic effect.

Lastly, in writing this article, I have tried to condense thousands of pertinent studies into something feasible for everyone to read, while also ensuring that this forgotten literature remains available to researchers and authors wishing to advance this work. In that, I made the decision to include the combination studies, both because they illustrate the common benefits DMSO provides with these agents across a vast swath of neurological conditions and because combination can often enhance the efficacy of DMSO (detailed extensively here), hence providing additional ideas for individuals struggling with the neurodegenerative diseases covered here. As such, anytime an agent with a therapeutic effect is mentioned in this article assume that it was combined with DMSO. Additionally, if that agent was a natural therapy (e.g., herb, nutraceutical or botanical extract), to help you, as mentioned before, I have marked it with a ⬖.