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My Experiment With DMSO for Plantar Fasciitis
My Experiment With DMSO for Plantar FasciitisThe FDA killed DMSO over 60 years ago. Today it's making a comeback.Plantar fasciitis can come for anyone, regardless of status. Tiger Woods withdrew mid-tournament from the 2023 Masters due to unbearable heel pain. NBA Center Joakim Noah, once awarded Defensive Player of the Year, had his electrifying career cut short because, he said, “It feels like you have needles underneath your foot while you’re playing.” Schlubs like me hobble through the same issues, in obscurity, often for years. A long-term study published in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine found that among people who suffer from plantar fasciitis, 45.6% had symptoms after a decade, and 44% still had plantar heel pain after 15 years. I am in year four. Studies of plantar fasciitis tissue have shown that the condition is actually chronic wear-and-tear degeneration (“fasciosis”) instead of an inflammatory condition (“fasciitis”). Fascia overuse is just like tendon overuse, where repetitive mechanical overload causes your body to give up on healing. Tendinosis leaves you with chronic golfer’s elbow, or rotator cuff discomfort, while fasciosis drives plantar heel pain. Once degeneration develops, the already limited blood flow to joints and fascia can indefinitely stall repair and remodeling. Doctors have no idea how to cure plantar fasciitis. Surgery shows a mild benefit only if you do it within the first year — when you should be prioritizing rehab. Unfortunately, there’s no way to predict what non-surgical interventions, if any, might relieve your heel pain. Here are some approaches you can try:
You see the problem. Plantar fasciitis rehab is a fulltime job that often accomplishes nothing. What is DMSO?DMSO — dimethyl sulfoxide — is an is an organic chemical compound that is known for its ability to easily penetrate the skin and biological tissues. In the early 1960s, the medical community discovered that DMSO quickly healed acute musculoskeletal conditions with minimal adverse effects, likely by increasing blood circulation. As public and professional interest in DMSO surged, the FDA found the situation intolerable. The agency stepped in to block this cheap and widely available cure, issuing a global research ban on November 10, 1965. Doctors stopped using it out of fear of prosecution. In the 21st century, we have little knowledge about how DMSO can treat orthopedic injuries. Recently, curiosity about DMSO has returned thanks to a doctor writing anonymously to over 250,000 subscribers at The Forgotten Side of Medicine. While DMSO can be administered via IV for complex health issues (neurological disorders, cancer), for acute sports injuries you pour some into your hand and apply it topically at the site of injury. My DMSO protocolThere is no evidence either way about the impact of DMSO on chronic musculoskeletal injuries. Early researchers never addressed this use case, and doctors never got the chance to try it out. You could say I’m a trailblazer for addressing my own chronic plantar fasciitis with DMSO. I started by slathering DMSO along the bottom of my foot twice per day, for about a month. (DMSO may also help your hair grow, so I rub the DMSO residue on my hand onto my scalp). Then I took a one week break to let everything settle and to assess. My foot pain was better but not gone, so I’m now doing a second round of twice-daily treatment. Although I may have successfully rebooted collagen turnover in my fascia, the healing process can still take up to six months, even under the best of conditions. Certainly a steady reduction in pain is a good sign that the tissue is remodeling. In any event, I have a biologically plausible explanation for how DMSO might help. Whatever you do, just don’t tell the FDA.
My latest posts As an athlete, model, personal trainer, and all-around fitness fanatic, Keva Silversmith has logged thousands of gym hours, and accumulated the nagging injuries that seem unavoidable. Committed to strength, fitness, physique, vigor, and confidence at an age when most men have let it all go, Keva has studied and experimented with how best to preserve his health and stay forever 35. |
​Keva Silversmith | Heal faster
Follow me to optimize healing after injury | Low back recovery expert for aging athletes | Join my newsletter for the knowlege gap left by doctors and PTs 👇🏻
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