DMSO for arthritis pain?

I remember gramma using this as a roll on, for her knees. Does it work, and is it still available..side effects?
I have arthritis and am looking for a non narcotic way to get relief.
Answer:
Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) is a solvent that penetrates the skin into the tissue beneath. As such, if you dissolve a pain reliever such as aspirin or tylenol, it should work as a local analgesic, and may people used to do this.
The reason people don't use it much now is because of health concerns--there is some reason to believe that repeated exposure to DMSO may be teratogenic (cause tumors and cancer).
More speculatively, there is a theory that bizarre cases of "toxic patients" was caused by excessive use of DMSO--cases where staff and other patients in emergency rooms were struck down with nausea, respiratory distress and neurologic symptoms. It is remotely possible that these cases were due to excessive metabolic byproducts of DMSO.
In general, as with all organic solvents, repeated exposure is not recommended and it is not a good way to get tylenol or salicylates into your body. It is, in general, much safer to just take tylenol or aspirin, and you will get just as much to the painful area as any kind of topical treatment.
Addendum--the next poster is correct--horse liniment DOES work. The active ingredient is the same used in the "IcyHot" rubs, but horse liniment is much cheaper per volume :)

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I do not know what DMSO is, but I have arthritis and have found that, no joke, Veterinary Linamint works.
I prefer the mint gel kind over the white lotion type.
I have found it in the Horse section of Ace Hardware.
Follow the directions, use sparingly at first, to see how you tolerate it. (Remember, this is for animals).

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DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) Was used in the 60's or so to treat pain due to different issues one included arthritis. There are very few side effects. But go to this web site and read. There is really good information on here. We get our med-grade dmso from the vets office for our dogs when they have pulled muscles and stuff. Its a miracle worker.
http://ww2.arthritis.org/resources/arthr...

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