Hello all.
When anyone does a Google seach for colloidal silver here in Australia
one of the first sites they see is the US National Centre for
Complementary And Alternative Medicine. I'm sure you've all seen it too
and would agree that it's a pretty effective party pooper for anyone
thinking about using colloidal silver. So to amuse myself on a wet windy
day I've written a little rejoinder. I hope this appears in a
reasonably readable format. For some reason my subject titles don't
usually appear so here it is just in case. "The National Uncomplementary
Centre for Alternative Medicine"
David
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The National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine ( NCCAM)
a US Government watchdog, makes the following claim -
"Colloidal silver can cause serious side effects. One is argyria, a
bluish-gray discoloration of the body."
This is misleading. Argyria isn't one side effect, its the ONLY known
side effect from the excessive ingestion of colloidal silver. Once you
overcome the fear of argyria and understand how rare it is, and how
easily it's avoided, then the benefits of colloidal silver can be yours.
The NCCAM goes on to make the following statement -
"Other side effects from using colloidal silver products may include
neurologic problems (such as seizures), fatigue, headaches, kidney
failure, skin irritation and stomach distress".
Note they use the word MAY. But in fact they KNOW (or should know) these
possible side effects in humans are speculative and entirely unproven.
There are NO medical reports connecting human neurological problems with
silver of any kind, let alone colloidal silver of the type made by 'home
brewers'. The fear that colloidal silver might cause neurological
problems and fatigue probably comes from experiments on rather
unfortunate rats and mice. (Rungby and Danscher 1984 for example). In
these experiments, the animals were given large daily doses of silver
nitrate in their drinking water. Whilst abnormal behaviour
(sluggishness) was eventually and deliberately induced, these
experiments had little relevence to humans because the amounts ingested
were vastly in excess of any likely human consumption. The rats intake
of 18 mg/per kg/per day for 125 days is roughly the equivalent of an
adult human drinking 180 litres of 10ppm colloidal silver PER DAY for
125 days straight. (It should also be noted that the rats were given
silver nitrate which is known to be much more 'toxic' than pure silver.
Home-made colloidal silver contains no silver nitrate)
The "kidney failure" claim has no clear reference but it appears to be
related to an easily researched Indian case of "Fatal renal and hepatic
failure following silver nitrate instillation for treatment of
chyluria". Put simply this means the unfortunate victim, I mean patient,
died after an operation to inject silver nitrate directly into the
centre of his kidney went horribly wrong. Apparently this is usually
quite a common and successful procedure (in India) but it has nothing at
all to do with drinking colloidal silver and the NCCAM should know it.
I can't find any authorative information about colloidal silver causing
"skin irritation" so I can only assume they are confusing colloidal
silver with silver jewellery. This is an understandable mistake.
Now, "stomach distress". Have you ever heard that term before? (What a
give-away that is!) But they might be on a winner here. I've read
thousands of testimonials and letters from regular users of home-made
colloidal silver and I must admit the occasional complaint of an upset
tummy does come up.
So, accepting that colloidal silver MAY cause the odd belly ache, the
hysterical (and I don't mean funny) raving of the NCCAM still seems
hugely at odds with the stance of such organisations at the US
Environmental Protection Agency and the US Agency for Toxic Substances.
Both these latter organisations have much more to lose if they 'get it
wrong' but they both take seem to take a pretty casual attitide to the
dangers of silver toxicity.
Isn't that funny? The organisation that's supposed to be providing
alternative medicine information is the one that's most opposed to
alternative medicine!
Regards
David
http://www.colloidalsilver.com.au/
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/alerts/silver/index.htm (The National
Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine)
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp146.html (The Agency for Toxic
Substances. 150 page silver toxicity report here)
http://www.epa.gov/iris/subst/0099.htm (The Environmental Protection
agency)
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P.S. Similar experiments that attempted to use silver to induce cancer
in animals eventually concluded that cancer was non-carcogenic.
The following quotes come from the US Enviromental Protection Agency
'Risk information System.'
"No evidence of cancer in humans has been reported despite frequent
therapeutic use of the compound over the years."... "They concluded
that finely divided silver powder injected i.m. does not induce
cancer."... "Further support for the lack of silver's ability to induce
or promote cancer stems from the finding that, despite long standing and
frequent therapeutic usage in humans, there are no reports of cancer
associated with silver."... "Silver nitrate was considered nonmutagenic
in this assay."... " Silver chloride was considered nonmutagenic in
this assay." "... Silver was not included as a metal of carcinogenic
concern.".
Maybe even the NCCAM got the message about that one.
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