Colloidal silver is a very effective home remedy, but it’s best used externally and never swallowed as it harms gut flora. More recent research has found that colloidal silver harms the brain.
What is Colloidal Silver?
Colloidal silver is one of the most effective natural antibiotics widely available to the public.
What’s more, colloidal silver is cheap and easily obtained at many health food stores. Some people make it at home. It consists of tiny silver particles suspended in liquid for use either externally or internally.
The remarkable antibiotic nature of silver has been known for centuries. In the early 1900′s, the founder of Searle Pharmaceuticals, Alfred Searle, wrote in his book The Use of Colloids in Health and Disease:
Applying colloidal silver to human subjects has been done in a large number of cases with astonishingly successful results…having 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.
In the 1970s, Dr. Robert O. Becker at Syracuse Medical University began to intensively research colloidal silver. He discovered that silver not only kills bacteria, but it actually killed bacteria that were resistant to all known antibiotics with no undesirable side effects.
Moreover, unlike prescription antibiotics, pathogens do not become resistant or immune to silver over time. It even has the ability to eradicate antibiotic-resistant microbes like MRSA.
This is because colloidal silver doesn’t poison the microbes like antibiotics do, but rather smothers them by adhering to their cell walls and inhibiting their enzyme production.
Internal Use of Colloidal Silver
Despite its stellar reputation as a natural antibiotic, I never swallow colloidal silver and don’t allow my children to ingest it either. I only use colloidal silver for externally based infections such as swimmers ear. Others I know use it to gargle with as a strep throat home remedy.
My reasons are fairly simple.
First of all, silver is a heavy metal that accumulates in the body over time, the same as lead, cadmium, and aluminum. Why would anyone knowingly consume heavy metals?
It never made any sense to me which is why I have always avoided consuming any silver solution including silver nitrates, ionic silvers, colloidal silvers, silver chlorides, and silver proteins.
The claim that colloidal silver is the only safe silver solution has never been at all convincing to me.
Dr. Kaayla Daniel PhD writes in her marvelous piece Mad as a Hatter: How to Avoid Toxic Metals and Clear Them from the Body:
Although the mental and physical problems from metal toxicity have escalated in recent years, our very language tacitly acknowledges the historic toxicity of certain metals: “Mad as a hatter” from the Civil- War-era’s crazed use of mercury sizing in hat manufacture, “gold fever” from the murderous greed of early prospectors, “lead poisoning” as black humor for “getting shot,” and, more recently, “get-the-lead-out” exhortations from trainers who would have us exercise long and hard in order to sweat out toxins and melt excess fat.
Certainly, occasional use of colloidal silver internally probably does no harm. This would including gargling with it to resolve strep throat without antibiotics.
Why risk it when there are plenty of natural antibiotics such as garlic, turmeric, cayenne, manuka honey, and oregano oil (oreganol) that are highly effective and present no metal toxicity issues?
Risks to Beneficial Bacteria
While the fact that silver is a heavy metal with accumulation in the body that is difficult to undo (and yes, it can permanently turn your skin blue if you get too much which happens with some forms of silver solution) is reason enough in my book to keep the colloidal silver for external use only, the biggest reason of all is to protect the gut microbiome.
You see, colloidal silver works not by poisoning microbes like antibiotics do, but by smothering them by adhering to their cell walls and inhibiting their enzyme production.
While colloidal silver’s unique method of killing bacteria is highly effective and does not lessen over time as microbes do not become resistant to it, it is not selective in the bacteria it kills.
In other words, colloidal silver can decimate beneficial bacteria in the gut just the same as pathogenic strains. Isn’t this exactly why conventional antibiotics are so problematic?
Reducing the population in the gut of beneficial bacteria is serious business no matter what the cause …natural or drug-based.
Dr. Martin Blaser MD of New York University’s Langone Medical Center who writes in the August 2011 edition of Nature, warns against harming the beneficial microbes in the gut:
Early evidence from my lab and others hints that, sometimes, our friendly flora never fully recover. These long-term changes to the beneficial bacteria within people’s bodies may even increase our susceptibility to infections and disease.
False Marketing Claims
Some colloidal silver manufacturers claim that their product does not harm beneficial microbes. Even some prominent alternative physicians deceptively claim it does not harm flora.
However, this information is usually a ploy to sell product and ignores the chemical realities of the metal’s effect on living organisms.
Silver Kills Microbes Indiscriminately
Steve Barwick, author of The Ultimate Manual on Colloidal Silver sets the record straight about this false advertising regarding colloidal silver:
But the truth is, colloidal silver does indeed act as a broad spectrum natural antibiotic. As such, if enough mineral silver reaches the intestinal tract it most certainly can kill off the friendly (i.e., beneficial) bacteria that thrive there.
Colloidal silver simply has no way of knowing a beneficial microbe from an infectious microbe. If the microbe is sensitive to silver, then silver will kill it whether it is a beneficial microbe or an infectious one.
Proponents of small amounts of colloidal silver taken internally say it won’t harm delicate gut balance. However, I choose not to take any chances given that many food-based natural antibiotics work just as well or even better for resolution of internal infections. This article details the best natural antibiotics to choose from instead of colloidal silver when an internal agent is required.
Why risk it where your delicate gut microbiome is concerned? Colloidal silver is a broad-spectrum antibiotic.
Just because it wasn’t obtained via prescription makes it no less of a risk to your delicate intestinal health.
Contraindicated on GAPS Diet
Due to its ability to upset the delicate gut balance and harm beneficial gut flora, colloidal silver is contraindicated on the GAPS Protocol for gut healing developed by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride MD.
Certified GAPS Diet Practitioners trained by Dr. Campbell-McBride recommend avoiding the ingestion of colloidal silver. This is necessary while attempting to rebuild the gut environment with beneficial microbes and healing/sealing the gut wall to put autoimmune disease in remission. L. D. Moore, a practicing GAPS Diet Practitioner, had this to say:
As a certified GAPS practitioner protecting the gut is the highest priority. I am SO careful at what my clients ingest that may destroy that delicate balance. I put colloidal silver in the no ingest bucket.
Do you take colloidal silver internally? Why or why not?
Wouldn’t it be better to use plant-based medicines such as garlic that have no risk in comparison, don’t build up in the body, act as food for flora, and are equally effective?
I’m interested to hear your reasons for this as my research tells me to just say no.
References
(1) The Use of Colloids in Health and Disease
(2) How to Avoid Toxic Metals and Clear Them from the Body
(3) The Ultimate Colloidal Silver Manual
(4) Stop the Killing of Beneficial Bacteria
(5) Does Colloidal Silver Kill Both Good and Bad Bacteria?
Probiotics taken two hours after taking silver is very important. But you might want to consider buying a nebulizer to use instead of ingesting so much CS. I found one for $35 online and no Rx needed. My daughter is having throat issues (not strep – viral) and started nebulizing this morning…her symptoms are already beginning to clear by this evening. Do not bother with Ionic Silver…it really isn’t good for much more than sunburn, Colloidal Silver at no less that 30ppm serves soooo many uses. Do your own research…beyond a blogger’s opinion. Utopia Silver is a good resource for studies.
My Holistic physician who is an M.D., highly recommends nebulizing silver and assures me it is very difficult to overdose. If not so great at antibacterial effect, why is it used to cover burns in hospital settings? I am terribly disappointed in this post and, now, must second guess all of your other suggestions. Ionic silver is ineffective for most applications, colloidal silver is a complete anti-microbial that will only do harm if intentionally misused.
It is not an effective natural antibiotic–in fact, it does nothing at all to bacteria. It’s been studied, tested, and the study results published in a peer-reviewed journal, the Journal of Wound Care. You can find an abstract of the study here: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15114827
Ingesting ionic silver is effective despite stomach acid.
The key to using ionic colloidal silver is taking it on empty stomach, roughly 20 minutes before meal times works fine. Our stomachs will only produce acid to digest. Stomach PH is about 3.5 during at mealtime, but is much higher in-between meals, approx 5.5. We’d have holes in our stomachs if we produced acid all day long.
How do you use it topically? I use it in my hair, but how do you treat a skin infection effectively with it?
I have multiple drug allergies. Pen, Floxins, Macrolides, Cephalosporins etc. My internist believes (and believe me it was hard to get him to admit it) that the reason for this is my family doctor’s ignorance in prescribing me nothing but broad spectrum antibiotics through my 20’s for every little thing. Sore throat? No need to culture.. now off you go with some Keflex. Chronic sinus infection? Here’s some Duricef… here’s a zpak, here’s this and that. You get the picture. I was also ignorant to these drugs or what they could be doing to me. Once I reached the age of 44 years old, I started having some major allergic reactions to them. Cipro nearly killed me. After taking it off and on most of my life, I started a round of it for a UTI and BAM my throat started to close, and I couldn’t breathe. I was terrified. And since that, I’ve begun having hives, rashes, throat closing to various drugs. It’s rather frightening to live this way knowing if you ever needed serious help… you may not be able to handle the cure. My doctor says I’d need to be admitted into the hospital if I needed an antibiotic and put on an IV and pumped full of antihistamines and watched carefully. So, two months ago when I caught a very nasty case of Strep group A in my throat, I panicked! I cried! The doctor looked at me and shrugged his shoulders, not knowing what to do with me. He insisted I try Erythromycin… being I haven’t had it since the mid 1990’s, I may do OK on it. So I took it, and three days later I landed in the ER unable to breathe, and my skin turned red on my face, neck and arms. I went home and laid in the fetal position… crying my head off. They told me I may have to go into the hospital just for the strep throat. So my husband’s co worker heard of this and encouraged me to try colloidal silver. I didn’t trust a homemade brand so my husband bought a big bottle of it at a nearby HFS. I honestly thought it was not going to help. But if you have ever had that knives/burning torturous swallowing feeling from strep, you get the desperation one feels to stop it. I’d swallow lard from a can at that point, if I thought it would go away. So I started with the silver and it wasn’t doing much… I gargled and took a tablespoon every few hours. My fever increased. My intuition said… to take more so I increased the dose and by the end of the evening the fever dropped and never returned. It took a good 3 days of increased dosing and the pain was completely gone. The pus pockets on my throat had gone from upwards of 8 down to 3 or 4. I felt very good all over too. I felt like going out walking.. shopping…. I was pretty much surprised because in the past it always took me a week or more on antibiotics, and sometimes MULTIPLE antibiotics just to cure one thing. I have spent so much money on antibiotics all of my life it’s unreal. And when I started to really study the side effects and liver damage from them… I’m angry that I ever took them. I feel that the antibiotics ruined me. I stayed on the CS for a few more days, lowering the dose and spreading it further apart. I returned to my Dr to get cultured again…. I insisted. Not a rapid strep test, but a culture. And it came back clean. All of the pockets on my throat were gone. No antibiotic has ever worked that quick for me, and usually after antibiotic use… my stomach is a wreck for the following week. Not with the CS… however, I still took some probiotics just to cover my bases. I know that ingestion is not favorable.. but in my situation… it’s not favorable to put myself at risk… enter the hospital and try to force my body to take drugs that it doesn’t want. There may be a day or situation that would warrant this, but not for smaller things. I also experimented with OOO when my husband came down with a cold..well.. he was a willing participant. His cold lasted 3 days and tapered off by 4. When he gets sick with cold… it knocks him down to where he needs to take off work and go to bed for a couple days. Not this time…. he was able to continue working and said he felt energetic on the OOO. As for CS and OOO, I treat them like they are antibiotics and do not use them every day for avoidance of getting sick. They work very well for us when we do not use them outside of being ill.
I had to take colloidal silver and grape fruit seed extract when I had citrobacter causing my dysbiosis. After taking colloidal silver, I have been even more fatigued. Even months after stopping the silver (I was on for 3 weeks) I am even way more fatigued than I was before. Is it possible for silver to give you long lasting fatigue?
I make my own colloidal silver/ That way, It takes 30 minutes to produce 250 ml of top quality silver, and a further couple of hours to stabilize the solution by reduction. Much of the so-called colloidal silver on sale will not have been reduced, and to compensate for this is sold in amber bottles, with instructions to store away from light. As for the efficacy and safety of CS, don’t forget that it is used in all major burns units in the U.S. and the UK.
Dear Orsen, how do you reduce your silver? I’m doing it by myself too but I never knew it has to be reduced.
Thanks!
Ciao
Adriano
Silver is toxic?
Not according to any accepted published information. According to the CRC handbook 52nd edition page B-30:
While silver itself is not considered to be toxic, most of its salts are poisonous due to the anions present.
Silver is a transition metal, not a heavy metal, and according to the EPA totally non-toxic to mammals. It is extremely toxic to molds, fungus, bacteria, protozoa and viruses.
MSDS sheets for silver all indicate 0 health effects. (2)
But for more than 40 years we have known that silver is a hard, proven carcinogen – a cancer-causing agent.
Every modern reference lists silver has having no carcinogenic properties.
The EPA restricts any carcinogens to negligible levels. The level that the EPA now accepts in drinking water is 1.142 ppm. If you assume a person drinks 64 ounces of water with 1 ppm of silver, and takes 2 ounces of 5 ppm colloidal silver, then they would receive 6.4 times as much silver in their EPA approved drinking water than the colloidal silver. It is incomprehensible that 2 ounces of 5 ppm CS could be harmful and that over 6 times that much in your drinking water is not.
Silver is not listed as a human carcinogen by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the National Toxicology Program (NTP), the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) or the European Union (EU). (3)
Metallic silver is listed in the 1979 Registry of Toxic Effects as causing cancer in animals.
This is an old document and all versions are available by subscription only. However OSHA not only lists this general document, but they have a document, “TOXICOLOGICAL PROFILE FOR SILVER” specific to silver at the CDC website. (1) The following is the most recent information they have on silver with regards to cancer:
No studies were located regarding the following health effects in humans or animals after inhalation exposure to silver or silver compounds.
Claims that it is safe have come primarily from the companies that make silver products – hardly a trustworthy source of unbiased information.
Actually the data that it is safe comes from the fact that not one single study has ever found any toxicity to silver or as a cause of cancer. Companies selling silver products simply state those facts. I have not found one study in 5 years of searching that has indicated that silver is not safe, as opposed to many which show a great lack of safety for typical modern antibiotics. The CDC has found this to be true as well as they indicate in reference 1.:
Predominantly negative genotoxicity studies and the lack of reports of cancer associated with silver in humans, despite long-standing and varied usage, suggest that silver does not cause cancer.
Silver in any form is a bio-accumulative toxic heavy metal, like mercury, lead, and arsenic.
False, silver is not a heavy metal, it is a transition metal, as is copper and gold. Comparison with toxic heavy metals is a red herring. It is also false that it is bioaccumulative. Studies done by Roger Aldman (4) have shown that virtually 100% of silver taken orally is eliminated from the body within a few months.
Its action as an antibiotic comes from the fact that it is a non-selective toxic “biocide.”
It is not a biocide, which means that it is toxic to all of life, it is germicide, that is only toxic to viruses and one celled life form. That is exactly what one wants if trying to kill bacteria, viruses, algae, funguses and protozoa. It is a proven fact that is it not toxic to mammalian cells, and when taken as a colloid in water in a typical strength of 10 ppm, the water is more toxic than the silver. Water has an MD50 of 190 G/KG for mice which works out to less than 2 gallons for a 100 pound woman. (6)
It is known – and acknowledged – that long-term use of colloidal silver or silver salts deposits metallic silver under the skin, turning people’s skin an ashen-gray color, an affliction known as argyria (see reference below).
Once again a false statement, one that is easily proven false. Silver salts do and can cause argyria, that is not in dispute. The physics is well known and is experienced by everyone as the standard photographic process. Silver salts when exposed to light gain an electron producing a silver atom. Then the silver atom (known as the latent image in film), will grow when exposed to additional silver salts and a developer in an alkaline solution (known as development in photography). When the silver particles grow sufficiently, they will begin absorbing light and causing a darkening of the area, whether in a photographic print, or the skin of an animal. It is impossible to make a photograph using silver particles to start with, that is the end result (and if you leave a dark photo which is dark because it has particles in the emulsion in the light over time it will tend to fade, not darken). Likewise it is impossible to cause argyria using colloidal silver which IS silver particles already. Silver compounds and silver colloid have nothing in common as far as argyria is concerned, and despite what many claim colloidal silver does not only not cause argyris, it can be an effective prophylactic against argyria. That is if colloidal silver is taken with silver salts there will be a reduced likelihood of argyria from the salts. The following reference uses IES to mean Electrolytically Isolated Silver, which is a combination of both colloidal silver and ionic silver that many people make with distilled water and pure silver electrodes:
What happens when you take silver compounds.
A silver compound will typically become silver chloride as soon as it hits the stomach. The silver chloride is sparingly soluble, about .8 ppm. The dissolved silver chloride will move into the blood stream and once there will be exposed to chemicals that will induce the silver to plate out on any other silver particles present. However initially there will be no other silver particles present, so the silver chloride circulates in the blood until exposed to light in the skin, where they are photo reduced to silver atoms. This is the photographic process that occurs when you take a picture (with a film camera). Once the silver atoms are produced in the skin, then the rest of the silver chloride will begin reducing onto those particles making them grow very fast, and resulting in many of them getting stuck in the skin. Since the particles are so small, they will appear as black or blue, giving the skin a bluish cast. This is called argyria, and can result from taking silver compounds without any colloidal component.
What happens to EIS when taken internally?
Since there are two components to EIS, then two different things happen.
The colloidal portion diffuses through the stomach wall rather quickly and enters the blood stream as long as the particles are small enough.
The ionic portion is a combination of silver hydroxide and silver oxide. While in solution they continually convert from one to the other and back again. Each has a solubility of about 13 ppm, so any EIS which is less than about 26 ppm and a pH of 7 will be totally dissolved. Upon contact with the HCl (hydrochloric acid) of the stomach both of these compounds will immediately form silver chloride. The silver chloride has a solubility of .8 ppm, so most of the silver chloride will precipitate out, but the remaining part will quickly move into the blood stream. As it does, that which precipitated will redissolve and move into the blood stream as well. The end result is that most of the silver chloride will move into the blood stream over time, but at a lower rate than the colloidal portion.
Once it is in the blood stream it is exposed to the same effects we discussed for silver compounds above. Basically it will try to plate out on any silver particles it finds. Since there will be colloidal silver which already passed into the blood, there will be lots of particles for it to plate out on. So in short order the silver in the silver chloride plates out onto the colloidal particles already there, and they grow by a small amount. Typically for an EIS of 10% particulate content, the particles should grow to about double in size. This is insufficient to cause them to get caught up into tissues, and they eventually get removed by the kidneys.
So, as it turns out. colloidal silver is actually a prophylactic against argyria, instead of a cause as some would have you believe.
Argyria is considered permanent.
It is by many, but there are reports of protocols that have successfully removed argyria in the last 10 years.
However it is agreed one does not want argyria, and thus should avoid silver salts and MSP if at all possible.
It also accumulates in internal organs, continually exposing the cells of those organs to silver, wreaking unknown havoc, and it is likely that it actually interferes with the body’s normal immune processes.
This is proven wrong by a number of studies, as given above. Silver does not accumulate, except in cases of argyria from silver compounds, one study was cited above already. What kind of statement is “wreaking unknown havoc”? It means that there is no known havoc, so there is the assumption of some “unknown havoc” that must occur to support his view. Unscientific at best and totally misleading at worst. Also it is likely that it interferes with immune process is not only pure speculation, but contrary to thousands of reports of people (including myself and members of my family) who have effectively never caught a cold, the flu or anything else after taking an ounce or two of colloidal silver a day. I began taking one to two ounces of 5 to 10 ppm colloidal silver a day in 1999, and have not had one single herpes simplex outbreak since although I would typically get at least one outbreak a month previously.
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Wow. Thank you very much for taking the time to share all this info with us. I appreciate it!
WOW!!!! Very informative. Even checking OSHA! Amazing, tysvm????
HI, lots of comments on this! I would agree with you in principal…though if in a distressing time of major infection an exception can be made. And the body can clear out heavy metals if things are working properly, and things like Fulvic acid are excellent chealtors that will remove heavy metals from us as well.
But I would add this: silver in the ionic form is most beneficial, and it is in what you can call a “dissolved” state then. It is not the same as colloidal silver, which are actual tiny particles of metal, as you know. Ions do not accumulate in the same way in the body. Sadly, ionic silver mixes with chlorine in our stomachs to produce silver chloride, which is not overly harmful or anything, it’s just not that helpful either. So ingesting ionic silver is almost useless. Hence colloidal silver will get the silver past your gut and ions can get into you that way as well.
However, the very best way is to nebulize silver, to breath in silver in it’s ionic form. This goes straight into your blood, and bypasses the gastric tract altogether, eliminating the main problem of getting silver into you. It is by far the safest and most effective way to get silver into you internally. Hope this helps.
Interesting! How would you go about breathing it in?
by using a nebulizer
That is Right and Wrong.
Ingesting ionic silver is effective despite stomach acid.
The key to using ionic colloidal silver is taking it on empty stomach, roughly 20 minutes before meal times works fine. Our stomachs will only produce acid to digest. Stomach PH is about 3.5 during at mealtime, but is much higher in-between meals, approx 5.5. We’d have holes in our stomachs if we produced acid all day long.
All antibiotics are not selective in the bacteria they kill. This is why people have bad stomachs after a course of such medicine because it attacks the flora in your intestines too, which are good bacteria. The reason we have different antibiotics is due to different ones being more resistant to others depending on the bacteria present.
No kidding just like the article says but what’s the gaps diet?