Eh, this is nothing new. Who was it in olden days that would grind up pearls into her wine as a display of wealth? Not Lil' Kim, even farther back than that.
The FDA is really weird about dietary supplements. Mostly, they just say that a company can't market a product as a treatment for any disease, but the rules for kava kava and colloidal silver are different. Stores selling them have to put up signs warning about their dangers, i.e., that kava kava is problematic for regular drinkers and anyone with liver problems should aboid it; and that colloidal silver can have pretty interesting side effects.
I spilled silver nitrate on my hand in high school chemistry, and it left an unwashable stain that lasted weeks.
Yay! Safety!
3: Define "interesting" side-effects.
An interesting monster needs an interesting side effect.
I have it on good authority that sprinkling ground up diamonds is, "the most baller thing you can possibly do to your food."
1: that was what sprung to mind with me as well. Cleopatra, I believe.
Well, better they get inspiration from Paracelsus than from Elizabeth Bathory (like Johanna Billington did).
So, alameida, did you have a specific comment in mind, or is it just the whole thread that makes you happy?
Define "interesting" side-effects.
Get on a search engine and do an image search on "argyria".
Y'know, you'd think a person would stop sometime before they turned this fucking blue.
it's the one from "zon/gies". as a consideration of the word alembic should make clear.
Stan Jones, Libertarian Party senatorial and gubernatorial candidate in Montana, turned himself blue drinking colloidal silver.
to make my ways marginally less mysterious, I'm preserving the googlewhack there rather than undead bridgeplate's anonymity.
13, meet the last word of the post you are responding to.
15: Which is entirely Alameida's fault for hyperlinking a generic word like "this".
I don't understand how the blue color can be permanent. Is it that after ingesting a certain amount of silver, you can't flush it out of your system? If that's the case, maybe it's a question of a tipping-point; you're merrily taking your silver solution, and suddenly you realise you've got a problem...
Whoa, that thread ends with some of the lowest-hanging fruit I've ever seen. Quick someone, pluck it.
The gold helps to strengthen every single skin cell
I keep my smooth complexion by drinking nothing but Goldschlager.
Just drinking it? Try bathing in it for the extra-special baby's-bottom soft-as-velvet look.
17: The elemental silver is apparently being converted to something the body then can't get rid of, like the conversion of cheeseburger molecules to arterial plaque.
Christ. They'll let people drink elemental silver, but I can't buy lead white.
They'll let people drink elemental silver, but I can't buy
...marijuana.
I know where you can buy some marijuana, Apo.
Is there a smokable form of colloidal silver? Recommended?
I've never tried to buy lead white (since I don't paint), but I'm pretty sure the on the ground barriers to its purchase are higher than those to marijuana's.
You get stern warnings about the tiny amounts of silver in photographic fixer and it's treated as hazardous waste in a lot places. And people are drinking it?
Actually, I know where to buy marijuana as well. But I'd really like to be able to pop over to the HandyMart (or at least the GNC at the mall) instead. I'm a busy man.
28- I think the "tiny" amounts are differ by orders of magnitide.
I think the "tiny" amounts are differ by orders of magnitiude.
re: 31
A quick google suggests the amounts differ by an order of magnitude (at the high end of 'medicinal' use) rather than several orders of magnitude. But I take your point.
17: JM, the dissolved silver goes into the blood serum and reacts with cellular surface proteins to produce an insoluble glop. There's no natural mechanism to get rid of it. These people are silvered all the way through, but they only turn blue at the surface, where sunlight can trigger silver grain formation, exactly like an albumen print.
(Some people, using the photography analogy, have injected hypo solution into themselves to try to flush the silver loose. I think they're the market for home appendectomy kits.)
So, when they die, you could do an autopsy and watch as their insides turn blue with every cut.
Hm, interesting. So was I right to suspect that there's a tipping-point of saturation, at which point they wake up and find themselves blue?
34: Or, you could get a full body Maori tattoo design without the pain. It's keeping it that might be a problem.
I think it depends on cumulative exposure to light. Found a picture in a dermatology article of a "58-year-old white man with no significant medical history presented to our institution with extensive blue-gray discoloration of sun-exposed skin". It's a classic farmer's tan in gray: face, neck, open-shirt area, forearms, hands. He treated what he thought was a kidney infection by drinking silver colloid solution for four days, and nothing else. He first noticed his mouth getting bluer a month later, and the picture was taken at five months.
(He looks a lot like a thinner Stan Jones -- goofy white hair over a gray-blue Anglo face. But this guy has earlobes, and Jones doesn't.)
Oh, here's a title: 'Argyria: the intradermal "photograph," a manifestation of passive photosensitivity.' A guy in 1946 treated his varicose veins by injecting silver nitrate into them; forty-one years later, his skin was examined by electron microscope. I am getting way too into this.
Does it do any real harm, or just turn you blue? If the latter I could see this becoming popular with the kids. Just a new form of body mod.
According to Wikipedia, it's a corrosive. Surprising that doctors apparently put a silver nitrate solution into infants' eyes, but that's what an MD qualifies you to risk.
I seem to recall that the Medici would grind up diamonds and then liberally dust their enemies' food, causing the eventual rupture of their digestive organs.
Before antibiotics, it was probably better than doing nothing.
39: Protects against little gonnorheas, though. Usually bacteria die before the human being does.
Glass is cheaper, but that's style.
42 sums up my philosophy of alcohol consumption
As long as you're drunk, you won't catch gonorrhea?
38: Argyria would make a remarkably unattractive body mod. It looks like a gray-blue full body nicotine stain.
But, "Adverse effects attributable to silver including argyria are exceedingly rare." I'm thinking Henry Rollins.
40: I wouldn't think that would work. I mean, diamonds aren't very reactive, and, while diamond dust is very abrasive, food gets a bit of a coating of abrasive dust in almost any environment. We're designed to handle that sort of stuff, that's what all the slimy body goop is for. Large jagged and sharpened chunks of diamond would work better.
A lot of body mod is remarkably unattractive body mod.
Do you really think diamond dust would work worse than ground glass, Biohazard?
In the spirit of Alameida's favorite comment thread, this is surely the holy grail of body mod technologies. And a reason to back stem cell research.
49: Seriously? I don't think either ground glass or diamond dust would work well if used in non-detectable quantities on food. I'd think one would notice either if used in amounts and sizes capable of cutting or abrading holes in the GI system. Also, dogs certainly eat, with no ill effects, lots off gritty stuff if they're out and about. It's the bigger and sharper things that get them.
Why would eating diamond crumbs be any worse for you than eating spoonfuls of sand?
51: That was, of course, an AFD piece, but this one isn't.
53 gets it right. You would have to intentionally make super-sharp microdiamonds, not just grind them up.
51 -- the last line of that interview is pretty interesting.
Offing your enemies by getting them to eat jagged objects is easier if you get them hammered on Rakia first.
51 makes me think about how bitter the one who gradually loses must be at the one who gradually gains. But maybe there's more of a "I'll give you my right arm for 3 inches of your penis" deal going on.
Surely he can't move that third arm?
Parcelus was teh hott. And 1: either Cleopatra or Maureen Dowd.
I just found the most amazing method to enlarge your penis! IT REALLY WORKS! Cut off the head, and pack it in ice. Then cut the shaft into five equal pieces, and send them to the five addresses in this email. Remove the top one, add your address at the bottom, and send it to all of your friends. In a matter of days, you will soon start recieving more penis than you could have ever imagined! Once you have enough, just get them all surgically reassembled, and your small-penis days will be over!
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh fuck me fuck me goddamn. Fucking apostropher links.
They talk about the Internet being the endless September, but really it's endless April too.
And all the chatrooms by the sea shut fast
All that long April that goes on and on
And even bloggers get some peace at last
And Unfogged's but a star, that once had shone.