961–970 of 1001 posts
For me as a European, adding fluoride to water for your teeth is as ridiculous as cutting the foreskin of babies' penis in name of (dubious) "hygienic reasons". But people get used to it. Specially when they don't get to experience the alternative. Most people rationalise it is a good thing. Stockholm syndrome.
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Fluoridated water, enriched flour, iodized salt, vaccines, etc. are why we don't see diseases and conditions that plagued us in the past and continue to plague people in places without these measures. Fluoridated water is the reason I've never had a cavity despite growing up poor with a terrible diet, dental hygiene and care.
> Fluoridated water is the reason I've never had a cavity despite growing up poor with a terrible diet, dental hygiene and care. I don’t follow the leap here. You could just be blessed with a good oral microbiome, proper calcium, D3 (sunlight exposure?), K2 etc. Going by your logic, there should be no dentists in the US.
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You can solve your “problem” for a very small price: it costs under $0.50 per day to distill your own drinking water per person. So for $15/mo, “problem” solved. Are you doing that?
I'd love to give it a go for my family
I initially dismissed it as the same category of stupid as anti-vax beliefs, but it turns out that there are a decent amount of good studies showing a link between fluoride in water and (slightly) lower IQ when pregnant mothers ingest the fluoride. Note that there is no significant effect after birth. The idea is to remove fluoride from water and advise pregnant women to use fluoride-free toothpaste. Everyone else ca…
> Everyone else can get enough fluoride from modern toothpastes, or regular dentist treatments. The advantage of putting it in water is that it ensures all children get it, not just the children whose parents can and do make sure they brush their teeth and go to the dentist.
Bad parents are gonna be bad parents.
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your study has been heavily criticized where you already posted it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43523900 I can only assume once you see those very valid criticisms, you will update your references
Does the study not literally refute the claim that fluoride's negative impact on IQ is lacking in evidence, contrary to the original claim? What exactly do you think needs to be updated?
I’m disappointed in the news media fails to mention the cascading effects of dental health. Yes, the primary and direct benefit of fluoride is to have a healthier mouth. But having a healthy mouth is far from the end goal, imo. If your mouth is full of cavities you’re more likely to build up bacteria that cause downstream effects as serious as heart disease. Also if your mouth is routinely uncomfortable you may gravi…
> If your mouth is full of cavities you’re more likely to build up bacteria that cause downstream effects as serious as heart disease. I don't know that you have the causality here correct.
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IQ points is just an indicator that could be measured consistently. Who knows what else is going on.. and statistically (especially depending on the distribution) 2 IQ points is quite a lot. After all 50% of the population fall into the 20 point range in the middle.. Of course it comes down to whether the relationship actually exists. But picking a slightly higher risk of cavities when the other option is potential m…
Has this link been found to not exist in fluoride supplements or fluoride toothpastes? I don't think it's such a no brainer if every health org is recommending fluoride, and some people think it's scary.
Also you are not supposed to eat toothpaste…
> don't think it's such a no brainer
Well obviously only if the relationship actually exists and there is enough evidence for it. How else could you interpret my comment?
> brainer if every health org is recommending fluoride
Is that true? e.g. throughout entire Europe for instance?
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You can presumably buy a different brand of flour or find a different source quite easily? Same applies to most other “fortified” products. With water your’e basically forced to waste money on bottled water or very expensive filtration systems. But yes, adding additional vitamins or minerals to food products is generally unnecessary when supplements are generally cheap and highly available these days.
The knowledge about the supplements we need also cheap and highly available and yet lots of people don't have it. I myself don't know all the supplements I need. I feel like for better or worse we are being forced into an era of individual responsibilities where the safeguards that we used to rely on without having to think are being actively dismantled.
That certainly doesn’t mean that whoever decided to put extra iron into flour knows that you need it.
IIRC iron deficiency is pretty rare in men.
Also it might have made sense 100 years ago when most people had very similar diets and lacked similar nutrients, not these days though.
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The study [1] that's based on seems pretty typical, and is precisely what drives skepticism towards these policies. The differences for permanent teeth were not significant. The paper claimed this may be because "7-year-olds have not had the time to accumulate enough permanent dentition caries experience for differences to have become apparent." The differences in temporary teeth had a deft (decay, extracted, filled…
In the 2nd study that shows correlation between fluoride and lower IQ in children, the water had twice as much fluoride as the recommended amount in the US (1.5 mg/L vs 0.7 mg/L).
So for instance of the 19 low risk-of-bias studies, exactly 0 came from the US. 10 were in China, 3 were in Mexico, 2 in Canada, 3 in India, and 1 in Iran. 18 of those 19 studies found a significant reduction in IQ that corresponds strongly with increases in fluoride (the outlier was in Mexico). With the current administration we'll certainly be seeing funding for such studies in the US and so there should be much more high quality data on the 0.7 level forthcoming. But in general this is a major problem that needs solving. Exploring the breadths of science, including the fringes, should not require an activist political administration.
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> The Affordable Care Act is similar to the Netherlands health insurance systemh > The average Obamacare plan costs $483 monthly for a 30-year-old, $544 for a 40-year-old and $760 for a 50-year-old. > The bronze plan covers 60% of the costs associated with care. I feel like they missed the most important parts of the Dutch health insurance system…
The Dutch system also requires payment of monthly premiums. The US premiums reflect the cost to insure the US’s significantly less healthy population.