Surprisingly effective anti-inflammatory
I had a spider bite on my finger bad enough to warrant the use of a steroid cream, and the itchiness and swelling from fingertip to knuckle was driving me crazy.  The steroid helped a bit, but I couldn't use it more than twice a day, so I tried "silver shield," which came highly recommended at a holistic-remedy-type shop.  Wow!  Several uses and half a day later, the swelling was almost completely gone.<br /><br />Silver's usefulness as an anti-fungal/anti-bacterial agent in topical creams is pretty well documented, but I didn't expect it to do so much good against my own immune system's swelling response.  Knowing that I'd want to keep using it to treat future bug bites, scrapes, and scars, I did some internet research on silver's toxicity.  (MAN are there some crazy claims out there - AIDS cures and such) but I was reassured by the following statement on wikipedia:<br /><br />"The reference dose, published by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 1991, which recommends the estimated daily exposure that is unlikely to incur a appreciable risk of deleterious effects during a lifetime, is 5 µg/kg/d; meaning 5 microgram of silver per kilo of weight per person each day - about 1 liter of 10 ppm colloidal silver per month for a 66kg person."<br /><br />Since the cream contains 24 ppm silver and since 1 liter is about 11 times as big as this 3 oz, container, you'd have to use up 4.6 of these 3 oz containers per month to reach that EPA recommended-safe exposure.<br /><br />So I'm gonna keep on using this gel.  Mosquitos, come and get me!<br /><br />Edited to add: I now use this cream instead of moisterizer on my face, both morning and evening.  The redness on my cheeks and a burst blood vessel (rosacea, I think) have faded quite a bit - the blood vessel in particular is completely invisible now.  Who knew?  I thought you could get those kind of results only with a laser!
Rating: 5 stars