colloidal Silver?

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politicaljules

New member
Hello All!

This is my first time posting, but I am desperately trying to find information about colloidal silver.

There is some talk bubbling up among my Cf community about nebulizing colloidal silver, so I wanted to get a feel for it from y'all. I've been trying to find research on the issue but all I can come up with is claims by the actual companies selling the product.

I will admit I am very skeptical, so this post will reflect my fear. Please know I am not trying to offend anyone or start an argument, but I would like to see some healthy debate on the issue. I think we can be adults and not get everyone's ire up. :) :) :)

It is not of the silver's antibiotic properties I have doubts about per se. Rather, it is the sterility of the product generated being aerosolized and inhaled into the lungs of a person with Cf that worries me.

Several members of one Cf group are really pushing the members to purchase a silver generator (which is fairly expensive btw.) But in order to generate the silver infusion the instructions include purchasing distilled water from those big gallon jugs to make the silver infusion.

It's always been drilled into my head that distilled water is not sterile. It is highly disinfected. The distillation removes the minerals tap water has, but it is not labeled or certified as sterile. Which means It does not have to be packaged for sterility like sterile water. I am assuming that would make the risk of contamination either on the shelf, or once it is brought home increase the longer it sits there.

Our clinic frowns against using distilled water to rinse Neb cups, for the same reason that it is not sterile.

When I asked about the sterility of inhaled colloidal silver, I was told that the silver kills everything anyway, so I should not worry that the distilled water is not sterile. The rebuttal to my argument was that the solution is completely safe because the silver will take care of any organisms or contamination.

However, I feel abandoning sterile procedures on the 'silver cures all' claim is inexcusable when it comes to the lungs. Especially for those with Cf.

If it was to be taken orally, I might be less skeptical, but the push is to nebulize it, so we could be off antibiotics forever. Which sounds promising.

I have other issues about the silver/distilled water combo drying out the mucus membranes because the formula is hypotonic which draws fluid away, as opposed to hypertonic which liquifies the tissues.

I also read some studies about ultrasonic nebulizers and distilled water causing bronchospasms in patient's with asthma, but that is not a huge worry because the study said that regular compressor nebulizers were ok because the particles were bigger and did not cause the same problem.

Anywhoo, I am looking forward to the discussions and responses that anyone can offer. Both for, and against.

Cf Mom 2 Phoebe,
Julie
 
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keefer11

New member
I'm curious about it, too, and what people's opinions are on it. I know some people who take it as a supplement and claim it helps, have you heard anything about that?
 
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chacha11

Guest
it's best to purchase colloidal silver, rather than make it yourself, it tends to be 'home making'option, that can cause the changes in skin colour and that's if you drink gallons of it!
My son has been taking silver for 10 years, it's helped alot and never caused any problems at all.
His consultant ran the silver through the hospital lab for testing, no problems found.
 
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LittleLab4CF

Super Moderator
The debate over antibiotic silver and colloidal silver is over forty years old for me. The first time I investigated these products I was involved in the holistic movement of that time. Many of my friends had ended up there after following Timothy Leary’s call to tune in, turn on and for some this is where they dropped out.

In the late ‘60s there was little data supporting the efficacy or the side effects and dangers of ingesting silver. And all that was available came from those who were promoting it. Sound familiar? Silver has been valued for making eating utensils less so for the beauty of the metal and more because of its visible reaction to toxins. Genghis Kahn used pure silver chop sticks, polished before every meal so that the slightest tarnish would immediately alert him to poisoned or spoiled food. From silver spoons to meat forks, the wealthy have had high tech instruments of detection for a long time. Silver serving plates and other food surfaces provide a naturally antiseptic surface historically. Today nearly all silver utensils are alloyed metals with tarnish resistant surfaces. The primary reason a precious metal was utilized has become again, fashion. This begins to show why there is an interest in silver as an antiseptic and possibly an antibiotic.

Silver based antiseptics for surface wounds have been and still are used. With most antiseptics, doctors have always been interested in internal use as an antibiotic. Most antibiotics are nothing more than a chemical agent excreted by a competing microbe that is not lethal to human cells. Silver is a heavy metal to the body but large quantities can be tolerated. Most antibiotics begin to diminish the capacity of the liver and kidneys to metabolize and excrete after a certain amount of use and silver is not known to be easily metabolized and excreted once in the bloodstream. Outside the bloodstream unless it’s in the GI tract, it is in “storage” locked up in tissue like lead or mercury is.

To answer the question over the quality of colloidal silver, there is no quality of silver colloid that isn’t immediately dissolved by almost anything making up a human body. The salt in our sweat tarnishes silver and that same process applied to colloidal silver just happens so much faster. The hemoglobin in our blood instantly breaks up silver into oxides and the insides of our lungs will bind up silver nearly instantaneously. These are organs designed to manage oxygenation and microscopic bits of silver cannot survive in this environment. In other words, there is no value in a colloidal suspension of silver over a solution of silver because colloids are dissolved like micro meteorites hitting earth’s atmosphere.

The big question I ponder is the bio-film effect of the desiccated mucus in the lungs. If bacteria could be attacked from both surfaces of this mucus, possible colonies of microbes could be fully destroyed. If silver could be inhaled to coat the mucus in the lungs, bacteria would be killed on contact. The silver will dissolve into silver salts after making contact with the mucus and permeate throughout the mucus layer. If it makes it to the mucosal cells, they may be destroyed if they are compromised. This is a best and worst case scenario from what I can see with nebulized silver. It could be very effective against bacteria too far for conventional antibiotics to reach. At some point, the mucosal layer will contact a concentration of silver. It may or may not be lethal to our body cells. This is the nature of antiseptics. The active ingredient in original, original Listerine kills everything known to man in a higher concentration.

Finally, I appreciate the idea of using an agent like silver to insure a sterile fluid to nebulize. HyperSal would do the job of a silver additive, to your lungs and the water. Silver iodide is a potent sterile additive but may not be particularly pleasant. Using it or any other water treatment requires a microscopic amount compared to silver. Silver, colloidal or not, is antiseptic and adding enough to sterilize your water is a little weird but it won’t kill you.

Distilled water is not sterile as you noted however there isn’t any medium for bacteria for grow in the water. By the nature of distillation it smells stale. Take a half filled bottle of distilled water and shake it for one minute. Fresh air dissolved in the water will eliminate that smell and the dissolved air will kill what little bacteria might be floating around. De-ionized water isn’t packaged for sterility but it is a killer of bugs naturally. It has a chemical purity that makes it hungry for solutes and a juicy microbe won’t stand a chance. It is a thought if you are looking for an ideal water source.

Colloidal silver is bad for most people’s blood pressure, especially mine. I laboriously tested and debunked the idea of colloidal silver not just once but twice. The second time I made a rather humorous but scientifically accurate model of a human digestive system to demonstrate the opportunities the body has to dissolve a silver colloid. By logical extension I know a colloid of silver won’t last in the lungs any longer than in the digestive tract.

What I will not conscience is the idea that silver can be taken chronically. The hucksterism starts and stops here. Silver is NOT something that easily leaves the body and like all heavy metals it accumulates in certain tissues. No sensible doctor would prescribe or patient would take a high dose of tetracycline for a year or six. There is no good reason for pathogens failing to develop resistance against silver fairly quickly and it would lose its value. Just like any drug, resistant pathogens develop with exposure.

A lot of enthusiasm for colloidal silver is the result of vitriolic blow-back by established medicine. I have heard every conspiracy theory on the topic. There is no question that medicine is a jealous endeavor and there is always going to be a critic. No organized interests are attempting to wrongly discredit the internal use of silver. Studies have been done but the reason they aren’t in abundance is they quickly established the limits of silver and moved on. The only studies I have seen on antibiotic (internal) use of silver have been from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. These were done in the early ‘70’s and again in the ‘90’s and I did not get them through the internet. In another discussion on colloidal silver I had promised to retrieve my archives of these articles. Haven’t found them and I am in no hurry to spend more time looking.

Try it if you like. Don’t invest money in any special equipment. If you can, choose a product that has been critically reviewed. Use it in moderation, either small quantities or for short periods, hopefully both. I can’t and don’t want to crush the colloidal silver enthusiasts. Because I am a professional scientist, sort of like a medical mythbuster, I have put many medicines and medical concepts through a scientific analysis. My word is no more valid than my methods. It isn’t hard to understand silver, it is hard to understand why there is such focus on a limited antiseptic.

Silver is not a panacea,

LL
 
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chacha11

Guest
hello .. My son has taken colloidal silver for 10 years .. His hospital consultants are aware and wrote an article on CF and silver in one of the medical journals,
He is routinely checked for levels of Silver. blood and tissue samples are taken each year. He has received results today and both are absolutely fine .. These tests are carried out within the hospital lab and with the biochemist .. 'Safe' levels of silver, as informed by my sons consultant, is 55, my sons was 0.2, after 10 years of use, his consultant said it would be absolutely impossible to get anywhere near that figure, you'd have to drink gallons and gallons every day .. My son takes it orally and also nebulises.
 
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Mrkdale

Guest
My experiance with colloidal Silver

I will confess that a good amount of this discussion is beyond my scope of knowledge but I can at least share my experiance with colloidal Silver.

I first used it on myself back in the late 80's. I had just burned through my first antibiotic and was a bit horrified by my dr.'s explanation of drug resistant bacteria. I stopped by my local health food store and purchased one of the more reputable brands at the time. I was using it to fight chronic nasal infections so I was sucking it up into my nasal passages mixed with saline NOT nebulizing it.

For the first couple of months it truly was a mirricle drug! I got off of all my antibiotics. My sinuses were wonderfully clear and open and I could feel air touching areas inside my head that I had long forgotten existed. It was wonderful. I had discovered an amazing cure and the traditional med folks could screw themselves. That was the first couple of months or so.

After that, my nasal drip started comming back and slowly but surely after a couple more months I was right back where I started with clogged up infected sinuses again. I think the whole "journey" last 6 to 7 months.

Every now and then I give it another try and some times it helps for a bit but never has it worked like it did that first two months.

Hope that helps,
 
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ethandley

Guest
Hi chacha, do you use a certain brand of silver or do you make it yourself? Also, do you have different ppm for oral versus neb'd? Thanks.
 
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Wrightclick

New member
The last thing you should mix it with is saline (salt). The silver combines with the salt to form silver chloride. That's what 'blue man' Paul Karason did. He added salt to his home brew to speed up the making process. So he was drinking and rubbing silver chloride on his skin, NOT pure nano-particle colloidal silver. The other part the media leaves out is he drank a QUART A DAY for years! Thousands of times more than a normal dose. It turned him blue but on the upside it otherwise caused no harm to his system. Try that with aspirin, antibiotics or even water and you'd be dead.
 
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Wrightclick

New member
Try Colloidal Silver

I'm a 61 year old male who doesn't have CF but have lungs that are 'functionally the same' as CF due to an immune problem, which my system yielded to
pneumonia dozens and dozens of times since I was 8 years old. Part of one lung was removed at age 14 due to infection. On/off antibiotics routine my
whole life, as many as 20 10 day rounds in a year, rotating 3 or 4 different ones. Severe Bronchitis, Bronchiectasis, COPD. The dreaded Pseudomonas
aeruginosa in my lungs.

At age 41 I was told I had 1-5 years to live unless I got a lung transplant, but I wasn't a good candidate due to my immune problem and prior lung surgery.
I told them I wasn't a statistic and they were fired. I've been taking immune serum by IV every two weeks for 25 years to try to boost my immune
system, yet I was still playing the antibiotic game and they were becoming less and less effective. Due to lung deterioration I went on oxygen at night in
2001 and then 24/7 in 2006. But by God I'm still here!

After doing a lot of research on Colloidal Silver I decided on June 11, 2012 to go to the health food store instead of the pharmacy. I had just left the Dr.'s
office with a Rx to refill for Levaquin but I just didn't want to do it any more. It wasn't solving the problem. I bought a bottle of Colloidal Silver that cost
$30 for an 8 oz. bottle with a local brand name. I put 6cc (1 1/5 teaspoon) in my nebulizer cup and breathed it in. I did it 3 or 4 times the first 3 or 4
days. By the end of the second day I had already seen marked improvement. Within a few days my lungs were more clear than they had been in months.

Today, 1/3/2014 I am 571 days antibiotic FREE. After a year and a half I also decided to suspend taking the semi-weekly immune IV in August 2013.

That's the first time I haven't gotten it in 25 years!

(Before anyone starts posting about the 'Blue Man' I average just over one 8 oz. bottle of Colloidal Silver a month. There is a formula you can use to
determine a safe level based on EPA standards. One or two 6cc doses a day is well under the dose to cause any blue problems (argyria). In addition, he
(Paul Karason) was not using pure Colloidal Silver. He was making his own and added salt to speed up the batch process, which means he was making
silver chloride, not pure colloidal silver. And he was drinking a quart a day and rubbing it on his skin for YEARS!)

I use the nebulizer mist and inhale in through my mouth but also through my nostrils and over my face where I tend to touch my face with my hands.

I've only had one or two colds during this entire time (unheard of!) so I boosted my dosage to double it for a few days. When I feel an infection trying to
start up I also sip an ounce (in 3 separate sips, that is I sip 1/3 oz. 3 times) and hold it under my tongue for several minutes each time and swish it
around my mouth then swallow. When I'm clear I stop taking it altogether. More and more recently I am able to go for days without taking any silver. Of
course with severely damaged lungs there's still a small collection of mucus, but it's relatively tiny and it is pure white 'spit' not heavy dark mucus. In other
words pretty normal lung secretion. I can live with that.

My lungs have never been better. My nasal passages are clear most of the time. I don't even have to blow my nose in the mornings and barely once a day
now. I'm sure all of you know what your sinuses are like when you have an ongoing infection.

Most of you have a nebulizer. Get a bottle and try it. Brigham's Law: If it can't hurt and it might help, you have to do it.

You can go to a local store and buy a bottle at top dollar like I did to try it, but after doing a lot of research and shopping I've been buying it from
Utopiasilver.com. First time customers get %50 off so you can get an 8 oz. bottle for about $12 bucks plus shipping. I just bought a gallon on sale for
$110, which averages out to just under $9 per 8 oz. bottle. (I don't get anything for plugging them.)

Be sure you're buying Colloidal Silver not Ionic Silver. I've tried both. It's my experience that the Silver Ion 'colloidal silver' is not as effective as the nano-partical colloidal silver. There are technical reasons why, but I'm not writing a book here. There's lots of research out there to read. Do your due diligence.

I should add that I had intended to give it a year before deciding to buy my own generator. But the more I read and learn the more I am certain that the simple low voltage home generators make mostly ionic silver not nano-particle silver. Of course there are some particles but it is not as easy to determine what you're doing on your own. I'm comfortable with buying a consistently reliable product for $9 for 8 oz which last me about a month. That's a helluva lot cheaper than my co-pay for antibiotics! Utopiasilver.com Colloidal Silver is 20ppm 85% nano-particle, 15% ionic silver.

Larry
 
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Mark_s83

Guest
My name is Mark. I was diagnosed at birth. don't know my genotype. FEV1 is about 46%. Original lungs.

I tried nebulizing colloidal silver but my lungs reacted by tightening up. My lungs are very sensitive to many antibiotics that are also inhaled, so, for me, I can't nebulize the stuff. Also, I looked into what is important for the best result when nebulizing. I was confused at first because different nebulizers are recommended for different medications. But after questioning the doc about this I think I have the answer: particle size. From what I can gather, particle size is the most important (and maybe the only important) aspect of nebulizing. A particle size of about 3-5 microns (the upper limit of 5 is for sure, but the lower limit I think is 3) is ideal, according to the doc and one other source I read but don't remember where.

This took the confusion out of it, for me.

I didn't buy a particle generator. I just made one at home using 4 - 9 volt batteries. Youtube tells you how. I bought silver rods that were pretty inexpensive - $35 for something that will last for a long, long time. And I've been making it for a long time. I don't know the concentration of what I make. I stop the generating process after I see a tiny bit of a cloud forming between the electrodes of silver. It might be a good idea to get a TDS meter but I haven't yet.

Anyhow, it was cheap and I have been doing it for about a year now. Several times each day I drink two or three ounces and I also spray my nasal passages with a combo of colloidal silver and xylitol solution. I found the recipe for xylitol nose spray on Youtube as well. By itself, it began to grow mold after a while, but since making a 50/50% solution of the two ingredients, no mold growth. And their are recommendations as well for using colloidal silver as a nasal spray.

The colloidal silver has a been a wonder for me. In the area that I live, I get many colds each year and they usually go straight to my lungs and hang on for several weeks and when I do get over them, I am wiped out! But since using the colloidal silver, colds have little effect and are gone in a day or two. I get the sniffles and a little mucous and they disappear so quickly I barely notice that they were there.

If you want any info about the details of where to get material or more in-depth about method, you can contact me and I will pass it on to you.

Mark
 
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CyrilCrodius

New member
Ionic silver is what causes agyria. Not colloidal silver. However, I wouldn't nebulize anything that isn't sold in single-use vials and market as sterile. That it's an antibiotic doesn't take away the importance of it being sterile. I've nebbed a brand of colloidal silver that had good reviews before and was said to be safe to nebulize and had a bronchospasm. So be careful.
 
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