Story at-a-glance
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There are three
distinctly different types of silver products on the market that are all
labeled and sold as "colloidal" silver: ionic silver, silver protein,
and true colloidal silver. While ionic silver and silver protein are the most
prevalent in the market, they contain very little or no colloidal silver and
can do more harm than good.
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Colloidal silver has
been known as a remarkably effective natural antibiotic for centuries. But in
past several decades, research has shown colloidal silver can eradicate
antibiotic-resistant microbes like MRSA, the Avian Influenza (bird flu), and
Human Corona virus (SARS).
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Since there are health
risks involved if you select the wrong formula, it is recommended you use
colloidal silver only under the guidance and supervision of a qualified
alternative health practitioner, who can help you select a high-quality
product.
The Silver
Safety Committee has announced its
creation of the Silver Safety Pyramid, which is designed to enable anyone to
easily determine safe usage levels of any dietary supplement containing silver,
typically referred to as ionic silver or colloidal silver.
The Silver Safety Committee consists of doctors,
chemistry professors and world leaders in health-freedom advocacy.
According to Herbert Slavin, M.D., director of
the Institute of Advanced Medicine in Lauderhill, Florida, and a member of the
Committee:
"This is an area where confusion and
concern developed needlessly. Few things in life are as cut-and-dried as the
fact that silver is completely safe when used within normal limits. The U.S.
government provides a very clear guideline for the safe oral intake of silver.
We've simply provided an easy method for applying that guideline to the safe
use of any silver supplement product."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a
guideline called the Reference Dose (RfD) for safe limits on daily intake of
silver. The EPA's RfD guideline is specifically intended to keep a person's
intake of silver below the level that could possibly discolor the skin.
Says Jeffrey Blumer, M.D., Ph.D., director of
the Center for Drug Research, the world's largest clinical research center for
pediatric drugs, and former director of the Greater Cleveland Poison Control
Center:
"Common substances like table salt and
aspirin are harmless with normal use, but excessive intake can become toxic and
even life-threatening. With normal responsible usage, silver supplements are
entirely harmless to humans."
The Silver Safety Pyramid is based on the
Committee's Silver Safety Guideline, which recommends that a person's intake of
silver from dietary supplements be limited to 25 percent of the EPA's
recommended limit for total daily intake of silver.
It utilizes the Silver Safety Calculation, a
simple mathematical formula that enables a person to easily determine how much
to take of any silver-containing product to remain within the safety
guidelines.
The EPA RfD guideline is expressed in terms of
micrograms of silver. Virtually all silver supplements, on the other hand, are
labeled in terms of parts per million (ppm), which is the concentration of
silver in the water, not micrograms. With the Silver Safety Calculation, you
just plug in your pounds of body weight and the ppm of silver in whatever
silver supplement you're using, and it calculates the appropriate limits for
you.
The Silver Safety Calculation is simple enough:
12 times pounds divided by ppm equals drops per day.
The Silver Safety Pyramid provides guidelines
for determining safe usage limits from three perspectives:
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Daily use
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Short-term use
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Entire lifetime
"This is useful information for everyone
interested in using silver for health," Dr. Baird added. "If people follow these
guidelines, they can use silver supplements while remaining fully confident
they are not exposing themselves to any risks whatsoever."
The Committee's website includes the Silver
Safety Auto-Calculator, which automatically performs the math in the Silver
Safety Pyramid for you. The site also has an Education & FAQ section, which
helps clarify the meanings of terms like ppm, ionic silver, colloidal silver,
and more.
Dr.
Mercola's Comments:
There are several types of silver products on
the market. Some are healthy alternatives to antibiotics while others can be
downright dangerous to your health.
Three Types of
'Colloidal' Silver – The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
According to a Commercial Product Report by
Silver-Colloids.com,1 a site that provides detailed laboratory
analyses of colloidal silver products, there are three distinctly different
types of silver products on the market that are all labeled and sold as
"colloidal" silver:
- Ionic silver
- Silver protein
- True colloidal silver2
This misrepresentation of colloidal silver by
less scrupulous manufacturers has no doubt led to some of the more negative
connotations to colloidal silver. When purchasing colloidal silver, it's very
important to make sure you're getting true colloidal silver, because, as you
will see, the other two varieties of silver may do far more harm than good.
Since there are health risks involved if you
select the wrong formula, I recommend you use colloidal silver only under the
guidance and supervision of a qualified alternative health practitioner, who
can help you select a high-quality product.
Ionic silver solutions – Silver solutions are typically clear
like water or have a slight yellow tint. The producers of ionicsilver
solutions will tell you that colloidal silver should look like
clear water, but this is incorrect, so don't be fooled. The term colloidal means particles,
not ions.
To determine whether a solution is ionic silver,
add regular table salt (sodium chloride) to it. If silver ions are present,
then the chloride ions will combine with the silver ions and create a white,
cloudy appearance. For more detailed instructions on how to do this, please see
the Silver Colloids website.
Ionic silver is not entirely without merit, but
since ionic silver products contain such a low percentage of silver particles,
these products will not be as effective as true colloidal silver, which has a
much greater particle surface area3 relative to the total silver content.
Ionic silver is still a strong anti-microbial,
and can be effectively used in situations where chloride is NOT present. When
chloride is present – such as inside your body – then what little silver
particle is present in the solution will survive to produce benefit, but again,
not nearly as effectively as a true colloidal solution.
Please be aware that most all "colloidal
silver" generators sold for home use produce ionic silver solutions, and
not true colloidal silver.
Potential Danger – Low. If you take ionic silver products
according to the manufacturer's recommended dosage, ionic silver will not cause
argyria, a condition that causes your skin to turn blue-gray.
Silver protein – Silver protein products are the second
most prevalent type of so-called colloidal silver products on the market. These
products are a combination of metallic silver particles and a protein binder to
keep the particles in suspension. One tip-off that it's a silver protein
product is if it claims to have high concentrations of colloidal silver
(typically in the range of 30 to 20,000 ppm).
Of the three types of colloidal silver, silver
protein products have the lowest particle surface area for a given silver
concentration, making the silver inaccessible for safe and effective absorption
by your body. Because of this, you want to avoid all silver protein products.
To find out whether you have a silver protein
product rather than a true silver colloid, look for these characteristics:
- Foaming: When
shaken, a silver protein product produces foam above the liquid that will
persist for minutes after being shaken. This is probably the single most
reliable indicator.
- Concentration: Silver
protein products tend to have very high concentration values, typically in
the range of 30 to 20,000 ppm.
- Color: The
color ranges from light amber to almost black with an increasing
concentration of silver.
Potential Danger – High. Due to the high concentration of
large silver particles, silver protein products are known to cause argyria, which turns your skin blue-gray
color.
True colloidal silver – True colloidal silver products are
the least prevalent type of colloidal silver on the market due
to the high cost of production. In true colloidal silver, the majority of the
silver content is in the form of silver particles. True
colloids will typically contain between 50 and 80 percent particles, while the
balance will be silver ions.
Because of the high concentration of silver
particles, true silver colloids are never clear like water.
True colloidal silver with a sufficient concentration of particles does not
look like water because silver particles – even very small particles – block
light from passing through, making the liquid appear darker.
Potential Danger – None. Due to the very low concentration
of ionic silver and small particle size, true silver colloids do
not cause argyria.
What Is Colloidal
Silver Useful For?
Colloidal silver has been known as a remarkably
effective natural antibiotic for centuries. But in past several decades,
research has shown colloidal silver can even eradicate antibiotic-resistant
microbes like MRSA,4 the Avian Influenza (bird flu), and Human
Corona virus (SARS).
In the mid-1970s, Dr. Robert O. Becker at
Syracuse Medical University began his groundbreaking research into colloidal
silver. He later concluded:
"What we have done was rediscover the fact
that silver kills bacteria, a fact which had actually been known for centuries…
All of the organisms we tested were sensitive to the electrically generated
silver ion, including some that were resistant to all known antibiotics…
In no case were any undesirable side effects of the silver treatment
apparent."
However, silver's innate anti-microbial effect
was actually common knowledge among doctors some 60 years before Becker's time.
In fact, in the early 1900s, Alfred Searle, founder of the global Searle
Pharmaceutical Company, had already discovered that silver in its liquid
colloidal form could kill even the most deadly of pathogens. In his book Colloids
in Biology and Medicine, 1919, Searle wrote:
"Applying colloidal silver to human
subjects has been done in a large number of cases with astonishingly successful
results… it has the advantage of being rapidly fatal to microbes without toxic
action on its host. It is quite stable. It protects rabbits from ten times the
lethal dose of tetanus or diphtheria toxin."
Unlike prescription antibiotic drugs, silver does
not create resistance or immunity in pathogens killed by it.
Recent Research
Espousing the Virtues of Colloidal Silver
Over the past few years, several new studies
have demonstrated the fact that silver is one of the most effective agents in
the battle against MRSA and other deadly antibiotic-resistant super pathogens,
including the:
- Brigham-Young Clinical Study – This study, published in the journal Current
Science in 2006,5 found
that a number of the antibiotic drugs which had previously been able to
kill MDR (multiple drug-resistant) pathogens, such as MRSA, could be
restored to full efficacy against the deadly pathogens, but only if
a liquid silver solution similar to colloidal silver was used in
conjunction with the drug.
- Iranian Clinical Study – This study6 also
found that silver increases the effectiveness of antibiotic drugs against
staph infections. The researchers concluded:
"The antibacterial activities of penicillin
G, amoxicillin, erythromycin, clindamycin, and vancomycin were increased in the
presence of silver nano-particles (Ag-NPs) against both test strains. The
highest enhancing effects were observed for vancomycin, amoxicillin, and
penicillin G against S. aureus."
- Taiwanese Clinical Study – Published in the journal Colloids
Surface B Biointerfaces7 in
2007, this study demonstrated that colloidal silver, by itself, eradicates
both MRSA and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, another deadly and
extremely opportunistic superbug.
- Czech Clinical Study –
Likewise, this Czech study published in the prestigious Journal of
Physical Chemistry B8 in
2006, also demonstrated that colloidal silver was a highly effective agent
against MRSA:
"…silver particles with a narrow size
distribution with an average size of 25 nm, which showed high antimicrobial and
bactericidal activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria,
including highly multi-resistant strains such as methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The study further demonstrated that very low
concentrations of silver could be utilized to destroy MRSA, as long as the
silver particles were very small, averaging 25 nm."
