It'd be great if there was a nice infographic that people like me could use to point out the difference between what this paper talks about (real) and colloidal silver (harmful, with a lot of false information) so that when cranks use this paper to peddle lies I can give people simple to understand information.
it's a little silly to believe that the high doses of colloidal silver that the crazies take (enough to make their faces literally blue) doesn't slough off silver(I). The high surface area of colloidal silver means that plenty of it is exposed to oxygen in a highly-reactive surface.
Obviously, it's the colloidal silver version of homeopathy! I just hope the authors of the article haven't lulled themselves into thinking that they've just invented a silver bullet for infections.
The idea of homeopathy tries to make the solutions "stronger" by dissolving them with water. It's the main process behind it - the point where you're pretty much left with just water.
Nothing like that is claimed here. This idea is based on how ions of silver interact with cells which was also described. You may not agree with the article, but comparing it to homeopathy is just silly.
Colloidal silver has been shown to have antibacterial properties in vitro (in a petri dish or test tube), and in fact it is still used by NASA and the World Health Organization as a drinking water disinfectant, but no evidence has ever shown it effective in vivo (used internally in a living being).
Drinking colloidal silver killed my amoebic dysentery - a rather horrible strain from drinking Egyptian water - within a day. That was after a week of very expensive treatment had done nothing - if anything I was getting worse. Three or four glasses of 30ppm silver in water over the course of 24 hours and I quickly recovered. It is very effective in vivo for some things. Is there peer reviewed research behind this? Probably not. But after reading Ben Goldacre's Bad Pharma, I'm of the opinion that my anecdote carries as much weight as the industry's research.
Given how doctors recommend sinus rinses these days, I wonder if adding some silver to it might be effective against ongoing sinus infections, especially since the rinse actually goes in and out, so you're not actually taking in much of it.
It's impossible to find serious information on it though because of all the quackery.
I'd love to not need antibiotics for those things, but they are often very effective: I stop being sick from one day to the next.
Give it a try. I make my own solution from a battery, a resistor, distilled water and some 9999 grade silver wire but your local store should have it.
I've got BMW silver-impregnated socks and they just never smell even after a full day in boots. My wife has used colloidal silver gel on burns (she's a nurse) and it's an incredible anti-bacterial agent. Silver, like ozone, needs to be treated with respect for medical purposes and you're sadly right that there's a good deal of nonsense out there but it does work.
The last guy that I met that talked like you had blue-gray skin. This isn't silly like arguing against thermodynamics, but it is an extraordinary claim and anecdotes are just not going to cut it. This isn't quite 'Nobel Prize' territory but it would be a sea change in the scientific literature and it goes without saying that we can always use a new antibiotic.
If anecdote is all you have to offer, however, please refrain from troubling us with reading it.
On topic, didn't we see some similar claims a few years back about sugar increasing the effectiveness of antibiotics greatly?
The last guy that I met that talked like you had blue-gray skin.
Well then he's an idiot and has been drinking it every day ignoring the MASSIVE ALL CAPS WARNINGS not to. I've used colloidal silver internally maybe three times in the last five years.
This isn't silly like arguing against thermodynamics, but it is an extraordinary claim and anecdotes are just not going to cut it.
It's not an extraordinary claim at all: silver in small concentrations is well known to be an anti-bacterial agent. I've used it against dysentery. It worked. In gel form it heals burns and keeps them sterile with nary a gauze in sight. Motorcycle manufacturers churn out pairs of socks by the million which are polyester impregnated with silver. They stay fresh.
This isn't quite 'Nobel Prize' territory but it would be a sea change in the scientific literature and it goes without saying that we can always use a new antibiotic.
If you think that the scientific literature about pharmaceuticals is this wonderfully neutral repository of human knowledge, untrammeled by commercial interest, bad science, junk test results and plain old fraud, then be my guest.
If anecdote is all you have to offer, however, please refrain from troubling us with reading it.
Naah, I'm just getting warmed up. How about good old oxygen? I have first hand experience of people with full blown AIDS going into full remission after ozone therapy. It's almost trivial to do too: get the patient's blood - if you can call the horrible black sludge that someone with a CD-4 count of 20 has blood, but never mind - ozonate it until it's cherry red, and stick it back in him. Lather, rinse, repeat. No anti-retrovirals or hellishly expensive treatements, just oxygen. Unpatentable and of course not profitable. And therein lies the heart of our problem with modern medicine.
That's just another anecdote, though. Also, a few nose drops seems to be at odds with how much of that stuff that some people seem to quaff prior to turning blue. Who knows... I wish someone would do some actual science. I don't want to randomly ingest stuff, myself, so I'll stick to antibiotics for the time being, but the idea seemed interesting to me.
For that matter, I'm curious why topical delivery of antibiotics via a sinus rinse isn't used either. Maybe it's just not an effective way of delivering them. I don't know, I'm not a doctor.
I'm as big of a skeptic as they come, but after reading the article, I don't think they're talking about colloidal silver. Rather "silver — in the form of dissolved ions".
I fully understand they aren't talking about colloidal silver. It was more poking fun at the article talking about the amazing medicinal effects to be achieved by simply adding silver to stuff.
Legitimate or not, it /sounds/ just like the same bullshit from the 90s.
I've been having a huge argument over colloidal silver in the family. It's hard to stay reasonable when there are family members health possibly at stake. I've kept a very skeptical stance, although I can't really say I can argue from any confidence. It seems obvious that the idea is littered with quackery and hopeful thinking. This article makes me more confused.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_uses_of_silver#Alternat...