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…
> No decent dentist would ever work in Mississippi. This sounds like some elitist BS.
Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm
241–250 of 468 posts
Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm
#242FYI: 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…
Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 red…
Im interested in your take about how humans get water into their bodies without coating their teeth in it
I’m more confused by how you would coat your teeth while drinking, do you swish it around in your mouth every sip?
Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, fluoride must not be added to any food or beverage, because it provides no benefits whatsoever when ingested. Fluoride is beneficial only when applied externally on the dental enamel, so that the fluoride ions will passively substitute the hydroxide ions. There is no known biological process that uses actively fluoride in the human body and excessive ingested fluoride has bad effects, e.g. bone damage. Therefore…
Wouldn't some part of toothpaste end up ingested? With strong fluoride pastes (like those 5000 ppm specialized ones) could there also be a risk?
When you brush your teeth with fluoridated paste or you wash your mouth with a fluoride solution and you spit it, most of the fluoride acts against the tooth enamel to harden it and only a little is ingested.
On the other hand, when you drink fluoridated water, only very little of the fluoride acts against the tooth enamel to harden it and most of it is ingested, which will provide no further benefits, but which might have bad effects.
How there is even a discussion about which choice is better, beats me.
Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm
#245Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
The harmful dose is many orders of magnitude higher than the concentration in tap water. Dose makes the poison. Literally any chemical in sufficient dose is poisonous
Tooth decay is caused by acid produced by bacteria. It's too bad we can't displace the bacteria themselves instead of working downstream from that.
Shameless plug for my company (Bristle Health) that is trying to do exactly that via oral microbiome testing and personalized recommendations and products to improve.
Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#248Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm
#249Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm
#250Adding 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…
EU citizen here, they're not putting it in salt here, but in toothpaste.