Transdermal Magic: DMSO’s Pathway through the Skin

One of the most interesting aspects of DMSO is its ability to smoothly penetrate skin, which helps it deliver a variety of intriguing biomedical benefits, like modulating pain, inflammation and oxidative stress. We cover these benefits in previous articles that are definitely worth checking out through the links above, but here, we want to focus on how these benefits are facilitated - what allows DMSO to find its way easily through the layers of the skin? How can this help in the delivery of other beneficial substances? And what precautions can help avoid delivering undesirable impurities? 

At VitalFlow, we definitely take every effort to guarantee the highest quality DMSO, and as you’ll learn through this article, this is imperative to avoid compromising skin contact. Let’s dive right in, into the secrets of DMSO’s transdermal magic. 

DMSO's chemistry within the skin

As you might expect, the magic is in the details - in DMSO’s chemical structure: 

• DMSO’s structure is actually pretty simple: its backbone has a sulfur atom in the middle, bonding to one oxygen atom in front of it.

• On both sides of the sulfur, a methyl group is also attached (methyl is the most common chemical group in living things, made from one carbon and 3 hydrogens). That's where it gets its chemical name: dimethyl sulfoxide. 

• Because the oxygen has a slight negative charge compared to the slight positive charge of sulfur, this makes DMSO slightly polar. 

• This is similar to how water is polar, which is why DMSO easily mixes with polar substances like water. But because the methyl groups are non-polar, this also gives it the ability to also mix well with non-polar substances, like fats. 

• As you can probably guess, the skin’s protective barrier is also made of fat-like layers, making it easy for the small DMSO molecule to wedge itself between the non-polar, fatty skin layers. 

DMSO as a medicinal transporter

So first and foremost, this property allows DMSO to make its way through the skin, slowly but surely, to deliver its own effects. But because DMSO is also slightly polar, it turns out that DMSO can also act as a transporter for other polar substances, surrounding them and ferrying them along the skin layers. 

Researchers have been fascinated by this ability for years, and continue to put it to good use, but with precautions. In Europe, DMSO eventually became used to deliver anti-viral agents in some cases, and throughout eastern Europe and Russia, it is used to help deliver other pain-relief substances, especially for sports injuries. It can also be found in Canada and Europe in over-the-counter topical treatments for joint pains. 

Precautions around DMSO as a transporter

In the US, precautions about DMSO’s ability to transport other molecules has held it back from use for that purpose in the medical field. This is exactly because using DMSO that is not pure can lead to transporting contaminants across the skin, in addition to substances that may be intended, causing more harm than good.

We discuss DMSO purity in a dedicated blog article, where we clarify further why it is very important to take careful precautions around DMSO purity. This is why at Vital Flow, the only DMSO we source and provide is consistently tested for 99.99% purity, avoiding any contamination in the production or transportation process. This also applies to our Aloe Vera DMSO blend, which also contains USP grade DMSO. 

Conclusions

In a way, we can think of DMSO as a very agreeable molecule, that mixes easily with other substances and the skin’s protective layers, allowing it to easily transport itself and neighboring molecules across the skin. This property gives it its promising role in research on various medicinal treatments, but when used without caution, this same property can act as a backdoor for contaminants. To keep DMSO research heading in positive direction, VitalFlow continues to call on all researchers studying the biological benefits of DMSO continues to do their due diligence in ensuring that they use DMSO at pharmaceutical grade, which we are proud to supply across North America to support their mission!