Silver Threads and Golden Needles
Before I even start, I have to say that you must talk with your doctor and find out whether your use of any of the products mentioned in this post, or indeed anywhere on this site, is appropriate for you. All statements are only personal opinion, and have not been approved by any authority or agency or anyone else whatsoever. And read our disclaimer statement.
There are some things about silver and gold that we all know. They are precious. They are valuable. They are useful.
Gold has unique uses in electronics and many other practical things that give it value beyond any sort of monetary system. Silver is very useful too. We are just now remembering what some of the most important practical uses are.
People of long ago, no-AMA-medicine days, knew some of the ways to use silver for wound care and health. Wise kings stored their personal water in silver containers. Mostly it was thought that the ‘virtue‘ of silver would take away any possible poisons someone might have added to the water to kill the king. Well, that was not always true, and gold did not do the trick either, or they would not have had tasters who sampled the kings food and drink.
But they knew that it helped. It was indisputably true that water would still be good to drink after several years of storage in the silver containers. Archeologists have opened some that were lost for many, many years… and amazingly, were still drinkable. The silver did kill ambient microbes that often infested the untreated water of those days. And that contaminated water could become quite deadly after only a relatively short period of storage. So, in a way, silver did keep the water from being ‘poisoned’… at least by bacteria.
And then there were the unsubstantiated stories of the, again, virtue of silver in treating wounds. I always believed them to be stupid mystic tales. And the phrase, ‘born with a silver spoon in their mouth’, made me a little crazy, but I supposed that just meant that the person was born into a rich family. But it did bother me that they didn’t say ‘gold spoon’. Surely that would be more obvious and to the point. But they didn’t. They said silver.
Fast forward to about 3 years ago in the locker room of my gym. A guy I knew was putting something all over his face like aftershave, but it was out of an old beer bottle, and it had no smell. Of course I asked him what he was doing. He told me it was silver. Small particles of silver in water. He then drank some. I was appalled.
But still curious. Checking out how easy I could make a fast exit if necessary, I asked him why.
Much to my surprise, he gave a rational account of using the silver water on some skin problems that went away, and his belief that drinking the stuff was good for him. He offered me some. I passed.
But my curiosity kept bothering me. So I researched it a little. And came back to him and said, okay, let me try some. He was very gracious, and gave me the rest of his bottle. It turns out he made it at home with a machine he had purchased on the web. I wondered if I would die.
I did not. With fear and trembling, I used it on a little scratch. It got better, a little more quickly than usual, I thought maybe. I tried it on a little scaly patch next to my nose. Humm… maybe a little better after a couple of days.
At that point, I did some deeper research. I looked into the claims that said silver would make a person turn gray or blue. I found out the difference between elemental silver and very small particle silver, between silver in solution and … the ‘gold standard’… colloidal silver. That’s where I hit pay dirt. Not only did I find out that it is not possible for colloidal silver to turn a person gray*, but professional nurses in England were demanded colloidal silver to use in their hospital work. I mean, it was the get-silver-in-here-or-we-quiit kind of demanding it. And they got it.
I’ll take the story from there, next post.
*Argyria is the formal term for turning gray from ingesting elemental silver. It is possible and even probable if you constantly ingest relatively large particles of silver. However, it physically can’t happen with the nanoparticles in good colloidal silver. It’s simply a matter of size. The body can retain the larger particles. It cannot retain the typically 10 micron size particles in good colloidal silver. It’s the same difference as trying to put a boulder through a screen… or fine sand.
Not everyone agrees with the statement above. Here is one of the most vocal and vehement disagreements from a person born in 1942 who developed argyria at age 14 from the elemental silver in prescribed nose drops. She hates silver and voices just about every possible reason not to use it. I thought you should hear from her before the next post.
