Let's examine the metallic form of colloidal silver first:
This form of colloidal silver is also often erroneously referred to by internet marketers as "true colloidal silver".
It's important to note, however, that the term "true colloidal silver" is a completely made-up term. It cannot be found anywhere in the scientific or medical nomenclature. That's because it's an advertising gimmick, and not an actual recognized medical or scientific term.
In fact, a friend of mine who's been the research director of a pharmaceutical firm for years often challenges people to find the term "true colloidal silver" in any reputable medical textbook or clinical reference work. He even offers to buy them a gallon of their favorite brand of "true colloidal silver" if they can produce such a reference.
But he's never been taken up on the challenge because there's simply no reference to "true colloidal silver" in any of the standard recognized medical or clinical reference texts in the entire world.
In short, there's simply no such thing as "true colloidal silver". Clinical researchers won't even use the term in their clinical studies because they don't want to be laughed out of the room.
So for the sake of clarity and scientific accuracy we'll continue to use the correct nomenclature and refer to the so-called "true colloidal silver" as the metallic form of colloidal silver, or nanosilver.
The metallic form of colloidal silver is generally manufactured through a chemical process in which a silver compound such as silver nitrate or silver acetate is chemically reduced until there's nothing left but tiny, bare metal particles of elemental silver suspended in water.
But metallic silver can also be manufactured through a high-voltage A/C process in which extremely high voltages of electricity up to 25,000 volts are used to force tiny particles of elemental silver to disassociate (i.e., break loose) into water from a larger silver rod or bar.
Another less-often-used method for producing the metallic form of colloidal silver is to take finely ground-up elemental silver and add it to water while sonicating it (i.e., mechanically agitating the silver particles) in order to bring it into a colloidal suspension.
The bottom line is that no matter how you produce the metallic form of colloidal silver, when you drink it you're drinking tiny particles of bare metal elemental silver. It would be the same as if you could use your knife to whittle raw silver particles off a silver coin, only the silver metal particles in the metallic form of colloidal silver are much smaller, of course.