Silica Supplements: Just Another Fraud

I have to disagree with you on silica not having any benefit. While I agree with you that if you google it you will find many a website touting it's healing abilities, I don't think they are all quacks trying to take advantage.
I have rheumatoid arthritis. I was taking the generic version of Plaquenil for 3 years with no noticeable difference in my joints. I was always stiff and the days I was without pain were few and far between. It also didn't seem to halt the progress of the disease at all either.

I found silica quite by accident while researching something completely different. I decided it couldn't hurt to try. So I bought a bottle. I started taking 10-20 mg daily.

Within 1 week I noticed a marked difference in not only my pain level but also by flexibility. I was not doing anything different such as diet, exercise, or stretching to explain this. I can only think it was the silica and plan on buying another bottle.

We wrote the article, <I>Naturally Eliminating Joint and Arthritis Pain</I>. We believe the advice contained within that story will be much more useful for helping than silica.

I'm going to be frank and honest here. The fact that silica seems to be helping you is an indication that there is something terrible about your diet -- not that silica is curing you. We know this because the only known biological use for silica is as a filtration agent. In fact, it is used to filter food and aid digestion in birds for that reason. You can even make your beer more pure with it!

The question is, what exactly is the silica filtering out? In any case, the silica is merely temporarily helping shield you from whatever garbage is going into your body, so it is hardly the best option. The better option is for you to discover and eliminate whatever is aggravating your problems.

Read those labels carefully. They're meant to deceive.

Of course I think research is always good especially when trying out supplements. I have in the past used turmeric, which helped for a short time. It always made me burp and I had to take it at night so it didn't upset my stomach. Not only that, but it also seemed like my body built up a tolerance to it. At one point it just seemed like it stopped working at all.
I have also taken cherry supplements. I didn't feel any noticeable difference at all with the cherry.
As far as my diet being terrible, I eat fruits and vegetables daily, most of the time they are organic. I usually only drink water and sometimes milk. I don't drink sodas at all and don't generally eat candy. I don't see how this could be blamed on diet at all. I have been diabetic for 25 years and that is for sure a contributing factor, especially with the inflammation part of it.

It is time to be a little more honest with yourself. If you have had diabetes for 25 years, then your diet is obviously not so good. Getting rid of it is probably the most important thing, if you want to get better and feel better. Everything you need to know is laid-out in the article, Special Investigative Report: Curing Diabetes Naturally and Holistically.

Silica is necessary for proper function/assimilation of other nutrients such as iron, calcium, magnesium and potassium. It also plays a key role in the strength of bone tissue and the elasticity and regeneration of connective tissue. Just because the FDA chooses to ignore something doesn't mean we should their conclusions are not sacrosanct and in fact they have been wrong in many cases.

One of the reasons supplements are so needed today is that the soil which our food supply grows in is severely lacking in many nutrients that in bygone eras it used to be rich in. Yes, the nutritional value of food depends on the quality of the soil it is grown in, that is a fact. It is therefore possible to eat a proper diet and still be deficient in certain nutrients which may result in health problems. I can personally attest that high quality supplements taken in the proper dosage can help dramatically improve health, whether you believe it or not.

Silica does not aid in the function/assimilation of iron, magnesium, potassium and calcium. Please do at least a small amount of research before eagerly spreading disinformation.

Thanks for stating the what one would think should be obvious.

The fact that the body only retains the silica that it needs and dispenses the rest makes it one of the better supplements to be taking without having to worry about getting too little or too much... as long as your body is properly regulating what it needs.

From what I can see from the several articles I have read about silica as a diet supplement - the worst thing that can happen is that you will pay for something that your body doesn't absorb. If there are no other noticeable physical benefits it is highly unlikely that anyone would continue taking it anyway.

The bottom line for me is "It can't hurt - only possibly help". So I'm going to give it a go. After years of eating grocery store mass produced foods (several of which are no longer grown in soil) I can draw a line directly from rather superficial symptoms
I have to the list of claims Silica claims it can remedy. Worth a shot I say.

It's not a life saver by any means but perhaps might bring relief to some and/or a little 'feel & look' better to others. And that's a good thing surely. It's definitely not deserving of the lashing it has taken as a suspected "Fraud" given all the other things out there that people are taking in attempts to find a quick fix to one thing or another.

But can silica do any actual HARM?

It is very unlikely that you would experience any actual harm, except to that of your wallet when swallowed. Inhaling silica is very different.

My only experience with silica is eating bread in Africa. I was near the Sahara and there was quite a bit of sand in the food. It served as a pretty good colon scrub....not sure of any other benefits.

I have used horsetail [esquistum arvense] tea. It is supposed to treat edema, and strengthen teeth, bones ,fingernails, and connective tissue. I noticed that my bladder, which had not been a problem, felt stronger and good, as though some kind of tension was relieved. A tea is a better way to take this than a pill. Horsetail is a primitive fern that grows on a long runner root, and survives as a small plant.
From Wikipedia: Equisetum (play /ˌɛkwɨˈsiːtəm/; horsetail, snake grass, puzzlegrass) is the only living genus in the Equisetaceae, a family of vascular plants that reproduce by spores rather than seeds. [2]

Equisetum is a "living fossil", as it is the only living genus of the entire class Equisetopsida, which for over one hundred million years was much more diverse and dominated the understory of late Paleozoic forests. Some Equisetopsida were large trees reaching to 100 feet tall.