Greetings and welcome, Rachel!
I am new to the list. Your archives are down and so I hope you don't
mind if I ask a couple of questions...
Please do...
... can somebody tell me what the difference is between colloidal and
ionic silver? Is it particle size and method of production? Which is
safer to ingest for medicinal purposes, colloidal or ionic silver, in
terms of preventing agyria problems?
Good questions, all.
Speaking in technical, rather than marketing terms, a colloid is a
suspension of particles that are small enough to stay dispersed in a
liquid just by the random mixing caused by Brownian motion within the
liquid. That's just the normal movement of the molecules of the liquid
due to the latent heat energy they posess due to the fact that our
planet isn't a dark, frozen rock in space. Thank the sun for that!
Colloidal particles could be pretty big, on an atomic scale, consisting
of 10's or 100's of atoms of a substance, or more. If they don't settle
out after a long time then they're small enough for the suspension to
be called a colloid; if they do settle out, they're not.
Fine clay in water can form a colloidal suspension, for example. It'll
stay cloudy indefinitely and not settle out.
An ion is a particle, too, but specifically an atom or small group of
atoms that has gained or lost at least one electron and thus has an
electrical charge.
Common table salt in water breaks apart into equal numbers of:
Na(+) sodium ions with a missing electron and a positive charge
Cl(-) chlorine ions with an extra electron and a negative charge
Even in plain water, random movement will cause there to be a few
hydrogen, H(+) ions and hydroxyl, OH(-) ions floating about, as water
molecules sponaneously break apart. They will recombine and cancel each
other out, and form again, indefinitely.
Now, talking about silver, including some translation of marketing-
speak:
What's generically been called "colloidal silver" seems to encompass
every damn thing anybody has ever bothered to put in a bottle.
Grind up silver metal into a powder, toss it in some liquid, and call
it colloidal silver... You'd be right, at least until it settles out in
the bottom of the bottle. Shake before use, no doubt! <shudder>
Put it in a protein gel to keep it suspended better and you'd have one
of the early "silver protein" products. (There are some recent versions
of these that are not so crudely made...)
Take a concentrated solution of some silver compound, mix it with
another chemical, causing the compound to break up and the silver to
precipitate out as tiny particles... and you'll have one of the
chemically derived products calling themselves colloidal silver. Some
of these are bottled and sold by health-food stores.
Take a concentrated solution of some silver compound and dilute it with
water and sell it directly... and you'll have yet another product that,
while it might be effective and safe if used sparingly, has also been
linked more than once to cases of argyria.
Do what most of us do, and buy or build a basic colloidal silver
generator, and you'll put silver into pure distilled water by low
voltage direct current electricity. At low concentrations, this will
produce mostly ions (single atoms) of silver, each bearing a positive
charge, floating around in the water. Up to the solubility limit (about
13ppm, isn't it?) these will mostly stay isolated in the water.
(Which has led to some of our members calling this kind of preparation
EIS, for Electrically Isolated Silver.)
Near the positive silver electrode, though, the local concentration can
be pretty high, leading to atoms hitting each other occasionally and
clumping together to make particles. These particles might or might not
still have a charge on them, but they're certainly small enough to stay
in suspension.
If you run the CS maker long enough, the ions of silver will become
crowded enough in the water to find each other and clump together just
by random motion. After running it long enough, the clumps of atoms can
grow big enough to start falling out of suspension. Go on even longer
and you'll end up with mud. <grin>
Thus, any product made this way is going to end up with some of both
the ionic and colloidal forms.
Most of us try to make a relatively low concentration "CS" or EIS that
will generally turn out to be 10 to 30% particles and 70 to 90% ions.
From a few ppm to about 10ppm is easy to do, safe, stable, and
generally effective. Exactly what proportion you produce isn't all that
important. It just works.
Back to marketing hype: People will claim that either ionic or
particulate (colloidal) silver is the part that's effective, and that
the other is less or not effective.
They'll say it's only because of the few percent of colloid that forms
that our simple EIS works at all.
Others will say the particulate part doesn't work and that it's the
ions that do the job...
A little thought will suggest that it's probably not anything as
obvious or simple as that, given the complexity of the human body...
After all, whatever you put in your mouth is going to interact with the
many salts, enzymes, and other chemicals in your saliva; some will be
absorbed into the bloodstream through your mucous membranes; anything
left will then hit the stomach environment, which can span a
considerable range of conditions depending on recent food or beverage
intake... before travelling into the intestines and yet another complex
chemical environment. All told, pretty much any form of silver you
ingest is going to be radically changed by *one* of those environments.
The short version:
Nobody KNOWS how silver actually works in the body, any claims to the
contrary aside.
Both colloidal and ionic silver seem to work, based on years of
experience by thousands of people. Almost all products are mixtures of
both forms anyway.
A low concentration (~5-10 ppm), mixed ionic/colloidal silver
preparation like we advocate, will drown you from excessive water
intake long before you can ingest enough silver to cause argyria, at
least as far as experience has shown so far.
Every case of argyria we know of has involved higher concentrations and
chemical salts or other compounds or protein-based preparations, if the
cause is known precisely at all.
In any case, we're all guinea pigs and lab rats, experimenting on
ourselves with little or no guidance from "proper authorities." In
other words, we're all on our own. You have to learn everything you can
from the experience of others and decide for yourself what will be the
best route for you to take. Consult your chosen medical professional
for advice and/or coordination with any other treatment you may be
persuing.
I'm sure if I've left anything out or made any mistakes others will
dive in with their corrections and additions. That's the way this place
works! <grin>
Let us know any further questions you have, Rachel, and, again, welcome
to the group.
Peace,
Mike D.
[Mike Devour, Citizen, Patriot, Libertarian]
[[email protected] ]
[Speaking only for myself... ]
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