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[wierd]

It's not frequently prescribed these days; It's in the same "quackery" realm as people who swear by colloidal silver and end up smurfs.

But yes, it's a thing, like idiots who use escharotic salves. (why, oh gawd, why?!)


These days, I would think exposure to gold nanoparticles for their use in treating certain soft tissue cancers would be a more probable source of toxic gold accumulations in the body.  Granted, you would have to have had quite a long term exposure to get enough to turn blue that way...  But still.

[Il Palazzo]

It's in the same "quackery" realm as people who swear by colloidal silver and end up smurfs.

But how else can people detox their kids from the heavy metals in the vaccines, huh?

[wierd]

It's in the same "quackery" realm as people who swear by colloidal silver and end up smurfs.

But how else can people detox their kids from the heavy metals in the vaccines, huh?

With Raw Water of course!!  The dysentery is part of the cleansing process!! (Also GREAT for childhood obesity!)

[Trekkin]

It's not frequently prescribed these days; It's in the same "quackery" realm as people who swear by colloidal silver and end up smurfs.

But yes, it's a thing, like idiots who use escharotic salves. (why, oh gawd, why?!)


These days, I would think exposure to gold nanoparticles for their use in treating certain soft tissue cancers would be a more probable source of toxic gold accumulations in the body.  Granted, you would have to have had quite a long term exposure to get enough to turn blue that way...  But still.

Gold nanoparticles aren't oxidized, though, which helps with bioaccumulation.

Incidentally, if gold compounds are quackery somebody had better go tell the WHO; they still classify auranofin as an antirheumatic, and it's still available.

[wierd]

notice the quotes.

Silver nanoparticles are also toxic to germs. (but then again, we had this discussion about mold.  Simply because it kills something in a petri dish does not mean it is good to ingest.)  Using it medicinally though?


Auric salts are effective, but superceded by safer pharmaceuticals.  (Most people couldnt afford gold salts anyway.)

[Trekkin]

notice the quotes.

Silver nanoparticles are also toxic to germs. (but then again, we had this discussion about mold.  Simply because it kills something in a petri dish does not mean it is good to ingest.)  Using it medicinally though?

Actually, there are therapeutics in development that do use silver nanoparticles, albeit mostly as a readily functionalized substrate for other drugs that's also bulky enough to impact endocytosis or, as ever, as chemotherapeutic sensitization agents. Turns out hitting things really hard with little tiny drug-covered rocks works too.

I did notice the quotes. I just maintain that it's not entirely fair to equate niche pharmaceuticals with the self-administration of toxic compounds. Sure, you'd only reach for auranofin for people allergic to methotrexate and everything else besides, but it's still a legitimate use.

[wierd]

I think you mistook me there.

There are people who think "Oh, THAT'S what that stuff is!", and go and self medicate.

Take for instance, digoxin.  This is a stabilized and standardized medication derived from digitalis. (foxglove.)  It is effective for treating a variety of heart conditions. 

Deciding "Oh, Hey! That's a valid therapy! I will stick it to the greedy pharmaceutical industry and self medicate!", and then proceeding to extract digitalis toxin to self medicate your heart condition is a great way to end up dead.

Likewise, production of silver nanoparticles because you learned they are good for killing toxic bacteria, and then ingesting large quantities is how you end up like this guy.

Likewise with escharotics.  Yes. They destroy tissue. Yes, skin cancer is a tissue they WILL in fact, destroy.  They do it very very well.  So, unless you want a FESTERING HOLE in your integumentary system, stay away from them.  You want something that selectively targets malignant tissue, not all of your tissue.  That does not stop people from going "Oh, I can use that to get rid of that lesion on my nose!" and ending up with half their face gone due to gangrene.

The existence of real, actually beneficial treatments for people who cannot use the safer medications available today should not be a foil against people who know just enough to be seriously dangerous about their self-care regimens.

Hence the quotes.

(That is to say, given that ALL THREE of the above things happen, and happen frequently enough to be a public health problem,  I would not be at all surprised if people synthesized auric chloride using batshit horribad garage grade hydrochloric acid, and nitric acid, did a lacklustre refinement process through repeat crystallization using coffee filters, then proceeded to manufacture gold thiols of dubious species (hell, let's say they used onion juice just because. Why the fuck not.), and then inject them into their gnarled, twisted hands, because they saw the pricetag on the actual medication, and said "fuck that."  There are people that inject silicone caulking, and this crazy assed shit. FOR COSMETIC REASONS. All it takes is one really badly written how-to on the internet, and its off to the blue patch races.)

[Reelya]

Likewise, production of silver nanoparticles because you learned they are good for killing toxic bacteria, and then ingesting large quantities is how you end up like this guy.

Minor side-point, but unfortunately he didn't end up like that just by ingesting the stuff, it was when he decided that the stuff was a cure-all and started using it as a face cream to clear up some dermatitis he had. You probably won't turn blue from just drinking the stuff: what he did was to basically tattoo himself with the stuff.

[wierd]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2861249/

NOPE.  Oral administration of colloidal silver preparation is sufficient for systemic argyria.

[Trekkin]

The existence of real, actually beneficial treatments for people who cannot use the safer medications available today should not be a foil against people who know just enough to be seriously dangerous about their self-care regimens.

Hence the quotes.

That is a very idiosyncratic use of quotation marks, and one not entirely consonant with your subsequent equivocation of gold drugs with silver nanoparticles (for which there is no current use as a drug) as "quackery". If we're going to not let legitimate drug use shield dangerous self-administration, surely we should be equally careful not to let the dangerous practices of laypeople disguise the legitimate uses of drugs.

At least, that makes sense as a matter of principle. In practice, I legitimately don't know how the marginal effects work out, since there's a notable asymmetry here: people can choose to self-medicate with whatever they like, but refusing medication is only a problem if they're instructed to take it specifically. On that basis, one could plausibly suggest a priori that overlooking legitimate medical practices in our apparent rush to point and laugh at people could be more dangerous than the converse, at least if we grant that people willing to self-medicate are probably going to take a liberal view of what counts as evidence of the efficacy of a drug and the availability of alternatives, having already selectively interpreted the scientific consensus once -- perhaps, for example, everyone who would have self-medicated with gold if you hadn't called it "quackery" (all zero of them, I know) will take vitamin C megadoses or Laetril or something instead.

This seems like something simple enough to study that someone has to have done so at some point, if only because noncompliance is such a problem, and yet I can't find one anywhere. I'll keep looking.

[Reelya]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2861249/

NOPE.  Oral administration of colloidal silver preparation is sufficient for systemic argyria.

Yeah, but look at the pictures in that article, then look at "blue man". They're completely different. "Blue man" is not a good example of what happens if you ingest colloidal silver.

This is the patient in that study (on the left):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

He has some skin discoloration relative to what he used to look like, but his current skin tone isn't really outside the range of normal non-silver-ingesting skin tones.

Remember, my main point was that merely ingesting the silver won't turn you blue. The photo in this study of someone who ingested colloidal silver for 5 years supports that.

[wierd]

In the case of Paul, he continued ingesting his silver preparation even after he started to turn blue.  Topical silver is very unlikely to impact deep skin tissue in this fashion. The integumentary system is pretty damned good at keeping large macroscopic particles OUT.

It needs to be a solvent form of silver to get through, and needs some pretty long term use. (Silvadene cream has such a risk, for example)

[Kagus]

Didn't we try the lithium before? I seem to remember the folks still ending up being a little unhappy about it.

They probably weren't getting enough.

[SalmonGod]

This thread right now

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[scriver]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2861249/

NOPE.  Oral administration of colloidal silver preparation is sufficient for systemic argyria.

Yeah, but look at the pictures in that article, then look at "blue man". They're completely different. "Blue man" is not a good example of what happens if you ingest colloidal silver.

This is the patient in that study (on the left):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

He has some skin discoloration relative to what he used to look like, but his current skin tone isn't really outside the range of normal non-silver-ingesting skin tones.

Remember, my main point was that merely ingesting the silver won't turn you blue. The photo in this study of someone who ingested colloidal silver for 5 years supports that.

This is the face of a woman who as a child took nosedrops with silver in them for three years:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The picture is of her around twenty years after she was diagnosed and stopped taking the nose drops.