Argyria is the real deal but the other side effects are speculation. A
few months ago I tracked the claims of seizures, neurological problems,
kidney damage, indigestion, headaches, fatigue, etc, as far as I could
and have found they were barely credible.
The FDA gets its info from the National Center for Complimentary and
Alternative Medicine. http://nccam.nih.gov/health/alerts/silver/
In turn, the NCCAM gets its info from the Natural Medicine Comprehensive
Database. http://www.naturaldatabase.com
I subscribed to that service and found that most of the claims are based
on the speculative idea that drinking colloidal silver might induce the
same symptoms as Metal Fume Fever.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_fume_fever Basically, metal fume
fever is what you get if you inhale lungfulls of toxic metal fumes such
as from welding galvanised iron or working in a metal foundry.
The other main reference listed in the NMCD database is 'Silver Products
for Medical Indications, Risk benefit Assessment , Journal of Toxicology
1996 Fung and Bowen'. I couldnt find this paper anywhere on the net so I
had to buy it from the National Library.
Its 8 pages, almost entirely about argyria, but with a couple of very
unconvincing hypothesis', mentioned almost as an aside, that silver
might cause other symptoms. The trail for the source of these
hypothesis' then gets even more blurred. But I think they are based on
experiments in the mid 80's in which rats were fed high doses of silver
nitrate every day until they started to get a bit cranky. (About 140
days straight as I recall). Even the researchers in those experiments
concluded that the doses were so high that they bore no relevence to a
real human situation.
So in the end I'd have to say that the proof that silver causes side
effects other than argyria is extremely unconvincing.
A few months ago here in Australia the TGA (our FDA) published an alert
that colloidal silver had caused in an elderly man 'debilitating fatigue
accompanied by blue skin discolouration, dilated cardiomyopathy, amnesia
and incoherent speech.' On three ocassions I asked the TGA to add some
reference to the alert that proves that silver could cause any of these
symptons other than argyria. They couldn't, and in the end simply said
that the doctors diagnosis was good enough for them. I asked 'How can a
doctor make such a diagnosis when theres no research to prove that
silver can cause such a thing?' They had no answer for that other than
"Go away".
David
Fox News states:
The FDA does not consider colloidal silver safe or effective to treat
any disease or condition. In fact, taking it could have serious side
effects, such as:
-- Argyria -- which is an irreversible blue-gray discoloration of your
skin, nails and gums
-- Seizures and other neurological problems
-- Kidney damage
-- Indigestion
-- Headaches
-- Fatigue
-- Skin irritation
