A widelynoted recent-year study at Boston University found an important key to the effectiveness of colloidal silver when it discovered that nano-silver particles increased the effectiveness of antibiotics against resistant “super bugs” by thousands of times. Besides demonstrating once again the effectiveness of colloidal silver, the study may have also found an important reason why colloidal silver enhances other medicinal compounds it is combined with and why it has been reported to enhance natural cancer treatments.

The Boston University Study

In the study, which was published in Science Translational Medicine, a team led by James Collins, a biomedical engineer at Boston University in Massachusetts, investigated how silver can disrupt bacteria and whether it could help deal with the thoroughly modern scourge of antibiotic resistance.

Collins and his team found that disolved ions of silver attacked bacterial cells in two main ways: first, it made the cell membrane more permeable, and it interfered with the cell’s metabolism, which led to the overproduction of reactive, and often toxic, oxygen compounds which are often referred to as reactive oxygen species (ROS).

Collins and his team showed a small amount of silver resulted in the silver and medicine combination killing between 10 and 1,000 times as many bacteria as medicines alone. They also found that the increased membrane permeability allowed more antibiotics to enter the bacterial cells, which may overwhelm the resistance mechanisms that rely on shuttling the medicine back out.

It might have been enlightening if the research team had tested silver alone against the bacteria and compared the results with the combination of silver and antibiotics. However, the purpose of the study was not to validate silver as an alternative to mainstream medicines, but rather to find a way to enhance the effectiveness of the medicines.

“We wanted to find a way to make what we have work better,” Collins said.

Colloidal Silver and Superbugs

In my article “The End of the Age of Antibiotics and the Rise of the Superbugs“, I wrote about the dangerous rise in medicine resistant microbial infections and how many of them were lurking in hospitals and being spread to increasing numbers of patients.

It appears clear that man made medicine is losing the battle against the new “superbugs” and the implications are dire. However, the situation may not be nearly so desparate if colloidal silver is utilized.

Unlike man-made antibiotics, it does not appear that any superbugs are showing increased resistance to natural silver. A huge advantage of colloidal silver is that it also does not have the side effects associated with many antibiotic medicines. Those side effects can be very serious.

Study after study has vouched for the effectiveness of colloidal silver against all kinds of microbial pathogens, and many of the recent year studies and scientific articles have specifically looked at the use of silver nanoparticles against the medicine resistant bugs that are being spread in our hospitals..

For example, the scholarly review article “Silver nanoparticles: the powerful nanoweapon against multimedicine-resistant bacteria” which appeared in 2010 in the Journal of Applied Microbiology noted the effectiveness of silver nanoparticles in treating and preventing Multi Drug Resistant (MDR) bacteria.

The February 2017 edition of the Journal of Electronic Materials had the article Antibacterial Activity of Electrochemically Synthesized Colloidal Silver Nanoparticles Against Hospital-Acquired Infections. The article discussed the effectiveness of silver against four bacterial strains isolated from clinical samples, including MRSA, E. coli, multimedicine-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Klebsiella pneumonia.

A quick internet search of “silver nano-particles versus medicine resistant infections will turn up several more. This site also contains a list of several studies which vouch for the effectiveness of colloidal silver. See:

The Significance of Silver Increasing Membrane Permeability

As significant as the Boston University study’s finding that silver nano-particles greatly enhanced the effectiveness of antibiotics, the observation that silver increased membrane permeability may be even more significant. It may help explain a major reason why colloidal silver has been observed to be effective in many instances against cancer, especially when it is combined with other cancer fighting substances.

One of the characteristics of cancer masses (tumors) is that they form a protective barrier, or membrane, which prevents the body’s natural cancer fighters from being able to penetrate into the cancer cells. This protective barrier also makes it difficult for natural cancer fighting to get into cancer cells.

Thus, if colloidal silver increases the permeability of cancer cells the same as the study found happened with bacteria, it stands to reason that it would help make natural cancer fighters more effective.

This author first heard of colloidal silver enhancing other cancer fighters several years ago when a resident of Utopia, Texas reported that he had used both colloidal silver and oleander extract against cancer and that while both of them were effective by themselves, they were all the more effective when used in combination with one another.

The Many Uses of Colloidal Silver

Silver has a history of safe and effective use dating back thousands of years and today colloidal silver is used successfully by millions of people around the world for infections and many other conditions. Unlike antibiotic medications, colloidal silver is equally effective against viruses and funguses.

Silver is used by NASA, the US military and Potters for Peace for water purification. It is also used as a germicidal agent by hospitals and medical suppliers. and was recently incorporated into a new line of hospital pajamas to prevent the spread of infection, to name just a few of its present day uses.

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