Live data from Hacker News

Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

salon.com

321–330 of 468 posts

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#321
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My german salt has both iodide and fluoride.

'german salt' sounds funny to me. Let's say you're buying the most popular and common brand, Bad Reichenhall. This is your selection: https://www.bad-reichenhaller.de/en/products.html In most supermarkets you get almost all of these options. Disclaimer is I have never seen the one with Selenium added.

I wonder what's the mineral composition of the 'pure salt' (it certainly contains some trace minerals) and/or the famed pink salt

Wouldn't be surprising if it naturally had some fluoride

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#322
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think there might be some confounders at play here. Consider this excerpt from Wikipedia's article on 'Tooth brushing': > In the United States, although toothbrushes were available at the end of the 19th century, the practice did not become widespread until after the Second World War, when US soldiers continued the tooth brushing that had been required during their military service.[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…

Different communities added fluoride at different times, it’s not hard to adjust for other factors when you’re drowning in such data.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#323

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…

I’ve been thinking about this recently - fluorapatite is stronger than hydroxyapatite when it bonds to enamel, and less soluble by acid. But fluoride doesn’t occur in any natural processes in the body - while hydroxyapatite is a perfect biomimetic - very safe, you can swallow it safely - and also works great in toothpaste to remineralise teeth. Currently using BioMin F (fluorapatite - very little fluoride due to a no…

Another option is just hydroxyapatite without the nano (sometimes nano particles end up having their own safety issues). A higher hydroxyapatite concentration might work almost as well. Kinder Karex is such a toothpaste. https://www.consumerlab.com/answers/finding-the-best-toothpa...

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#324
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> beyond my power of understanding how this could be mandated There is of course the "that was the plan all along" hypothesis, that mild cognitive decay on a large scale is a useful outcome for control purposes.

It really isn't. Lower cognition is strongly associated with dissatisfaction and violence, not to mention much lower economic productivity (less taxes!).

Who cares about taxes when you can print money?

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#325

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.

> Now is it still necessary?

An experiment in Windsor, Ontario (across the border from Detroit, MI):

> Yemmi Calito's children are patients of Dr. Meriano. The two oldest kids were raised on fluoridated water in Windsor and both have healthy teeth. Her two youngest weren't, and they've had to be treated for serious tooth decay. Calito said their oral hygiene habits are the same.

> "The younger two I feel they have more cavities," Calito said. "My little one, my three-year-old, actually had to go have general anesthesia … [about] four weeks ago to get his teeth fixed. They were in pretty bad shape."

* https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/fluoride-tap-water-1.4990257

Calgary, AB, stopped and has recently decided to restart:

* https://calgary.citynews.ca/2022/11/17/calgary-fluoride-wate...

The public voted in 2021 to stop:

> What’s happened since 2012? A study found that within a couple of years of ending fluoridation, decay in children’s baby teeth had risen by 65 per cent compared to 2005, while the increase was only 14 per cent in Edmonton, which continues to fluoridate its water. “We weren’t looking at little tiny cavities that needed to be fixed. They were large cavities, they were destroyed teeth,” says dental hygienist Denise Kokaram, who led a dental program for vulnerable Calgary youth in the wake of fluoridation’s discontinuation.

> In 2019, the University of Calgary’s public health institute summarized for council’s benefit the body of science on fluoridation—the abundant evidence that it curbs tooth decay in both children and adults, and the lack of conclusive evidence of the myriad harms that anti-fluoride activists allege, from bone deterioration to brain disease. (Authorities have lowered recommended fluoride levels in water to limit the risk of fluorosis, a condition that mainly causes mild tooth discoloration.)

* https://macleans.ca/news/after-a-decade-of-cavities-will-cal...

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#326

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…

> These things need to be investigated

are you assuming they haven't been? that people just bunged in chlorine into swimming pools without a second thought? that nobody has thought to look into heavy metal exposure in babies?

If anything, the issue is the opposite. All of these tests have been repeated so many times, often by honest scientists, but also often by biased companies, that people struggle to find the truth and instead find whatever they want to believe (and its usually something about how all the professionals are stupid and dumb but they personally are special and right)

How do you think those labels about mixing drugs with alcohol/grapefruits/whatever else came about? if it goes into your body, it needs to be tested.

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

[deleted]

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#328
post #276
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU citizen here, they're not putting it in salt here, but in toothpaste.

Salt is definitely commonly supplemented with fluoride, say least in Germany.

Does it noticeably change the taste?

Re: Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Obviously a little fluoride will be ingested. However it is doubtful that this would increase much the total amount of fluoride that is ingested daily, mainly from the plants that you eat and from the natural water that you drink. 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…

> which will provide no further benefits

Source please.

Post reply on HN