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Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

salon.com

41–50 of 468 posts

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#42
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who comes from an area with clean fresh water, that does not contain added fluoride, this is not a complex issue. It's simply not a question that comes up. People have good dental hygiene here. To my mind, yes sure you can over complicate the entire debate, but all of that is irrelevant in the face of these basic points: - Is there a chance that fluoride ingestion could be detrimental to human health? - Ca…

What do you consider necessary for “good quality toothpaste?”

I’m not OP or american, but i can comment. >1,500ppm concentration of fluoride is prescription only (so you either pay for a pointless dentist visit or get it on the grey market), despite being safe and much more effective at remineralisation. There are also experimental ingredients such as nanohydroxyapatite and Novamin which are difficult to find on the american market due to the FDA

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#43
post #11

So we know that there is definitely little benefit from ingesting fluoride, and also that we can not rule out negative effects from ingesting fluoride. This seems like... a bit of a big deal?

Not from ingestion, but exposing the enamel periodically during the day to fluoride and having trace amounts of it on your saliva supports remineralisation.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#45
post #42
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you consider necessary for “good quality toothpaste?”

I’m not OP or american, but i can comment. >1,500ppm concentration of fluoride is prescription only (so you either pay for a pointless dentist visit or get it on the grey market), despite being safe and much more effective at remineralisation. There are also experimental ingredients such as nanohydroxyapatite and Novamin which are difficult to find on the american market due to the FDA

Novamin used to be available via Sensodyne Pronamel in Canada. I was surprised to see that at some point it disappeared from our market - no longer able to buy at any grocery store or pharmacy or on Amazon, whereas it used to be available in all of these places.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#46
post #42
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you consider necessary for “good quality toothpaste?”

I’m not OP or american, but i can comment. >1,500ppm concentration of fluoride is prescription only (so you either pay for a pointless dentist visit or get it on the grey market), despite being safe and much more effective at remineralisation. There are also experimental ingredients such as nanohydroxyapatite and Novamin which are difficult to find on the american market due to the FDA

IME high fluoride can agitate the digestive system, so perhaps the limit is for good reason?

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#47
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they added it to salt and toothpaste instead.

Toothpaste, for the most part, isn't swallowed. Salt, you can get any kind you want. I think this gives consumers more discretion/control over what they want to or do not want to ingest.

Yes, I agree. I was just pushing back against the common false narrative that no fluoride in tap water equals no fluoride at all. It's brought up as a fact in every online discussion about fluoride.

Usually it's alongside that one study that shows naturally occurring fluoride in water is harmful to children's mental development. Which is true, but neglects to mention that the areas studied (in rural China) had levels of fluoride twenty times higher then public water fluoridation programs and that the same study also included a control group at "normal" added fluoride level and found no negative effect.

Heres the study. You'll start to recognize it if you get involved in a few of these discussions.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1852689/

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#48
post #23

What is it about this report that no one is calling it a conspiracy theory anymore? Edit: why am I being downvoted for this?

Science.

There are 85 studies… The science has always been there. A Salon article hasn’t been though. Is that it?

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who comes from an area with clean fresh water, that does not contain added fluoride, this is not a complex issue. It's simply not a question that comes up. People have good dental hygiene here. To my mind, yes sure you can over complicate the entire debate, but all of that is irrelevant in the face of these basic points: - Is there a chance that fluoride ingestion could be detrimental to human health? - Ca…

I always thought anti fluoridation sentiment in Utah was related to them having the highest dentist count per capita. It’s the only state that I know of where fluoridation isn’t common.

Dentists are the ones who are pro-fluoridation … at least it was a dental trade group that fought the release of this report (maybe they are funded behind the scenes by a different interest group)

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#50
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who comes from an area with clean fresh water, that does not contain added fluoride, this is not a complex issue. It's simply not a question that comes up. People have good dental hygiene here. To my mind, yes sure you can over complicate the entire debate, but all of that is irrelevant in the face of these basic points: - Is there a chance that fluoride ingestion could be detrimental to human health? - Ca…

Citing: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24308394/ which recommends flouridating salt. "Children and adults of the low socio-economic strata tend to have substantially more untreated caries than higher strata. Salt fluoridation is by far the cheapest method for improving oral health." Sure, good for you that you're in one of the higher socioeconomic strata who can take care of their teeth. Not everyone else is.

>recommends flouridating salt

That is a scary recommendation. Would be very hard to avoid fluoride if restaurants, packaged food etc all used fluoridated salt

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