I recently heard about Mark Sloan’s book on Methylene Blue while listening to a webinar on Covid response through the Root Cause Protocol Member’s site.
If you’re like me, and you’ve never heard of Methylene Blue, here are a few points about Methylene Blue from the book, The Ultimate Guide to Methylene Blue.
What is Methylene Blue?
Methylene Blue is an inexpensive blue dye developed by scientists in the 19th century for the textile industry. In addition to being a brilliant blue dye for fabric, surprisingly it was soon discovered to be useful in the scientific laboratory and in medicine.
An Antidote for Chemical Poisonings
Most people today don’t know that if you overdose on a pharmaceutical or a street drug, swallow some toothpaste containing the insidious poison fluoride, or eat a poison mushroom, methylene blue is the first line of treatment doctors and nurses will administer in an emergency.
Malaria Cured in 48 Hours
Methylene blue was the first antimalarial drug ever used in medicine and successfully treated all types of malaria in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Methylene blue works by inhibiting the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum, including drug-resistant types.
In the late 1800’s, it was physician and scientist Paul Ehrlich who found that methylene blue would not only stain the parasite causing malaria, but that it was capable of killing it.
Viruses Don’t Stand a Chance
According to the research, many of the viruses that the public is taught to fear are quickly inactivated by methylene blue, including Herpes, West Nile, Hepatitis C, Ebola, Zika, HIV and Covid-19. And perhaps the most promising part is the startling increase in anti-microbial potency of methylene blue when combined with light therapy.
It turns out, the combination of methylene blue and specific wavelengths of red and near-infrared light poses an even more significant threat to the survival of all types of pathogens and harmful microorganisms.
A Brain-Boosting Powerhouse
Recent research has shown that methylene blue can powerfully target the hallmarks of brain aging that can be found in pathologies like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. These diseases share a common feature of mitochondrial dysfunction and repairing dysfunctional cellular metabolism is methylene blue’s specialty.
Cancer Cells are Targeted First
One of the most remarkable things about methylene blue is that it selectively targets the cells most in need of healing first before others. Any cells which stray from the highly efficient form of energy metabolism called oxidative phosphorylation, including cancer cells, are selectively targeted and restored by methylene blue.
If you search ‘methylene blue’ on PubMed, you’ll recover over 25,000 peer reviewed articles, so the reference list in the back of his book is a good way to hone your research.
For further reading, see the following list of selected references from the back of the book to really delve into methylene blue’s mechanism of action (which generally seems to be that it importantly energizes complex IV in the mitochondria).
- Brooks MM. Methylene blue as antidote for cyanide and carbon monoxide poisoning. Journal of the American Medical Association. 1933; 100(1): 59-59.
- Atanma H, et al. Methylene blue delays cellular senescence and enhances key mitochondrial biochemical pathways. FASEB J. 2008; 22(3): 703-712.
- Yang L, et al. Mitochondria as a target for neuroprotection: role of methylene blue and photobiomodulation. Translational Neurodegeneration. 2020; 9(1): 19. (Note: this is a really good one, the free full text is available here.)
- Haouzi P, et al. Revisiting the physiological effects of methylene blue as a treatment of cyanide intoxication. Clin Toxicology. 2018; 56(9): 828-840.
- The Right Chemistry: methylene blue shakes up the medical world. Montreal Gazette. 2016
- Ansari MA, et al. Antifungal action of methylene blue involves mitochondrial dysfunction and disruption of redox and membrane homeostasis in c. albicans. Open Microbiol J. 2016; 10:12-22.
- Wang, Y, et al. Inactivation of Zika virus in plasma and derivatives by four different methods. J Med Virol. 2019; 91(12): 2059-2065.
- Methylene blue photoinactivation of RNA viruses. Antiviral Research. 2004;61(3):141-151.
- Muller-Breitkreutz K. Mohr H. Hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus RNA degradation by methylene blue/ligh treatment of human plasma. J Med Virol. 1998;56(3):239-245.
- Gendrot, M. et al. Methylene blue inhibits replication of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro. Int J Antimicrobial Agents. 2020; 56(6).
- Necula, M. et al. Methylene blue inhibits amyloid aBeta oligomerization by promoting fibrillization. Biochemistry. 2007;46(30): 8850-8860.