Colloidal Gold's Impressive Claims

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Colloidal gold supplementation is enjoying a lot of publicity presently as a health product to fight inflammation, support skin health, boost immune function, combat aging, and improve cognitive function.

  • Today’s main feature examines the scientific evidence for these claims!

  • The evidence is much like the gold itself: very thin.

• As we age, our collagen levels tend to get depleted more easily. Collagen is important not just for youthful good looks, but also for the health of bones and joints

  • Today’s sponsor NativePath are offering high-quality collagen without additives or harmful impurities

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

🤫 A WORD TO THE WISE

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Top 10 Foods That Promote Lymphatic Drainage and Lymph Flow

Prefer text? The above video link will take you to a 10almonds page with a text version as well as the video!

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

• Melatonin: A Safe, Natural Sleep Aid?

• Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)

❓️ THIS OR THAT?

Vote on Which is Healthier

Yesterday we asked you to choose between physical sunscreens and chemical sunscreens—we picked the physical sunscreens (click here to read about why), as did 82% of you!

Now for today’s choice:

Click on whichever you think is better for you!

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

• The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need

• Knit for Health & Wellness: How To Knit A Flexible Mind & More (book)

💊 MAIN FEATURE

All That Glitters…

Today we’ll be examining colloidal gold supplementation.

This issue of 10almonds brought to you by the writer suddenly getting lots of advertisements for this supplement. It’s not a new thing though, and has been around in one form or another since pretty much forever.

Colloidal gold is…

• Gold, as in the yellow metal

• Colloidal, as in “very tiny insoluble particles dispersed though another substance (such as water)”

What are the claims made for it?

Honestly, just about everything is claimed for it. But to go with some popular claims:

• Reduces inflammation

• Supports skin health

• Boosts immune function

• Combats aging

• Improves cognitive function

So, what does the science say?

Does it do those things?

The short and oversimplified answer is: no

However, there is a little bit of tangential merit, so we’re going to talk about the science of it, and how the leap gets made between what the science says and what the advertisements say.

First… What makes gold so special, in general? Historically, three things:

1. It’s quite rare

2. It’s quite shiny

3. It’s quite unreactive

• The first is about supply and demand, so that’s not very important to us in this article.

• The second is an aesthetic quality, which actually will have a little bit of relevance, but not much.

• The third has been important historically (because it meant that shiny gold stayed shiny, because it didn’t tarnish), and now also important industrially too, as gold can be used in many processes where we basically need for nothing to happen (i.e., a very inert component is needed)

That third quality—its unreactivity—has become important in medicine.

When scientists need a way to deliver something (without the delivering object getting eaten by the body’s “eat everything” tendencies), or otherwise not interact chemically with anything around, gold is an excellent choice.

Hence gold teeth, and gold fillings, by the way. They’re not just for the bling factor; they were developed because of their unreactivity and thus safety.

So, what about those health claims we mentioned above?

Here be science (creative interpretations not included)

The most-backed-by-science claim from that list is “reduces inflammation”.

Websites selling colloidal gold cite studies such as:

Gold nanoparticles reduce inflammation in cerebral microvessels of mice with sepsis

A promising title! The results of the study showed:

That “20 nm cit-AuNP” means “20 nm citrate-covered gold nanoparticles”

So it is not so much the antioxidant powers of gold being tested here, as the antioxidant powers of citrate, a known antioxidant. The gold was the carrying agent, whose mass and unreactivity allowed it to get where it needed to be.

The paper does say the words “Gold nanoparticles have been demonstrated to own important anti-inflammatory properties“ in the abstract, but does not elaborate on that, reference it, or indicate how.

Websites selling colloidal gold also cite papers such as:

Anti-inflammatory effect of gold nanoparticles supported on metal oxides

Another promising title! However the abstract mentions:

MOx NPs = mineral oxide nanoparticles. In this case, the gold was a little more than a carrying agent, though, because the gold is described and explained as being a catalytic agent (i.e., its presence helps the attached mineral oxides react more quickly).

We said that was the most-backed claim, and as you can see, it has some basis but is rather tenuous since the gold by itself won’t do anything; it just helps the mineral oxides.

Next best-backed claim builds from that, which is “supports skin health”.

Sometimes colloidal gold is sold as a facial tonic. By itself it’ll distribute (inert) gold nanoparticles across your skin, and may “give you a healthy glow”, because that’s what happens when you put shiny wet stuff on your face.

Healthwise, if the facial tonic also contains some of the minerals we mentioned above, then it may have an antioxidant effect. But again, no minerals, no effect.

The claim that it “combats aging” is really a tag-on to the “antioxidant” claim.

As for the “supports immune health” claim… Websites selling colloid gold cite studies such as:

Efficacy and Immune Response Elicited by Gold Nanoparticle- Based Nanovaccines against Infectious Diseases

To keep things brief: gold can fight infectious diseases in much the same way that forks can fight hunger. It’s an inert carrying agent.

As for “improves cognitive function”? The only paper we could find cited was that mouse sepsis study again, this time with the website saying “researchers found that rats treated with colloidal gold showed improved spatial memory and learning ability“ whereas the paper cited absolutely did not claim that, not remotely, not even anything close to that. It wasn’t even rats, it was mice, and they did not test their memory or learning.

Is it safe?

Colloidal gold supplementation is considered very safe, precisely because gold is one of the least chemically reactive substances you could possibly consume. It is special precisely because it so rarely does anything.

However, impurities could be introduced in the production process, and the production process often involves incredibly harsh reagents to get the gold ions, and if any of those reagents are left in the solution, well, gold is safe but sodium borohydride and chloroauric acid aren’t!

Where can I get some?

In the unlikely event that our research review has given you an urge to try it, here’s an example product on Amazon 😎

Take care!

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

• How Science News Outlets Can Lie To You (Yes, Even If They Cite Studies!)

• Becoming a Supple Leopard: The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury, and Optimizing Athletic Performance (book)

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

NativePath Collagen

Pop quiz: What’s the body’s most abundant protein?

The answer: Collagen.

NativePath's Certified Grass-Fed Collagen Powder is made from grass-fed, pasture-raised cows and contains 18 grams of protein per suggested serving.

Start incorporating it daily to support skin elasticity, joint health, bone strength, and muscle growth and maintenance.

Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

Browse By Category

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

How Healers Heal: Lifestyle Medicine Physicians Transforming Healthcare and Their Own Health – by Dr. Shilpi Pradhan

First note: the listed author here is in fact the compiler, with the authors being a collection of no fewer than 33 board-certified lifestyle medicine physicians. So, we're not getting just a single person's opinions/bias here!

But what is lifestyle medicine? This book holds the six pillars of lifestyle medicine to be:

1. Nutrition

2. Physical activity

3. Stress management

4. Restorative sleep

5. Social connections

6. Avoidance of risky substances

...and those things are what we read about throughout the book, both in highly educational mini-lecture form, and sometimes highly personal storytelling.

It's not just a "do these things" book, though yes, there's a large part of that. It also covers wide topics, from COVID to alopecia, burnout to grief, immune disorders to mysterious chest pains (and how such mysteries are unravelled, when taken seriously).

One of the greatest strengths of this book is that it's very much "medicine, as it should be", so that the reader knows how to recognize the difference.

Bottom line: this book doesn't fit into a very neat category, but it's a very worthwhile book to read, and one that could help inform a decision that changes the entire path of your life or that of a loved one.

Click here to check out How Healers Heal, and learn to recognize the healthcare you deserve!

Wishing you the most well-informed start to the week,

The 10almonds Team