By Ken Adachi <E-mail>
http://educate-yourself.org/cs/csmoreinfo.shtml

 Brief Overview | Uses | A Brief History | Problems With Pharmaceuticals Health Concerns | Conflicting Information | Articles | Testimonials | FAQ


A Brief Overview

Prior to the use of penicillin and sulfa drugs during World War II, Medicine's most commonly utilized infection fighter was Colloidal Silver (a solution of extremely fine particles of pure silver suspended in water). A powerful germicidal, silver is an exceptional metal in that it is non-toxic to the human body, but lethal to over 650 types of bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, and molds. Conventional pharmaceutical antibiotics are typically effective against only 6 or 7 types of bacteria and are useless against viruses.

Silver filters are found in the water fountains of every airliner and space craft to guarantee germ-free water. Silver is used by the Soviets to sterilize recycled water aboard the Mir Space Station. Silver is being used to replace chlorine in swimming pools, because it does not sting the eyes and offers greater germicidal action. Laboratory tests have shown that Colloidal Silver will kill most bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses within 2-6 minutes of contact. Many chronic infections, from pyorrhea to vaginal yeast infections, conditions which are often resistant to drug therapy, will quickly clear up with Colloidal Silver.

It had always been a great mystery during the Middle Ages that while untold thousands of peasants died from the Bubonic Plague, most of the aristocracy remained untouched. Why? The aristocracy remained infection-free because their water and wine was stored in silver vessels which allowed silver atoms to migrate into the liquid and afford germicidal action. They also ate off silver plates, used silver utensils, and drank from silver goblets.

During the last century, American Pioneers always put a silver dollar into a bucket of fresh milk in order to slow down its clabbering and souring.

Despite years of research to find a superior pharmaceutical product, silver is still considered the most effective germ fighter and promoter of rapid healing in cases of severe burns. UCLA medical labs found it effectively disabled every virus they had in the lab!
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Uses

As stated above, Colloidal Silver is lethal to over 650 types of bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, and molds. However, it is completely non-toxic to the human body. For several decades, silver has proven itself in the treatment of burns, and eye, ear, nose, throat, vaginal, rectal, and urinary tract infections. Silver has been prescribed as an adjunct treatment for reproductive disorders in women and the circulatory system, as well as a treatment for AIDS infective complications. It has been used as a remedy for allergies, boils, ulcers, leisons, thyroid conditions, infantile diseases, parasites, wounds of the cornea, enlarged prostate, warts, bladder inflammation, infections of the eustachian tubes, sleepwalking and anorexia nervosa. Colloidal silver also acts as a tissue regenerator by stimulating the production of de-differentiating cells, which promotes the replacement of specialized cells.

The following is only a partial list of the more than 650 disease conditions for which colloidal silver has demonstrated proven clinical amelioration:
 

Acne  Anthrax Bacilli  Arthritis  Athlete's Foot  Blood Poisoning  Bubonic  Cancer  Candidiasis  Cholera  Chronic Fatigue  Colitis  Conjunctivitis  Cystitis  Dermatitis  Diabetes  Diptheria

Dysentery  Eczema  Excema  Fibrositis  Gastritis  Gonorrhea  Hepatitis  Herpes Virus  Impetigo  Influenza  Keratitis  Leprosy  Leukemia  Lupus  Lyme Disease

Lymphagitis  Malaria  Meningitis  Neurasthenia  Ophthalmia  Parvovirus  Pheomonia  Pluerisy  Pruritis Ani  Psoriasis  Pymphagitis  Rheumatism  Rhiritis  Ringworm  Rosacea

Scarlet Fever  Seborrhea  Septicemia  Shingles  Skin Cancer  Staph Infection  Stomach Flu  Strep  Syphilis  Tonsillitis  Toxemia  Trenchfoot  Tuberculosis  Whooping Cough

For your pets, Colloidal Silver can clear up cases of ulcerative and infective skin conditions due to flea infestation, mange, dermatitis, etc. It has proven to be effective against canine parvo virus, feline leukemia, and ringworm.

For more uses of Colloidal Silver, please read the article, "A Few Unique Plus Traditional Uses For Silver Colloid", by Dr. Bob Beck.
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A Brief History

The properties of silver have been known for thousands of years. Throughout the ages, silver was the hidden ingredient utilized by knowledgeable healers to fight any type of infection. It was not until the late 1800's that Western scientists were able to prove what had been known in other civilizations for thousands of years--that silver was a proven germ fighter!

After researchers discovered that the body prefers to utilize colloidal minerals, the endless possibilities which could occur from the use of colloids in medicine were exploited. Colloidal Silver proved to be enormously effective against infectious organisms and extremely safe to use, without the negative side effects associated with drugs. As a result, Colloidal Silver was widely used in medicine as one of the main-stays of antimicrobial treatment. It became the choice of medical practitioners.

Throughout the early 1900's Colloidal Silver rapidly gained recognition as one of the best infection-preventive agents, but unfortunately its availability was limited due to the high cost of colloidal silver production combined with the fact that colloidal silver could not be patented. This profit limitation prompted the development of more profitable infection-fighting drugs. Silver was ignored while new patented antibiotic drugs became the choice of medical treatment. However, as is common when we deviate from Nature's path, serious unforseen problems were inevitable. Today, fifty years after the advent of patented pharmaceutical antibiotics, many types of bacteria, which were once susceptible to these drugs, have mutated to drug-resistant strains.

Over the years, the medical establishment has reported on the new strains of "Super Bugs" that are resistant to every pharmaceutical antibiotic. Newsweek Magazine reported in March 28, 1994 that in 1992, 13,000 hospital patients died of infections that were resistant to every drug hospital physicians tried. Also, it is a well known fact that pharmaceutical antibiotics are detrimental to the natural flora of the colon. Colloidal Silver does not disturb this very necessary environment.

Fortunately, the timely re-emergence of Colloidal Silver--due to new production technology--may prove to be one of the best remedies the public now has to protect themselves from disease, new and old.
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Problems With Pharmaceuticals

Simply stated, the problem is multiple drug resistant (MDR) strains of bacteria are becoming commonplace. Within five years of the widespread use of penicillin after World War ll, scientists were discovering that bacteria such as Staphylococcus were developing a resistance to penicillin. Drug companies have poured millions of dollars into new research during the 60s, 70s, and 80s, to develop new antibiotics which could overcome these resistant strains. It appears that every disease-causing bacterium has strains that can resist at least one, if not most of pharmaceuticals' antibiotics.

The prophylactic overuse of drug antibiotics is giving life to the spread of mutant microbes. Since the 1970s, various studies have concluded that 50 to 60 percent of all outpatient antibiotic prescriptions are inappropriate. Other studies have found that seven in ten Americans receive antibiotics when they seek treatment for common colds. Dr. Lee Green of Family Practitioners at the University of Michigan states, "We have a tradition of prescribing antibiotics to anybody who looks sick." As a result of the overuse of antibiotics, sales have nearly doubled since the mid 1980s. Likewise, drug-resistant infections have also increased.

Bacterial tests are not covered in many insurance policies, encouraging doctors to make sloppy diagnosis. Drug companies encourage the situation by promotion of their products through extensive advertising and providing doctors with free samples.

Adding to the dilemma is the fact that many patients do not use the antibiotics their doctors prescribe in accordance with the doctor's instruction. Many stop taking their medication after just a few days when it has killed many of the most susceptible microbes, leaving hardened bacterial survivors to flourish. Aside from being harder to treat, the resistant microbes can actually spread their immunity to different bacteria! An already serious problem is compounded when many patients save their unused drugs for later use.

Recently, Dr. Thomas Beam of the Buffalo, New York VA Medical Center, summarized this health dilemma completely when he stated, "RESISTANT INFECTIONS ARE PRESENT IN EVERY HOSPITAL AND NURSING HOME." Super bugs are scattered everywhere including hospitals. No one has an exclusive on them. Patients are being stricken with drug resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, a bacteria that infects surgical wounds and can cause pneumonia and systemic blood infections.

The Los Angeles Times stated on October 23, 1994 that "in the last decade, a broad resistance to antibiotics has begun to emerge. And because bacteria can transfer genes among themselves, experts only expect the resistance to grow. The potential nightmare is an Andromeda strain, which is immune to all antibiotics and could wreak havoc." (article, Arsenal of Antibiotics Failing as Resistant Bacteria Develop).

Drugs such as penicillin and tetracycline lost their power over staph in the 50s and 60s. Methicilllin, another antibiotic, is now experiencing resistance. It was recently reported that in some 20 percent of nation's gonorrhea is now resistant to one or more antibiotics. A startling proportion of TB now resists the drug, Isoniazid.

There is an enormous health crisis in the making, and pharmaceutical antibiotics do not hold the answer. It is blatently obvious to anyone who does research on this subject that new emerging diseases and super bugs (not to mention the threat of biological attack from terrorist groups) are more of a threat now than ever before. Colloidal Silver can provide people with additional, non-prescriptive immunity armor to protect themselves. And unlike pharmaceutical drugs, no pathogen has ever develop a resistance to Colloidal Silver.
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Health Concerns

While having gone unnoticed by a large portion of the population, there are numerous new emerging diseases which are beginning to manifest themselves with greater and greater frequency at ever widening locations across the country. In addition to this, the threat of biological attack from nations such as Iraq, as well as various terrorist groups has become increasingly prominent. Recently, news stories about terrorists using biological agents like Anthrax, to emerging diseases such as Flesh-Eating Bacteria, Multiple Drug Resistant Staph, Hanta Virus, Mad Cow Disease, Pfiesteria ("Red Tide"), Meningitis, Australian Flu, Bird Flu, E-coli, etc. have become commonplace.

Moreover, diseases that we were previously controlable with pharmaceutical antibiotics are adapting themselves and becoming resistant to virtually all of our pharmaceutical drugs. A good example is the dangerous strain of the common staph germ, Staphylococcus aureus. It now has doctors worried because it has developed a resistance to pharmaceuticals' most powerful antibiotic, Vancomycin (CNN May 28, Aug 22, & Sept 5, 1997). The percentage of Staphylococci infections resistant to penicillin in 1960 was 13; the percentage resistant in 1997 was 99. Clearly, a non-pharmaceutical solution is required.

Unfortunately, while some television shows, such as Dateline and Nova, have examined the issue of emerging diseases, the true extent of the danger is barely perceived by the public. The problem goes unnoticed, so more and more people remain unaware, unprotected, and vulnerable.

For more information on this topic, please see the Emerging Diseases section of the Educate-Yourself main page.
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Conflicting Information

In some cases, written articles and web sites which promote colloidal silver present conflicting information on a given issue. Also, some news articles or web sites have an agenda of debunking the use of colloidal silver altogether. The hidden hand behind the latter is usually pharmaceutical companies or orthodox medical interests who wish to make all alternative therapies and natural medicines go away (for obvious reasons).While we don't claim to be the final authority on colloidal silver, the dissemination of honest information is our goal. Our opinion on some of the more contentious issues:

Toxicity & Concentration

The weight of historical and laboratory evidence seem to indicate that there is no known toxic concentration level of Colloidal Silver in normal use. While some writers will indicate that 5-10 ppm (parts per million) or 10-20 ppm is the "ideal concentration", numerous studies have shown that 30, 40, 50, 60 ppm or even higher concentrations are nonetheless completey non-toxic. It has been our experience that higher concentrations might speed healing in those cases where the colloidal silver can remain in direct contact with the pathogenic organism, as with pyorrhea, acne, or vaginal infection, for example. Systemically, however, lower concentrations seem to work as well as higher concentrations for general prophylactic immunity boosting.

The only known toxic reaction to silver occured during World War II when silver plates were used to replace missing skull bone in severely injured GI's. Normally, the blood-brain barrier prevents silver from entry into this domain. This mechanical barrier effectively blocks silver from entry into the brain or spinal cord area, the only part of the body where it would be toxic to nerve cells. 

Blue/Grey Skin

Proponents of pharmaceuticals have attempted to debunk the use of Colloidal Silver based on a fraudulent claim that Colloidal Silver can cause Argyria, a rare condition that results in a bluish/grey tinting of the skin. What these debunkers fail to mention is that all known cases of Argyria are due to long-term exposure and systemic absorbtion of silver compounds, usually in the form of protein compounds. Colloidal silver is silver in its elemental form. The body does not store excess elemental silver, but rather eliminates it, as with other heavy metals, via the metallothioneins. These ubiquitous proteins bind heavy metals into metal-thiolate-cluster complexes and remove them from the body.

The Color

 

When making colloidal silver, no other issue inspires more debate than the matter of what constitutes the 'correct' color. Most writers support yellow or a golden yellow as the ideal color, but some writers suggests that a clear solution is preferred. Others argue that a white/cloudy solution is better. Here's the lowdown as we see it:



White/Cloudy Color

 

 

The white/cloudy color is produced when you make colloidal silver using a mineralized water (tap, well water, mountain spring bottled water, etc.) or you add an ionizing agent like sodium chloride (table salt) to the water. The silver ions combine with the free anions in the water and produce silver salts such as Silver Chloride. In his hundreds on lectures given on colloidal silver, Dr. Bob Beck had been recommending up to 1997  to use tap water and the addition of  a small amount of table salt to ionize the solution. Fellow health researcher , Merlin D. Wolf, however, recommended to Bob to use distilled water heated to near boiling and avoid adding the salt entirely. The heated water allows electrolysis to take place while at the same time avoiding the problem of producing silver salts. This is the preferred technique that Dr Beck embraces today.

Yellow Color

One of the more cogent explanations for the often touted yellow color was offered by Peter A. Lindemann in his article about colloidal silver entitled: Colloidal Silver, A Closer Look. To quote Peter's article directly:

There has been a fair amount of controversy in the public literature concerning the appearance of the "yellow" color. A lot of well meaning people have told me that "yellow is bad", "silver isn't yellow", "yellow is sulfur contamination", "yellow is iron contamination", and lots of other things. I finally found what I believe to be the answer to this question in a book titled Practical Colloid Chemistry, published in London in 1926. In the section on the "Colours of Colloidal Metals", sub-section on the "Polychromism of silver solutions" on page 69, I found the following statements: "The continuous change in colour from yellow to blue corresponds to a change in the absorption maximum of the shorter to longer wave-lengths with a decreasing degree of dispersion. This is a general phenomenon in colloid chemistry illustrating the relation between colour and degree of dispersion." This section goes on to describe the colors that show up in a wide variety of colloidal metal solutions. Interestingly, they ALL have a yellow phase.

For true "electro-colloidal" silver, the particle size range that can appear yellow is .01 to .001microns (10 to 100 angstroms) because that is the size of silver particle that best absorbs the indigo light, leaving only its inverse color, yellow, to be observed. The final transparent-yellow appearance only shows up after the particles have become evenly dispersed.

Clear Color

A few individuals who sell colloidal silver or colloidal silver generators claim that a clear solution is more desireable. It's not that simple. The clear color could be accounted for by different reasons:




1.In one case, the CS may simply be of too low a concentration (in ppm) to look yellow, even pale yellow.

 

 

2. It's possible that there's no collodial silver in the solution at all and you're just dealing with plain water (it has happened).

3. The colloidal silver could be of a special form known as High Voltage AC silver (HVAC). This form of colloidal silver does look clear at all times, even in very high concentrations. This form of colloidal silver has interesting properties and sometimes can be more effective than the conventional DC form of colloidal silver, for certain conditions. However, it is much more acidic than the DC form and might prove to be somewhat caustic in certain situations. The equipment for making this form of CS uses very high voltage and must be handled with know-how and respect. However, for health researchers and healers, it might be something you might want to look into. For those interested, contact me at Ken Adachi, Editor  for more info on the HVAC form of CS and the equipment for making it.

The most common reason for a nearly clear color is simply low concentration. Many people who heard or read about colloidal silver production from Dr Bob Beck's lectures, or read a reprint of his original ideas, continue to make CS using room temperature tap water with a pinch of salt. When you stick the electrodes into a glass of water and turn the generator on, you see a lot of white cloudiness forming within a few seconds. Everyone thinks that the white cloudiness is the colloidal silver. It is not. It's silver chloride salt being formed. So after running the process for 5 minutes or so, they think they got a glass full of colloidal silver (the salt settles out and the solution will look practically clear). Yea, they got a tiny little bit of CS, but they mostly have silver salts in the solution. The key is to run the process long enough to produce golden yellow CS using heated distilled water and without any salt added.

According to Dr Bob Beck, silver atoms sinter off the silver electrode in equal particle size (approximately .001 microns) when using a DC generator of approximately 30 volts. Therefore, with a DC generator, distilled water will usually begin to turn a pale yellow color when the concentration approaches 7-10 ppm. Higher concentrations reveal a deeper yellow color, while lower concentrations (usually 1-5 ppm) display more of a pale yellow color.

 

Purity of the Silver Wire

Most commercial and home producers of colloidal silver that we have talked to use silver electrodes of 99.9% purity. As explained below, it seems to be the best choice when one weighs both economy and safety. Again quoting from Peter Lindemann's article, A Closer Look:

The quality of your finished product depends entirely on the purity of the water you start with and the purity of the silver you start with. Most of the current literature suggests that only 99.9999% pure silver can be used. Most home brew systems use 99.9% pure silver.

So, what is the difference? To find out, I contacted Academy Metals, a company in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that produces commercial silver. The total allowable impurities in 99.9% (.999 fine) silver is 1000 ppm or 1 part in 1000. These impurities and their maximums are 1) Copper, 800 ppm, 2) Lead, 250 ppm, 3) Iron, 200 ppm, and 4) Bismuth, 10 ppm. This product is readily available in wire form and costs about $3.00 above the market (spot) price of silver. When this product is used to make electro-colloidal silver at a concentration of 5 ppm, the total impurities from the silver drop to 4 ppb (parts per billion) copper, 1.25 ppb lead, 1 ppb iron, .05 ppb bismuth. With all allowable impurities at these low levels, there is a reasonable argument for not being concerned. Still, sometimes small things make a big difference. 99.99% silver (.9999 fine) has total allowable impurities of 100 ppm of the same metals in the same ratios, and costs (in wire form) between $50-$90 above the spot price of silver. 99.999% silver (.99999 fine) has total allowable impurities of 10 ppm, and in wire form costs about $250 above the spot price. 99.9999% silver, in wire form, costs more than gold and is very difficult to find commercially. In one sample of 10 ppm colloidal silver we sent out for total analysis (made with 99.9% silver electrodes), the primary impurities found were: 1) Sodium, 470 ppb, 2) Calcium, 260 ppb, 3) Manganese, 70 ppb, 4) Potassium, 50 ppb, and 5) Magnesium, 24 ppb. Since none of these impurities could have come from the silver, it suggests that the purity of the water should be of greater concern to the person making their own colloidal silver, than spending extra money on purer silver.

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Personal Anecdotes about Colloidal Silver
If you wish to talk about your observations using colloidal silver so that others might know what you have experienced, then send me an e-mail and I'll publish your comments at this link: Personal Experiences (http://educate-yourself.org./cs/csexperiencesindex.shtml )
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Copyright 1997, 1998, 1999 by Ken Adachi and Educate-Yourself. All Rights Reserved

For more information, please see our FAQ Page, in which we address the questions and concerns most often expressed

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