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Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

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Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#291

Post by mihaaly »

>> This January, Birnbaum issued a scathing legal declaration as part of the lawsuit, writing, "The decision to set aside the results of an external peer review process based on concerns expressed by agencies with strong policy interests on fluoride suggests the presence of political interference in what should be a strictly scientific endeavor."

with

>> Despite this unusually rigorous review process, a network of health officials and influential dental groups argued that the NTP had failed to address several issues raised by the NASEM review committee.

Health officials and dental groups have interest on fluoridation for political reasons? I don't buy it!

I would imagine a self interst focused dental and profeccional helthcare group would argue for the decrease of fluoridation so more income comes from the work on decayed teeth. If it is meant of interest of their patients then that is just desirable! Also health officials and dentists are not the typical polititian group I picture in my mind. I'd sooner call them scientists than politicians. (if meant about scientific politics then should say so - including themselves and that why they push despite widespread scientific critics).

I am telling this with having only topical use of fluoride - with good results -, and with no desire for water fluoridation but also knowing that topical may not be sufficient enough for children and the broad population.

Somehow the feeling is that the NTP and Birnbaum is the manipulative and polititian here. Just a felling though, based on this limited and filtered report, but based on quotes.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#292

Post by heyoni »

olodus wrote: post #104
sunk1st wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preventative dental care in the US is a thing. Have you lived in Europe? It’s not really a thing in the EU.

Do you have a reference for that? I'm from Sweden and I can definitely say preventive dental care is a huge thing here. I felt your statement sounded weird so I googled around. DMFT seems to be one index used to rank countries oral health, which is produced by WHO. In that ranking several European countries beat or sit at US levels. Do you only mean eastern Europe? This links to OECDs compilation of WHOs data, was ea…

That study is for children. Oral health problems take years to surface and looking at adults would be a better way to measure these things.

Having lived in both the US and France, I can say that it’s been my experience that Americans have “nicer” looking teeth. Whether that translates into anything medically relevant is apparently really difficult to prove.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#293

Post by Natsu »

dharma1 wrote: post #269
david_l_lin wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that we can! The oral microbiome can be modulated to get exactly what you’re asking: remove pathogens that are good at creating acid and replacing them with ones that are good at remineralizing. 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.

Interesting, can you tell more? I’ve tried oral probiotics without much effect. Did notice a difference for a couple of days after taking antibiotics for a week for something else, but it quickly subsided (my regular micro biome probably quickly recolonised the mouth).

I searched for the name and found it, seems like they ship you a test kit, then ID the microbes in your mouth and make recommendations based on that.

I noticed L. ruteri in some screenshots which I already know from other probiotic uses.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#294

Post by heyoni »

david_l_lin wrote: post #246
Natsu wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except that we can! The oral microbiome can be modulated to get exactly what you’re asking: remove pathogens that are good at creating acid and replacing them with ones that are good at remineralizing. 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.

You guys have anything on the market yet?

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#295

Post by heyoni »

andruby wrote: post #163
jorvi wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t fluoridate our water but from 12-18 we do “fluor happen” (loosely translated: “fluor biting”), where we are given an upper and a lower bit which are both filled with heavily fluoridated gel, you bite into it and after a couple of minutes you take the bits out, rinse your mouth and then spit out any left-overs.

That’s interesting. Hadn’t heard of that. How common is this practice?

It’s very common in the US as well. It’s called fluoride treatment and is usually reserved for children.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#296

Post by mihaaly »

adrian_b wrote: post #206
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, 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…

adrian_b vs. health scientists throughout the world and history, ca. 1:1e10

Who to believe here, who should we believe here, hm, very difficult problem, adrian_b's passionate statements or practically all the professionals of the world. I go and contemplate over this for a while now. : )

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#297

Post by justsee »

thrashh wrote: post #239
adrian_b wrote: post #206

Earlier 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…

Well it halved childhood cavities in the 50s. It did its job and I don’t think it’s hard to understand why it was done. Same reason why they stared iodine to salt… because people were having mental development issues. Now is it still necessary? That’s a different question but let’s not pretend that we don’t know why it was done.

The first meta-analysis of water fluoridation studies – The York Review – was conducted in 2002 and found that the data on efficacy was limited and of low quality. [1]

A point to be considered here is that the institutionalised belief in water fluoridation for the half-century which preceded the York Review was apparently not grounded in much solid scientific enquiry, if any.

This review was conducted 3 years after the CDC published "Ten Great Public Health Achievements in the 20th Century", which included water fluoridation as one of these great achievements.

Another curiosity of this public health belief was the guideline that water fluoridation levels need to vary in a region based on temperature. This was because it is apparently a predictor of water consumption amounts by small children.

Colder climates were meant to have higher levels of fluoride (up to 1.2 ppm) because people apparently drink less water, and warmer climates were meant to have lower levels (0.7 ppm), because they drink more water.

It indicates that consumption is a very important factor in considering additive levels, and that all other factors are less important than climate.

This was codified in a 1957 paper "Determining optimum fluoride concentrations" (Galagan and Vermillion) [2] which includes their scientific formula:

parts per million of fluoride = 0.34 / E

"Where E is the estimated average daily water intake for children through 10 years of age in ounces per pound of body weight. It may be calculated from the estimation equation E=-0.038+0.0062 temperature, where temperature is the mean maximum temperature in degrees Fahrenheit."

This seems to reflect the kind of scientific rigour behind this belief, and perhaps the absurdity of the formula is why the US DHHS updated their guidelines in 2015 to settle on a flat 0.7 ppm regardless of climate [3].

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/4801410

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031310/?page=1

[3] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/05/01/2015-10...

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#298

Post by mihaaly »

blackhaz wrote: post #231
adrian_b wrote: post #206

Earlier 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?

It is on the digestive system, but the benefits are much greater.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#299

Post by jstanley »

mihaaly wrote: post #296
adrian_b wrote: post #206

Earlier 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…

adrian_b vs. health scientists throughout the world and history, ca. 1:1e10 Who to believe here, who should we believe here, hm, very difficult problem, adrian_b's passionate statements or practically all the professionals of the world. I go and contemplate over this for a while now. : )

1e10 people is about 10% of everyone who has ever lived. It's more than the current global population.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#300

Post by elif »

adrian_b wrote: post #206
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, 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…

>it is beyond my power of understanding how this could be mandated by law in USA

Consider that fluoride ingestion has been linked with increased anxiety and depression[*]. Depending upon one's political objectives, this could be a desirable outcome. For instance, the "anti-terror" decades of invasion would be easier to accept for an anxious public. Or depression may lead to more consumer activity.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258252498_Fluoride_...

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