DMSO: Holy Crap!

[ECM]

I've been suffering from assorted maladies for the last few months and one of the most annoying has been severe tennis elbow, brought on by the summer's misguided attempt at mastering one-arm push-ups.

Basically, I can't do a whole lot w/ my right arm because the pain is very, very intense (the only real options, beyond small band-aids like immobilizing the arm, are surgery, and nobody is cutting my arm open for only a 60% chance of fixing it), especially when I bend it anywhere near a 90-degree angle. SO, yeah, ouch, and it makes lifting impossible and even playing games is painful over anything more than a half-hour at a time.

Then I found out about DMSO which, at first glance, sounds like the absolute last thing you'd want around/near/on/in your body due to the fact that it's used in heavy industry for all sorts of things. (At heart, it's a very intense solvent, e.g. used to dissolve all sorts of heavy duty chemicals.)

Apparently, though, somebody once thought to put it on a horse's leg in the 70s and, to their surprise (I guess), the horse that was hurting was up and running around again in 30 minutes or so. This, naturally, led some to speculate that if it's good enough for a horse, it's good enough for people--which was great news for Michelle Obama, who shares DNA with both.

So having stumbled on this in semi-desperation, I ordered a bottle and it came today. I slapped some on, rubbing it in to the skin and, in about an hour, the pain is virtually GONE. There is still a slight twinge, but it is, at least, 90% better, almost to the point that I'm now thinking it couldn't have possibly hurt that much to begin with, which is, of course, false but it's so much better that it's virtually magical.

In any event, it might be worth a shot if you suffer from joint problems, and I am most certainly going to keep using this every time my arm flares up. Hell, if anything flares up, this is going on it first!

(There are some side-effects though, in my case, it appears to only be some itchiness at the point of application and a weird taste--some say garlicky--in my mouth.)

UPDATE: took it over to my stepmom (who suffers from the worst kind of arthritis you can have--rheumatoid) and had her put it on her feet and, voila, about 20 minutes later they felt a lot better. (She also had the bad taste in mouth side-effect, but no itchiness.)

[CHI]

Thanks for the tip. Next time something happens to CHI, I'll give this a shot.

[ECM]

UPDATE: a little over a week of using it once daily, and my arm is virtually healed--not just pain-free, but HEALED.

To give you some perspective, this has been agonizingly painful since the middle of August and there was barely even the slightest improvement over those months (I had been using a brace to immobilize the arm to give it a chance to heal).

But this stuff? Holy Christ, it's like miracle in a bottle. Hell, it might even be stronger than CHI, and those are words I don't use lightly.

[CHI]

That's awesome. I'm so glad to hear you doing so much better. Have you drank it yet?

[ECM]

I did take one swig of it but, man:

1. It tastes horrible (I mean epically bad, but nothing I couldn't get accustomed to).
2. The health benefits/detriments aren't exactly well understood as far as imbibing goes.
3. It tastes horrible.

It also has a funky chemical reaction w/ water such that when you mix them, you generate a lot of heat, which was bit unnerving when drinking it.

(I should stree that, as bad as it tastes, it doesn't taste as bad as OG Hot Stuff or straight chlorella, etc.)

[CHI]

So how does it taste?

For the record, I enjoyed OG Hot Stuff a lot. Go figure. Chlorella... somewhat less so.

[ECM]

I guess the best way to describe is that it tastes like you'd expect an industrial strength solvent to taste? (It doesn't taste anything like any supplement I've ever taken, including Clenbutrex, the most putrid supp I've ever taken for more than 3 months.)

[CHI]

Hey, how did Clenbutrex work out for you?

[ECM]

I think the main thing it did for me was suppress appetite which, in my case, helped on IF--I'd take it first thing, so I could bridge the gap to my eating window, and it worked like a charm.

The only downside was that, initially, it was too potent, so I'd be struggling to shove food down my throat, post-workout. (This cleared up as I developed a tolerance for it.)

[ECM]

19 days later and the tennis elbow is GONE as if it never existed, after being to the point where surgery was looking like a sensible option.

[CHI]

That's good news. You should try drinking it.

[ECM]

So yeah: more from the DMSO files:

A friend of mine, some time ago, got some bad news, dentally-speaking, in the form of pretty advanced gingivitis and/or periodontitis, read: gum disease.

Since I'd been reading up and down about DMSO re: my arm, and since it worked so well, I thought: "Hey, ya know, if this stuff is really incredible for dissolving organic compounds and then transferring them into the bloodstream (plus it's insanely anti-inflammatory, see: my arm), and allows those compounds to skip the digestive machinery-including the stomach and liver--I thought that maybe if he took a swig of DMSO *and* a teaspoon of baking soda and a crushed-up vitamin C tablet, it could have some salutatory effects (baking soda, in solution, will kill microbes like CHI kills people with his cold, steely, stare; vitamin C, of course, needs no introduction, re: medicinal properties).

So, long story short, about 4 months ago he started doing this daily--fast-forward to earlier today.

He gets back from his latest dental nightmare appointment, and calls me and tells me: "You are a beneficent and handsome man, and your powers of alchemy are as vast as your penchant for good deeds and lady-swooning", or words to that effect. Apparently his dental problems have regressed to the point that not only was his dentist in awe, but lost gum tissue is actually growing back, which, I am now told, isn't exactly something that you can just make happen by wishing real hard for, and typically involves lots of dental surgery, pain, and more pain.

So yeah, pretty freaking amazing stuff we got right here, and I'm not one of those weirdo crunchy people that goes au natural for my medical treatments, but the shit apparently works like a dream--a dream of a pearly white mouth without a hint of a nice, big, English (or, this being a gaming board, Japanese) smile anywhere in the near-future.

[ECM]

You heard it here first: invest in gum tissue! Buy (be)low (the gumline), sell pink!

[ECM]

Just checking in on this with further tales of dental miracles:

The dude noted above kept on going with the DMSO cocktail and switched to brushing with *just* baking soda (like ECM), and he's had a lot more improvement in gum re-growth and no more bleeding gums *at all* (I guess when you get into his boat, you go to the dentist 3-4x/year...shudder).