Argentyn 23 Silver

i didn't know much about it - other than its some kind of silver solution

i remember hearing something about silver toxicity turning people blue on the radio the other day so just looked that up to see how toxic it really is

the good news is you have to take a lot of silver for a long time to do that

for completeness i then looked at Argentyn 23's website to see how much silver there is in there
and as far as i can make out its - 23 parts per million - providing around 0.320miligrams of silver per daily dose of 1 teaspoon of argentyn 23

now silver is definitely antimicrobial - but with any antimicrobial - the effect is in the dose- and this approx. one third of a milligram is a very small dose indeed - so small in fact that, on the face of it, it becomes hard to credit that its doing anything much antimicrobial at all.

so, to try to get some sense of proportionality, i looked at some of their own referenced documents on the same site to see if there was an indication of how much silver is needed to be usefully antimicrobial - and in mice - its quite a lot - around 20% of the dose of silver that will kill the mouse.

to try to relate that to dosing in humans - the single dose toxicity for humans for silver is around 64mg per kg - so 3,840mg for a 60kg human ( apparently it was used to provoke abortions historically )
Argyria - permanent blue skin discoloration happens at doses much less than that - at total cumulative doses of around 70-1500 mg per kg
NOTE that's Milligrams - not Micrograms ( there are 1000 micrograms in 1 milligram )

so to me there is a disconnect here -

acc to the studies on the argentyn 23 website - 20% of the fatally toxic dose is needed to be usefully antimicrobial in mice.
in humans that 20% of fatal dose would equate to something like 800mg of silver nanoparticles -
and yet the recommended dose according to argentyn 23 is only 0.32miligrams per day

this number is several thousand times smaller than the dose proven effective in mice
( calc = 800/0.32 =2500)

whenever we see three orders of magnitude difference between what is shown in the lab - and what is claimed in product marketing i think its a clear red flag
the marketing material on their site claims the small particle size makes all the difference - but i am not sure of the veracity of that claim
in fact some of the papers their own site lists as references seem to disagree with this claim

so, i am not sure what to make of this

on the one hand silver solutions sold online and over the counter are a popular alternative remedy and as a result is a huge business - according to argentyn 23 there are about 10 million colloidal silver water users in North America and 100 million users worldwide. so clearly a lot of people believe in it.

on the other hand - as with a lot of these alternative type, unregulated over the counter cures - the claims often seem to become hard to credit once you start to properly dig into them

I worked at a natural foods store for a few years, and we sold a lot of liquid colloidal silver to people during the winter to help with strep and other throat-centered illnesses, for short-term use. I have not heard much about its effectiveness for long-term use in chronic systemic illnesses.

A practitioner who dispensed DesBio products recommended that I use the product Smart Silver (containing "engineered nanoparticles" they claim work better than traditional colloidal silver). I noticed no difference, which was very unusual for me at the time because I reacted so strongly to everything then. This practitioner also did acupuncture, reiki, NAET, flower essences, muscle testing, and infrared light treatment. My more traditional LLMDs were not supportive of using silver but did not seem to feel strongly about it.

What has kept you from trying it again? Are you concerned about renal toxicity?

That's interesting, saraeli. Good information from experience. The nano-particles are why my LLMD had me use Argentyn-23. As Garzie pointed out, don't really know why they are considered safer as I've seen no strong proof of that after years of reading.

I'm not really considering using it right now but have noticed it's not mentioned as much as it was 9-10 years ago. And, the kidneys didn't seem to be impacted by it before. GFR stayed in same area and have been close to the same range for 10-11 years. Probably is as Garzie mentioned = not enough to cause any harm.