Silver Deficiency and Your Health

Silver, like all other minerals play important roles in the body – if the levels we need are not sufficient there will be consequences in the long term.

It has become increasingly difficult to obtain all the essential nutrients we need through our food and diet: 
The world's soils have become depleted through modern farming methods and increased population demands, the foods grown on these mineral depleted soils now thus have less nutrient content. The situation is then aggravated by the use of over-processed and fast foods.

One of the earliest studies that reported on silver content in foods was conducted by R.A Kehoe of UCLA, back in 1940. This study showed that an average daily intake of fruit and vegetables would provide between 50-100 mcg of silver as a trace element.

By 1975 the amount of silver found in our diet was so low that it became necessary to use picograms (one trillionth of a gram) as the unit of measurement instead of micrograms (one millionth of a gram). According to Snyder, W.S, the average daily intake of silver has been estimated to be only 70 pg/day. This immense drop in silver content of our foods could explain that many researchers have found indications that silver indeed plays an important role in our health and immunity, and deficiency in silver could impair our immune system.

Robert O. Becker, MD and medical researcher, noticed a correlation between low silver levels and illness:
He found that people with low levels of silver (determined through hair analysis) were sick more frequently and their illnesses lasted longer than people who had higher levels of silver. Other researchers such as Dr. Gary Smith and Dr. Bjorn Nordstrom of the Karolinski Institute in Sweden also investigated the correlation between low silver levels, immune deficiency and chronic conditions.