Not All DMSO is Created Equal: A Guide to Purity Grades and their Importance

The story of DMSO’s therapeutic potential is fascinating — what began as a simple industrial solvent soon revealed powerful biological properties, including the remarkable ability to penetrate skin and cellular membranes rapidly. This discovery opened the door to its use in pain relief, inflammation control, and tissue recovery.

However, with this exceptional skin-penetrating ability comes a major responsibility: purity. The same property that allows DMSO to deliver therapeutic effects deep beneath the skin also means that any contaminants present can be carried along with it — directly into the body.

Understanding DMSO Purity

DMSO purity refers to the concentration of true dimethyl sulfoxide in the solution, free of residual solvents, heavy metals, or manufacturing by-products. Industrial-grade DMSO, typically used in chemical and manufacturing processes, can contain trace contaminants that would be harmless in a lab but unsafe when applied to the skin, so it should be avoided in any research involving the biological benefits of DMSO.

For this reason, pharmaceutical-grade DMSO, like that produced by VitalFlow, is refined and tested to a 99.99% purity level. Each batch undergoes stringent analysis to eliminate impurities that could cause irritation, toxicity, or unwanted absorption of other substances.

Why Purity Is Crucial for Any Application

When DMSO is applied to the skin, its chemical properties allow it to travel through the skin smoothly, to deliver its own impacts within the body, such as pain relief through interacting directly with nerve cells. This is a great property for DMSO itself, since it allows it to cross the skin and act locally, instead of needing to go through the blood stream to impact parts of the body that have nothing to do with the area that needs treatment. 

To learn more about what researchers have discovered about DMSO’s direct benefits, check out our complementary blog articles on pain relief and antioxidant and anti-inflammatory impacts of DMSO. 

However, DMSO can also act as a biological transporter for other molecules, carrying them across the skin membranes even if they wouldn’t be able to do so alone. For example, if DMSO doesn’t conform to pharmaceutical purity, it can contain microscopic amounts of contaminants, fragrances, or residues from containers, chemicals or pipes during its manufacturing process, which would then enter the bloodstream along with DMSO. (We provide more insightful info about this process, in our article:  “Transdermal Magic: DMSO’s Pathway through the Skin.”)

This is why using only the highest purity DMSO is non-negotiable for any research where it’s applied topically or used in therapeutic contexts. The risk isn’t just reduced effectiveness; it’s the potential for harmful exposure.

The VitalFlow Standard

At VitalFlow, every DMSO product is manufactured under pharmaceutical-grade standards, guaranteeing 99.99% purity, and avoiding the presence of contaminants in any of our DMSO products. We provide…