Can Colloidal Silver Treat Your Gout?
I’m writing this post since some of my readers have brought it up on more then one occasion. The subject matter for this week is colloidal silver as a potential treatment for gout. Silver has a long history of serving as an antiseptic and disinfectant before antibiotics were invented in the 1940s.
After the introduction of antibiotics the use of colloidal silver diminished as a antimicrobial agent. Hippocrates has discussed silver being used to treat wounds in his writings. Even World War I soldiers used a silver leaf to treat their infected wounds. What silver does best since it’s a bioactive is kill bacteria. Nowadays colloidal silver is considered more holistic or alternative type of medicine.
Colloidal silver has been claimed to be used effectively in various treatments like cancer, aids, STDs, septic arthritis and even for gout! Colloidal silver may kill around 650 known microbes like influenza, salmonella typhus and streptococcus-A. It kills microbes that rely on oxygen for metabolism. There are side effects if you take colloidal silver orally causing your skin to turn blue or greyish, a condition called “argyria”. It can also cause you headaches, kidney function issues and other side effects, so be careful.
Since the early 1990s there has been a resurgence for colloidal silver being promoted as a dietary supplement being purported as an “essential mineral” supplement. Let’s set the record straight. Silver is not an essential mineral for humans and therefore there is no such thing as a silver deficiency, so you don’t necessarily need a dietary supplement of colloidal silver to treat your gout.
Colloidal silver can play a role as an antiseptic but gout is not a disease that is caused by bacteria and there are no studies or evidence to prove that colloidal silver can help with your gout. Consumer Reports magazine has also stated that colloidal silver is a “supplement to avoid” and is described as “likely unsafe”. The claim that colloidal silver is a cure-all is a fraud, so try to avoid internet sellers promoting it as a gout treatment. If you’ve got a wound, give it a try but other then that, forget about it!