Posted on 06/21/2013 9:02:11 PM PDT by neverdem
Ancient antimicrobial treatment could help to solve modern bacterial resistance.
Like werewolves and vampires, bacteria have a weakness: silver. The precious metal has been used to fight infection for thousands of years — Hippocrates first described its antimicrobial properties in 400 bc — but how it works has been a mystery. Now, a team led by James Collins, a biomedical engineer at Boston University in Massachusetts, has described how silver can disrupt bacteria, and shown that the ancient treatment could help to deal with the thoroughly modern scourge of antibiotic resistance. The work is published today in Science Translational Medicine1.
“Resistance is growing, while the number of new antibiotics in development is dropping,” says Collins. “We wanted to find a way to make what we have work better.”
Collins and his team found that silver — in the form of dissolved ions(i.e. ionic compounds, aka salts, before being dissolved) — attacks bacterial cells in two main ways: it makes the cell membrane more permeable, and it interferes with the cell’s metabolism, leading to the overproduction of reactive, and often toxic, oxygen compounds. Both mechanisms could potentially be harnessed to make today’s antibiotics more effective against resistant bacteria, Collins says.
Many antibiotics are thought to kill their targets by producing reactive oxygen compounds, and Collins and his team showed that when boosted with a small amount of silver these drugs could kill between 10 and 1,000 times as many bacteria. The increased membrane permeability also allows more antibiotics to enter the bacterial cells, which may overwhelm the resistance mechanisms that rely...
--snip--
Before adding silver to antibiotics, “we’ll have to address the toxicity very carefully”, says Fowler. Ingesting too much silver can also cause argyria, a condition in which the skin turns a blue-grey colour — and the effect is permanent...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Hat tip yefragetuwrabrumuy, but we can only link Ars Technica.
If it aint your time to go, I dont care what the world or the devil throws...
“Science” means nothing to me.
colloidal silver..lol
Ingesting too much silver can also cause argyria, a condition in which the skin turns a blue-grey colour — and the effect is permanent.
100 years from now it will be found that the silver resistant bacteria can only be stopped by the saliva of those afflicted with lycanthropy, but then it will be too late.
Freegards
I had a series of wicked spider bites, and after removing the necrotic tissue, they still felt like someone putting cigarettes out on my skin. Curad makes a silver chloride ointment which was the only thing which would stop the pain—an immediate cooling effect. The bites took three months to heal over, and that ointment was my main source of relief. I alternated the silver chloride ointment with triple antibiotic at dressing changes. They never became infected.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/125898/colloid
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/colloidal-silver/AN01682
It doesn’t sound like colloidal silver to me. Siver ions are completely dissolved like the sodium ions in table salt in water. Colloids are suspensions; colloidal silver sounds like a suspension of elemental silver, not a silver salt. Silver salts have been used on wounds in medicine for a while, typically burns.
If you think about it, though, before the advent of cheap stainless steel, most people ate off of silver plate or silver utensils, even if the base metals were showing through. I would expect trace amounts of silver ended up in their system, and people seemed healthier (although I'll admit nostalgia may colour my memories). Cooking was done in cast iron, and after no-stick (Teflon, because good and well-seasoned cast iron is pretty much non-stick) cookware came out, it seemed like a lot more people had anemia, too.
As for the colloidal silver, I would not expect that to remain metallic in the digestive tract, but would end up as a silver salt (likely a chloride). The trick, of course is not to overdo it. The fellow who has the blue complexion made his own and ODd.
Btw, I prefer Tea Tree Oil on minor burns, after cold running water. Pain relief, and no blistering.
They still can’t get it right.
It is the impurities that cause the Argyria, and you have to consume mass quantities to cause it.
If you make your own. Use .9999 pure silver wire, attach the wires outside the glass, keep the voltage and amperage low(3-9V batteries) use only distiled water and filter the precipitates out before you take it. The smallest suspended particles are what you want.
I prefer to buy it in a lab produced, protein concentrate, that can be mixed into juice.
OK, now continue with the inevitable, ignorant, pictures of blue, gray, and green idiots that would OD on water if you told them to drink at least 4 glasses a day.
“Science” means nothing to me.
Considering the fact that advancing science has raised life expectancies across the board, the "time to go" part has been altered by humans in the past 100 years to a phenomenal extent.
Even countries with primitive cultures that have been touched by the spell of modern science are seeing the same phenomenon of increased life expectancy.
Man played God in increasing his days and succeeded decades ago. Than science.
Than = Thank
Exactly! Thanks for that common sense explanation. Of course, you and I know Big Pharma won't allow a natural substance (that can't be patented) to "be found to cure anything" because they can't make money off of it. Colloidal silver has been proven to cure even tough infections like MRSA but you won't hear it in the main stream media.
manuka honey will also help wounds not get infected. manuka honey kills all bacteria that comes in contact with it.
Had a brn recluse bite middle finger...almost had to cut it off..”which would have reduced my ability to respond competitively in heavy traffic by upwards of 50%” any way...after a 25yr old female somoli “ dr.” working for the most Infamous clinic in north america in could not identify the problem ... In desperation I googled it.found out it was a brn recluse bite...anti biotics are good...burning it out with a hot iron is good....but the best apparently is an electric current passing through the wound combined with antibiotics it negates the toxin causing necrosis ...I would like to take this opp. to WARN THE SHT OUT OF ANYONE WITH A BITE donot go to sleep...do not get drunk do not eat pain meds and hope it gets better....Get some anti biotics and fry the wound w heat or a stun gun...do it when its small...dont wait....dont put it off....OF COURSE IM NOT A DR.!you certainly
dont have listen to me....Im just a guy who can still flip you off with EITHER hand because I ate antibiotics and fryed the wound myself while it was still dime size....GLTUA
ps hydrogen peroxide also seems to help debilitate the toxins effect.
pss I think I can climb better now...call me Psychosomatic if ya want I dont care.,........:)
I gave up long ago trying to explain Colloidal silver. I can’t imagine any serious prepper not having such a simple device available. The blue man pops up on any silver thread as quick as the “It’s the Aliens” dude on space threads.
Makes one wonder just how smart this community really is.
Then Rubio pops up and I kinda know.
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