Not again! Why, short of desperation, would a person ingest a heavy metal? For certain silver has been used as an antiseptic for a long time. Even silver based nasal sprays, throat spray and throat lozenges existed when I was a kid. I used them as if it were perfectly safe to do so. The real Original Listerine of my day did the same thing and yes a diluted concoction of Listerine was on the inside label for a nasal rinse. Bleaugh, alcohol up the nose? So what now, should I leap logic and inhale carbolic acid? This is the active ingredient in original antiseptics like Listerine. Phenol or carbolic acid kills all known life including viruses. Great if you feel sacrificing some flesh in killing pathogens is worth the trade off. Like so many metals, silver will burst living cells. In terms of inhaling colloidal silver, it will almost immediately lose the weak cohesion of a colloid, ionize and react as a poison. In silver's defense it binds with the thick mucus we CFer's harbor. Most will bind with the thickening salt and become photoreactive silver halides and silver salts. An amount of silver will attack microbes and toxins from infection. The removal of toxins is normally addressed with proper hydration. Nothing more toxic is formed when silver binds with cytotoxins. In other words silver and cytotoxins are both human poisons but combined they are no worse than either substances unbound chemically.
If anybody is interested in putting pure metals in their bodies why not copper? It is a proven antimicrobial metal used freely in water pipes and ships for those very properties. With billions of people years exposure to copper disolved in drinking water, it's safe to some degree. Most people wouldn't trust inhaling copper so why inhale mercury or silver? Overwhemling anecdotal stories are just that, no slight intended for those who swear by it. If it works for you, who am I to argue?
I am a professional researcher who has spent way more time than it was worth to establish benefit to risk statistics for coloidal silver. A year and a half of my time and lots of money tells me that as much as standard antibiotics fall short in the arsenal of CFers, antiseptics are topical and however they are used or misused, they are the ultimate broad spectrum antibiotic in that everything living it contacts it will kill.
Our antibiotics took eons to discover and the microscopic battle between bacteria, molds and viruses for dominance has given us designer drugs of almost magical qualities. Penicillin is nothing more than a common mold's chemical warfare agent against bacteria, that are fighting with the mold for dominion. We have taken to extracting stuff made by living things to see what it kills. If something helpful is found it is tested for bio-viability against mammalian cells. When a substance meets some basic criteria, it is taken to the next step toward being an antibiotic for us. So why not use something targeted to kill pathogenic infections and not harming body cells? Unless every antibiotic has been tried to exhaustion, silver, phenol and several classes of antiseptics intended for external use should stay external.
Do to youself the practice of physician. If you have a great personal journey, so much the better. Doctors have their place and at a minimum they make great co-pilots. Unless you have divining wisdom I would run any non FDA approved drug past two doctors first. Colloidal silver pisses me off for several reasons. 1. It is a scam, whether it works or not, ingest 1000mcg of colloidal silver and none of the silver excreted is the colloidal silver deemed inert since it is too big a molecule.
LL