Ionic silver or colloidal silver?
- Thread starter Audi
- Start date
cyber-junkie
Inquisitor
- Joined
- Sep 2, 2009
I find they both work, true collodial silver is probably better.
For an excellent explanation of the difference in composition between ionic and colloidal silver products and its impact on the usefulness of the products to treat infection, click on the following Links. I agree with cyber-junkie and jbaerbock that colloidal silver is more effective than ionic silver. My personal opinion is that one product in particular, MesoSilver, is the most effective and safest for both internal use and topical application, and when used topically it does not stain as does at least one other silver product.
https://www.purestcolloids.com/effectiveness.php
https://www.purestcolloids.com/ionic.php
https://www.purestcolloids.com/mesocolloid.php
If you haven't done so already, click on and review the "Particle Surface Comparison Table" for the various silver products:
https://www.purestcolloids.com/psa-table.php
For more information scroll down through the subject Links for the various articles and click on the ones that most interest you:
https://www.purestcolloids.com/learning.php
To read testimonials about the use of MesoSilver to treat various conditions click on the below Link and scroll down through the active titled Links on the left hand side of the page, or rather than clicking on one or more of the titled Links just continue scrolling down to the texts.
https://www.colloidal-silver-colloids.com/contrib/mesosilver-testimonials.htm
For an active forum go to:
https://www.colloidforum.com/phpBB3/
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At this point, I'd like to add something to the original post. There is a great deal of confusion about ionic versus particulate colloidal silver. The way we measure the concentration or strength of colloidal silver is by its conductivity. We measure this in Microsiemens.
One Microsiemen of conductivity equals 1 ppm. Conductivity in a liquid is caused by the presence of ions. Without ions, there is no conductivity. It is an insulator. No current will flow. So the very measure that we use to denote the strength of a colloidal silver solution is, by definition, the number of ions present.
An ion is a single atom of an element, in this case, silver, with a single electron, either missing or added. For silver, the outer valence bond band contains only one electron. That makes it relatively easy for silver to become an ion as this outer electron is loosely held.
It becomes a positive ion looking for some other element with which it can share an electron. Your body is one huge electrical factory with all sorts of elements very busily combining and disassociating.
All of this is accomplished with ions. If you go into a hospital in a condition where they have to find out what's wrong with you one of the very first things they will do is check your electrolytes. An electrolyte is a substance that dissociates into ions in solution and acquires the capacity to conduct electricity. Sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, and phosphate are examples of electrolytes, informally known as lytes.
When we make colloidal silver, it is the process called electrolysis. Initially, everything that leaves the anode is an ion. If we try to make too many leave the anode at the same time, they will start combining and discharge forming particles of silver with 2, 3 or a thousand or more atoms and be discharged and lose their charge. If they become large enough, they will fall out of suspension and form little black dots at the bottom of the glass.
If it was possible to make a purely ionic solution your colloidal silver would not make it past your mouth or nose or throat. There is some evidence that for intestinal problems it's a good idea to have some particles make it down to your intestine.
As long as they are small, they will pass through, and the ones that do make it into your bloodstream will be filtered out by your kidneys and pass in your urine within 48 hours. So we need some way to judge when we have made the particles to an acceptably small size so that we can stop the process at that point. That coincides with the point at which we will have reached the maximum sustainable ionic strength in ppm.
Before the availability of low-cost laser diodes, it was done with a small bright and tightly focused penlight. It would be shined down through the solution and form a cone shaped rainbow caused by the diffraction of the particles. That is called the Tyndall effect. Lacking this, most people would continue the process until the entire solution had a yellow tinge. Unfortunately, by the time the whole solution becomes yellow the particles are more than 100 nm in size.
Continued daily use, which is the case with many people, of this type of colloidal silver could lead to argyria. That is a cause of concern for very light-skinned people. The use of a laser enables us to start seeing the particles of a size less than 20 nm. Unfortunately, virtually all the cheap laser pointers from China have no regulation. The power of the laser in these devices will vary directly with the condition of the battery.
That is not acceptable in a piece of test equipment. Atlasnova went to Taiwan and secured the supply of a line of laser pointers that are tightly regulated. The least expensive of these is the one supplied with the various colloidal silver generator kits sell. It maintains an exact power until the battery is completely dead. The phenomenon which produces the red line in the solution with the laser is caused by the scattering effect. Many suppliers still referred to this as a Tyndall effect.
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One Microsiemen of conductivity equals 1 ppm. Conductivity in a liquid is caused by the presence of ions. Without ions, there is no conductivity. It is an insulator. No current will flow. So the very measure that we use to denote the strength of a colloidal silver solution is, by definition, the number of ions present.
An ion is a single atom of an element, in this case, silver, with a single electron, either missing or added. For silver, the outer valence bond band contains only one electron. That makes it relatively easy for silver to become an ion as this outer electron is loosely held.
It becomes a positive ion looking for some other element with which it can share an electron. Your body is one huge electrical factory with all sorts of elements very busily combining and disassociating.
All of this is accomplished with ions. If you go into a hospital in a condition where they have to find out what's wrong with you one of the very first things they will do is check your electrolytes. An electrolyte is a substance that dissociates into ions in solution and acquires the capacity to conduct electricity. Sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, and phosphate are examples of electrolytes, informally known as lytes.
When we make colloidal silver, it is the process called electrolysis. Initially, everything that leaves the anode is an ion. If we try to make too many leave the anode at the same time, they will start combining and discharge forming particles of silver with 2, 3 or a thousand or more atoms and be discharged and lose their charge. If they become large enough, they will fall out of suspension and form little black dots at the bottom of the glass.
If it was possible to make a purely ionic solution your colloidal silver would not make it past your mouth or nose or throat. There is some evidence that for intestinal problems it's a good idea to have some particles make it down to your intestine.
As long as they are small, they will pass through, and the ones that do make it into your bloodstream will be filtered out by your kidneys and pass in your urine within 48 hours. So we need some way to judge when we have made the particles to an acceptably small size so that we can stop the process at that point. That coincides with the point at which we will have reached the maximum sustainable ionic strength in ppm.
Before the availability of low-cost laser diodes, it was done with a small bright and tightly focused penlight. It would be shined down through the solution and form a cone shaped rainbow caused by the diffraction of the particles. That is called the Tyndall effect. Lacking this, most people would continue the process until the entire solution had a yellow tinge. Unfortunately, by the time the whole solution becomes yellow the particles are more than 100 nm in size.
Continued daily use, which is the case with many people, of this type of colloidal silver could lead to argyria. That is a cause of concern for very light-skinned people. The use of a laser enables us to start seeing the particles of a size less than 20 nm. Unfortunately, virtually all the cheap laser pointers from China have no regulation. The power of the laser in these devices will vary directly with the condition of the battery.
That is not acceptable in a piece of test equipment. Atlasnova went to Taiwan and secured the supply of a line of laser pointers that are tightly regulated. The least expensive of these is the one supplied with the various colloidal silver generator kits sell. It maintains an exact power until the battery is completely dead. The phenomenon which produces the red line in the solution with the laser is caused by the scattering effect. Many suppliers still referred to this as a Tyndall effect.
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I would not characterize Mesosilver as "junk"; it is simply "misbegotten." It was developed at a time in the past that Colloidal Silver was not well understood. The manufacturer developed the process which was a high percentage of particles of silver, rather than silver ions. That is not easy to do, and they took pride in it. They also asked a high price for it and still do to this day. The process is not practical for people to do it themselves. Their websites are very professionally done, and they spend a lot of money advertising.
The fact is that there is an overwhelming amount of university-level research showing that silver ions are at least 100 times as effective as uncharged silver particles. Here is an example:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2292600/?report=classic
I quote from the article above:
"The following silver compounds and silver are listed in Martindale: the Extra Pharmacopoeia: silver metal, silver acetate, silver nitrate, silver protein, and silver sulfadiazine (26a). The silver ion can be generated by electrolyzing the silver metal or dissolving the silver compounds. It is known that the electrically generated silver ion appeared to be superior to the silver compounds in antimicrobial activity (3, 4). However, most of the aforementioned studies which determined a mechanism of action of silver used silver ions produced from silver compounds like silver nitrate or silver sulfadiazine, and thus there has been limited research on the electrically generated silver ion. Recently, a laundry machine that emits electrically generated silver ions was developed for hygiene, namely, in order to prevent easily transmissible bacterial and fungal skin infections from being transmitted by contaminated laundry. In particular, it can be beneficial to hospitals and homes in which immunocompromised people (the elderly, children, and medical patients) or pets may dwell. Our previous study demonstrated the antifungal activity of a laundry machine that electrically generates silver ions (14). In the present study, we used conventional plate counting, flow cytometry (FC), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to investigate the antibacterial activity and mechanism of action against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli bacteria of a silver ion solution generated from the laundry machine.It is known that the electrically generated silver ion appeared to be superior to the silver compounds in antimicrobial activity."
It should also be noted that this manufacturer has set up some so-called "independent forums" to create the impression of a great body of happy users.
The only forum that I know of that is active in the Colloidal Silver area and independent is: https://goldismoney2.com/threads/the-art-of-making-colloidal-silver.61973/
It was set up by investors in precious metals and is funded by donations from members. You will never see an ad there. It is open to everyone but is rigidly moderated to avoid anyone or any company to take advantage of the forum. I started a thread there about making Colloidal Silver four years ago. It now has almost 300 replies and 24,000 views. It is an excellent resource for anyone to gain unbiased knowledge about making colloidal silver. It is interesting to note that there is an effort on this forum to initialize the naming of ionic colloidal silver to EIS "Electrically Isolated Silver". That would properly distinguish the modern product from the antiquated concept of colloidal silver as relatively large particles kept in suspension by their Zeta potential and Brownian motion. It is also worth noting that Mesosilver was introduced at a time when many of the "colloidal silver" products consisted of silver oxide particles in water with instructions to "shake vigorously before use."
