Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

salon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 468 posts

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#171

Post by throwaway2990 »

s0rce wrote: post #145
throwaway2990 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m very much anti fluoride in drinking water. And did not buy fluoride tooth paste for my kids until they learned to spit. But 1) kids brush teeth to form a healthy habit, and protect their gums. Kids who do not brush teeth often develop gum disease which can cause tooth loss in the future as adults. 2) residual fluoride isn’t anything to worry about. Just spit the toothpaste out. If you’re super worried about fluor…

Whats the point of calcium fluoride in your toothpaste, the water solubility is very low I would suspect it to do almost nothing, could be wrong, never heard of this. Generally soluble salts like sodium or tin fluoride are used.

Sodium fluoride is a by product of aluminium production and is poisonous in high dosage. That’s why people are so anti fluoride.

Calcium fluoride is naturally occurring and was what was discovered to be so good. Well the water it was first discovered was contaminated with sodium fluoride from aluminium but the water that promoted the research was calcium fluoride.

But while sodium fluoride is poisonous in high levels. You could drink super high levels of calcium fluoride and be totally fine.

So if you’re super worried about sodium fluoride (which you shouldn’t be in tooth paste since you should spit it out and anything you swallowed is harmless as the dosage is so low) then the alternative is to source tooth paste with calcium fluoride. Which is harder to get but it does exist.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#172

Post by newZWhoDis »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #119

Adding fluoride to water has always seemed weird to me, since you can't control for how much water someone is drinking or account for different bodily factors like age and weight. I wonder why the European solution of adding it to salt isn't the default, especially given that iodized salt is already so popular and commonplace. As a general rule of thumb, I think it's interesting to scrutinize dosage recommendations a…

No credible scientific evidence exists that ingesting fluoride is beneficial.

Whenever you point this out, people respond with studies that focused on topical application. This topic is weird. Otherwise intelligent people shut down and begin quoting movies from the 1960’s, and are somehow incapable of distinguishing between a topical mouthwash and oral consumption.

Might as well drink sunscreen and talk about the reduction in lip skin cancer.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#173

Post by mixedCase »

Thorrez wrote: post #169
para_parolu wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess it easier to buy different salt but hard to get second water pipe.

>A Reverse Osmosis (RO) system can remove 85-92%* of fluoride in your water. https://www.paragonwater.com/does-reverse-osmosis-remove-flu...

An RO filter is not accesible to the majority of the population.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#174

Post by eloisius »

xupybd wrote: post #96
yeeeloit wrote: post #30

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…

My wife comes from a country that did not add fluoride to the water. She has very good dental hygiene but here teeth are not in good shape for her age. That's one data point that I have observed.

I’ve noticed the same thing living in Taiwan. They don’t fluoride the water, and in general people have pretty bad teeth with caries and decay that I never see in Americans in their 20s and 30s. The highly sugary diet probably doesn’t help either.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#175

Post by [deleted] »

epgui wrote: post #167
xupybd wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure they do, but the dentists here have told her that lack of fluoride is her problem. She is using a night time fluoride paste to help.

Dentists don’t do genome sequencing, so they have no way of ruling out genetics.

[deleted]

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#176

Post by newZWhoDis »

s0rce wrote: post #142
DoreenMichele wrote: post #114

FYI: The CDC recommends breastfeeding infants, as breastmilk contains significantly less fluoride than fluoridated drinking water. If breastfeeding is not possible, the CDC also endorses using fluoridated water in infant formula, though it suggests mixing the formula with low-fluoride bottled water to lessen the risk of dental fluorosis. Infants who are fed formula made with fluoridated tap water can have three to fo…

Hmm, its been a while since I worked in the area of dental fluoride (was part of my PhD) but my understanding was systemic exposure pre-eruption was still beneficial. This (possibly biased source) agrees: https://www.dentalcare.com/en-us/ce-courses/ce334/pre-erupti... Excess exposure can cause fluorosis but nothing to do with the brain.

None of the studies I have seen properly account for the lifetime effect, and instead only deduce lack of harm from flawed isolated studies.

It’s in the entire water supply.

You were gestated in a womb of a woman consuming highly fluoridated water.

You were fed formula made with fluoridated water tuned to dose a 200lb man when you were 8lbs.

The water you drank as your bones were growing was similarly overdosed

The food you eat is washed in fluoridated water. The coffee and beer you drink is brewed with fluoridated water. The bread you eat is made with fluoridated water.

Basically, the dose is insanely wrong from the get go and then it’s applied to everything so there’s no way to accurately measure exposure. Then factor in the bell distribution and you are massively overexposing huge numbers of people a few standard deviations out.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#177

Post by adrianN »

dosman33 wrote: post #124
vallismortis wrote: post #97

Twenty years ago, I moved from Michigan (a state that uses fluoride) to Mississippi (a state that doesn't use fluoride). My dentist at the time told me that I was going to end up with tooth decay if I stayed down there for more than a few years. Sure enough, five years later I moved back to Michigan and ended up with a cavity in an unusual place. My (new) dentist in Michigan was completely unsurprised. He said there…

That is funny. However Ill postulate this: Why wouldn't someone go to where the most interesting work is to be found though? You don't become a military doctor if you don't find it interesting stitching up bullet holes. And vice versa, you don't become a military doctor if you're not interested in working on the same.

Maybe because people prefer earning money over interesting work?

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#178

Post by dtech »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #156
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #119

Adding fluoride to water has always seemed weird to me, since you can't control for how much water someone is drinking or account for different bodily factors like age and weight. I wonder why the European solution of adding it to salt isn't the default, especially given that iodized salt is already so popular and commonplace. As a general rule of thumb, I think it's interesting to scrutinize dosage recommendations a…

Omg, no wonder my teeth are getting worse after moving to Amsterdam. I drink a ton of water and use Maldon salt. I didn’t realize there wasn’t fluoride in the water. (All the Nutella isn’t helping either, but… ooh, maybe that’s a reasonable vector for Europeans)

Everyone in the Netherlands is using fluorided toothpaste and brushes twice a day, cavities are really low.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#179

Post by dukeofdoom »

This guy posted a video a few weeks ago, claiming to be sick from being over exposed to chlorine in drinking water in Mexico. He believes the combination of highly chlorinated drinking water and swimming daily in a chlorinated pool caused his symptoms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeWdEr1XyTw

My friend is convinced her autistic child was over exposed to aluminium or other metals...but maybe it was fluoride. These things need to be investigated.

We know that Lead exposure is widely known to cause harm to the brain, so other metals could have similar effects. Babies having a much smaller mass, would be much greater risk of ingesting toxic amounts or slow dose environmental exposure through things like aluminum cookware.

A substance might not be toxic on its own, but in combination with another substance in the environment could be highly toxic, but affect only some small percentage of people that come in in contact with both.

Like we know many prescribed drugs, can't be mixed with alcohol, because they become toxic if you do.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#180

Post by newZWhoDis »

vallismortis wrote: post #97

Twenty years ago, I moved from Michigan (a state that uses fluoride) to Mississippi (a state that doesn't use fluoride). My dentist at the time told me that I was going to end up with tooth decay if I stayed down there for more than a few years. Sure enough, five years later I moved back to Michigan and ended up with a cavity in an unusual place. My (new) dentist in Michigan was completely unsurprised. He said there…

Once again, this is akin to drinking sunscreen having a positive effect on lip skin cancer.

Yes, but… no.

Post reply on HN