First Aid at the End of the World: Should You Trust Colloidal Silver?
One of the most important aspects of being prepared is addressing medical concerns — having a first aid response kit and solutions to medical problems of any sort as they arise. If our society were to collapse, we would no longer be able to rely on hospitals and doctors, so we would have to cure our ailments ourselves.
This post deals with the question: Should You Trust Colloidal Silver?
Over the years, various propponents of preparedness have offered solutions to medicine after a collapse of society, but the one that stands out as probably the most controversial is a literal solution. It’s called colloidal silver.
Colloidal silver is a suspension of silver particles in water that purportedly has a kind of miraculous healing power. Given that silver ions are bioactive, can kill bacteria in vitro as well as in external living tissue wounds, are disinfectants, antiseptics, and are regularly found woven into wound dressings, the hypothesis that silver can act as a universal antibiotic isn’t all that surprising.
And if you had to fend for yourself medically, the wide availability of silver and the relative ease of making a colloidal silver suspense would make it an excellent and obvious candidate for medical treatment.
In fact, before antibiotics were introduced into the medical system in the 1940’s, silver was widely used in the medical field, treating everything from infections to epilepsy and gonorrhea.
With all these reported usages and alleged benefits of colloidal silver, you may begin to wonder why silver isn’t used more extensively in the medical field now, especially since silver is so abundant, and relatively inexpensive.
There is no shortage of theories explaining this phenomenon, most of them conspiratorial. (Doctors, hospitals, and governments wouldn’t make any money if they used silver.) The theory that shouldn’t be ignored, however, is the one that is based on scientific tests and trials.
While colloidal silver hasn’t been proven to have any adverse health risks — except for argyria, which is a silver coloration of the skin due to high silver levels in the body, which is only cosmetic, as it were — doctors and scientists have yet to find definitive and consistent evidence that colloidal silver has any curative properties whatsoever.
Silver by itself is not ionized, and it is only ionized silver that has been proven to cure and treat ailments. The silver delivered to the body by colloidal silver suspensions is inactive, and therefore should not have the same properties as silver ions.
The FDA has prohibited manufacturers of colloidal silver to market it based on any medical claims — in fact, it is illegal to do so — and practicing doctors will never prescribe or even recommend colloidal silver to patients. Claims made about the effectiveness of colloidal silver are largely unsupported, and where they are supported, the evidence is spurious.
It is possible that colloidal silver is a kind of placebo, in that if someone who truly believes that colloidal silver will cure their ailments administers a dose to herself, it might actually work. But whether you want to base the success or failure of your post-collapse society on colloidal silver is, in the end, up to you.
Author Bio:
This is a guest post by Nadia Jones who blogs at online college about education, college, student, teacher, money saving, movie related topics. You can reach her at nadia.jones5 @ gmail.com.
