Paul Karason became known around the internet for something no one expected. His skin turned a deep blue after years of drinking colloidal silver every day.
He started using it to treat a bad case of dermatitis. He made the mixture himself through electrolysis and drank about 10 ounces a day for over ten years.
At first, he didn’t even realize anything had changed. He said: “He looks at me and he says, ‘What have you got on your face?’ ‘I don’t have anything on my face!’ He says, ‘Well, it looks like you’ve got camouflage makeup on or something.’ And by golly, he came in and he was very fair-skinned, as I used to be. And that’s when it hit me.”
The condition is called argyria, and it happens when silver builds up in the body and causes permanent blue-gray discoloration. It usually shows up first in the mouth, then spreads more where sunlight hits.
Despite the skin change, Paul said it helped him physically. He said: “The acid reflux problem I’d been having just went away completely. I had arthritis in my shoulders so bad I couldn’t pull a T-shirt off. And the next thing I knew, it was just gone.”
He believed completely that silver was the reason. He said there was “not the slightest doubt in my mind” about it.
Online, people started calling him “Papa Smurf,” but that nickname wasn’t always welcome. His wife Jo Anna said: “That was a nickname he didn’t appreciate, depending on who said it. If it was a kid who ran up to him saying ‘Papa Smurf,’ it would put a smile on his face. But if it was an adult, well…”
Paul died in 2013 at the age of 62. He had a heart attack, then developed pneumonia and suffered a stroke before passing away in a Washington hospital.
In the years before he died, he had been through a triple bypass and wasn’t healthy enough to work. Jo Anna said he mostly stayed inside, reading historical books and watching the History Channel.
She said: “He didn’t like to go out in public much, only when he thought he needed to, like to go to the bank or to pick up tobacco.”
