When I read this article http://niagara-gazette.com/features/x1440313542/Natural-Health-Feeling-well-with-Candida-involves-diet-change
in the Niagara Gazette, there wasn’t a place for comments, so I sent the following email to the paper but never got a response.
From: Rosemary Jacobs
Subject: Catherine Stack
Date: May 4, 2011 4:59:19 PM EDT
To: rick.forgione@niagara-gazette.com
Cc: winterhalterm@gnnewspaper.com
In an article by Catherine Stack, "Natural Health: Feeling well with Candida..." published on May 4, 2011 Ms. Stack states, “Nutritional supplements such as probiotic’s, colloidal silver, Vitamin C, herbal or homeopathic combination formulas are extremely helpful when it comes to killing yeast.”
Is Ms. Stack paid by your publication to write articles? Does she write them for free or does she pay you to publish them? Whatever the case may be, I urge you to have a medical doctor well trained in pharmacology and toxicology review her material for accuracy. Since her statement about colloidal silver (CS) is incorrect and she also sells the product, http://stores.homestead.com/Gifts4Healing/Categories.bok, I would be quite skeptical about the rest of her claims.
CS is snake oil, at best useless and at worst harmful. It can cause argyria, discolored skin. Perhaps you have heard of Paul Karason, The Blue Man, who was all over the news even on Oprah.
Here are some references:
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/alerts/silver/index.htm (Search NCCAM using the term "silver".)
http://www.fda.gov/Food/DietarySupplements/Alerts/ucm184087.htm
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/id/QAA363388 (One of the major US promoters of "dietary supplements" and "natural remedies".)
http://www.waikato.ac.nz/news/index.shtml?article=178
http://dermnetnz.org/reactions/argyria.html
http://www.fda.gov/OHRMS/DOCKETS/98fr/081799a.pdf
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/colloidal-silver/an01682
Using the search term "argyria", you will find cases here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed
This is the site of a lawyer who is getting out-of-court settlements on behalf of people who have gotten argyria from silver supplements.
http://www.goldenberglaw.com/CM/PracticeAreaDescriptions/Colloidal_Silver-Argyria.asp
The following is one of many of the videos you'll find on the Internet of Paul Karason, the most publicized argyria case caused recently by a silver supplement. His was homemade.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa2OpNTX9Ck
Silver is sold as a "dietary supplement". This is a great article on "dietary supplements".
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/10/FDCQ1788VE.DTL
Also check my webpage.
Rosemary
http://www.webanstrich.de/rosemary/
http://rosemary-jacobs.blogspot.com
On 7/8/11 the Niagara Gazette published another article by Stack promoting colloidal silver in which she claims that, “Many studies seem to reflect that colloidal silver use has been proven to be useful against many different infections and is toxic against all species of fungi, bacteria, protozoa, parasites and certain viruses.“
She doesn’t offer references, but the medical literature is indexed, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed. I’ve been reviewing it for decades and have never seen any studies showing that ingesting silver offers any benefits although it has severely discolored many who have taken it internally. And if you check the links I sent the Gazette as I hope Ms. Stack has, you will see that neither the FDA, the National Center for Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Andrew Weil, one of the biggest US promoters of “dietary supplements” and alternative medicine or the Mayo Clinic has either. Yes, silver is a disinfectant like alcohol and peroxide and there are FDA approved topical silver drugs, but like most disinfectants, silver doesn’t kill disease causing germs inside people who ingest it. In other words, it isn’t an antibiotic. Neither is it safe to ingest.
Stack refers you to a silver promotional site that she says will tell you about “safe dosing” but fails to mention that in one of the FDA links I sent the Gazette it states, “Based on the available scientific information, FDA is not able to advise consumers of a dose or use restrictions that would minimize or eliminate the risk of argyria.”
The people that I’ve spoken to who have gotten argyria recently from silver supplements lament the fact that they believed the salesmen and promoters who insisted that the silver products they sold could not possible cause argyria. Many salesmen insisted that their silver remedies were nontoxic and that the customer could take as much as he wanted, but after the person got argyria, the salesmen blamed him, the customer, saying that he took “too much” or took or made “the wrong kind”of colloidal silver, that even though there are no toxicology studies to show how much is too much and many case reports demonstrating that ingesting silver in any form can cause argyria.
And oh yes, Ms. Stack is still selling colloidal silver. Did she mention that in her article?
http://stores.homestead.com/Gifts4Healing/StoreFront.bok
If any of you readers can answer the questions I asked the Gazette, please let me know. Is Stack paid to write her column? Does she do it for free? Does she pay the paper to publish her material? I’m told that it is quite common for papers today to publish articles for a fee without clearly stating that when the piece is published.
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