THE WILLIS PROTOCOLS: NOTES ON MSM
by Carol Willis, MA

(C) Copyright by Carol Willis, 2005. All rights Reserved.

[Permission is granted to forward this article only in its entirety to individual friends. Please request permission of a list owner before posting it to an e-list. Please write for author's permission before publishing it to a website or hardcopy periodical. cbwillis@lightlink.com ]

["The Willis Protocols" are a series of thematic articles on natural healing and wellness, documenting what has worked for me over the years, together with my notes on underlying fundamentals and rationale. Disclaimer: I am NOT a doctor. The following should be taken as the speculative writing of a layman and personal history only. - CBW]

What is MSM?

MSM is methylsulfonylmethane, an organic sulphur which is also a common nutritional supplement today. We get some MSM in foods, but many people seem to benefit remarkably from supplementation.

What is MSM used for?

MSM is commonly found in joint and sports injury formulations, though I have no experience using MSM in these areas. I've seen MSM as a supplement for horses.

My personal experience is that MSM vastly improves and even perfects nail integrity and makes hair and nails grow like a weed at nearly double the usual growth rate. For someone whose nails were always splitting and fragile even with supplements that included vitamin A, protein, and thyroid meds, MSM was like a godsend for nails and hair. If MSM does this much for nails and hair, I suspect it might do some good things for bones as well, but that is speculation on my part.

Forms of MSM

I've seen MSM in nutritional supplement formulas, or by itself in capsules or powdered crystals.

The crystalline powder form of MSM is extremely bitter. I can manage just about any taste without complaint, but could not handle the crystalline powder MSM. No fruit juice nor sweetener nor nut nutter could make it palatable.

Gelatin capsules such as Mega MSM 600 mg by Gero Vita were easy to take. However, my favorite way to take MSM now is Alacer brand Emergen-C Lite with MSM. I alternate that with other flavors of Emergen-C, so I'm getting the MSM version about once every 3-5 days.

Note: MSM is finding its way into many joint formulas, etc, so that people don't always know they're taking MSM, and are not aware of how much they're getting. Further, they may take the "recommended" amounts on the label, which are more like legal maximums and may be waaaay too much MSM for the individual especially over weeks, months and years' time.

Amounts of MSM

Many people are taking a total of 600-3000 mg MSM per day in these supplements. They are also finding that over a few weeks or months time they begin to wake up with a dull pain over their kidneys. This pain gets more severe and troubling over time. Normally we aren't supposed to be aware of our kidneys. If we are, something is wrong. MSM users may not associate the pain with the MSM, but I've found that, if it's not a kidney stone, this sort of pain syndrome can be traced to what is excess MSM usage by the individual. MSM is great stuff, but the amounts being touted currently are too high for longer term usage, and it may only be a matter of time until the kidney pain syndrome sets in, usually a few weeks or months. I suspect there are a lot of mystified MSM users out there right now, who are suffering pain needlessly. I would speculate that such continued excess usage could even lead to actual kidney damage.

What is it about MSM that causes the kidney pain? I have heard that MSM chelates or moves mercury out of the body, and if this happens too quickly for the body to handle, there is a traffic jam in the kidneys, and the kidneys protest in pain. This seems reasonable to me, and that the pain doesn't occur immediately usually, but rather in a few weeks or months. The effects of MSM can be cumulative, for good AND ill, if the amounts taken are too high.

After I decided I just couldn't take the crystalline powdered MSM, I found Mega MSM 600 mg capsules. Although the bottle suggested 2 twice a day (total 2400 mg/day), I took ONE daily for several weeks. Within a couple of weeks, I noticed my hair and nails growing about twice as fast as ever before. My nails also got stronger and more integrous, stopped splitting horizontally. I was amazed and pleased with these results. About 3 months after beginning the MSM, I started waking up with a dull ache over the kidney area. At first it was subtle, then it got to be more painful. About 1-2 months later, I finally hit on the idea that it might be the MSM, so discontinued MSM for a couple of weeks and the pain immediately began to subside. Later I modified my MSM maintenance supplement to one packet of Alacer brand Emergen-C Lite with MSM (has 1000 mg MSM) every 3-5 days. On other days I use different flavors of Emergen-C that do not contain MSM. This routine has been working well for many months now. However, I have since heard of several other people who were taking MSM in the larger amounts commonly touted, who developed the kidney pain symptom, and whose pain quickly reversed on stopping the MSM and later going back to a MUCH smaller amount.

Summary

My conclusion is: MSM is a wonderful supplement, especially for remarkable hair and nail growth and integrity, and there appears to be no substitute for it, but the amounts currently touted are too high to be safe for ongoing or longterm use and need to be reduced. I would propose a reduction to something like 250-300 mg/day, or 1000 mg every 3-5 days. It may be useful to double that amount for the first month if there is no pain, tank up and remedy deficiencies sort of thing, then back it down to the above amounts for maintenance. But this is a far cry from the 1000-3000 mg/day that I hear of many people taking today.

I don't know if the reduced numbers will give the joint relief about which I have no experience, but certainly we don't want or need to have kidney pain, especially mysterious kidney pain we don't know the cause of, pain that is a signal something is wrong. I doubt urologists know about excess MSM, and I have heard of some doctors warning patients off of MSM generally without explanation. I would hate to see MSM given a bad rap generally, as that would be entirely unfair, based in untruth, and an hysterical overreaction of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It is my hope that by simply reducing the recommended amounts on MSM, we will then have a sane and very useful supplementation.

Carol Willis
cbwillis@lightlink.com
February 7, 2005

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