[HN Gopher] Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to ...
___________________________________________________________________
Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm
Author : gjsman-1000
Score : 451 points
Date : 2023-05-28 19:24 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.salon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.salon.com)
| dm808 wrote:
| This extensive review has been available since 2006:
| https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/11571/fluoride-in-...
| Neurotoxicity, especially in the presence of iodine deficiency,
| which is common, has been clearly documented. Toothpaste level
| exposure is enough to lower IQ in iodine deficiency.
| ycombinete wrote:
| So does that mean that it's fine if we're not iodine deficient?
| throw28523 wrote:
| [flagged]
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| 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 and compare regulations between
| countries. If someone claims that the science on some topic is
| well settled then health officials in multiple countries should
| arrive at roughly similar results. If there's a discrepancy
| between the suggestions made by health officials in the US and
| EU, it's worth asking why.
| osigurdson wrote:
| I think the obvious answer is, we can't actually tell one way
| or the other if it is a net benefit. However, humans can't
| handle uncertainty so must be told in confident tones that the
| decision is the correct one. If anyone questions the
| established decision, they must be discredited.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's worse than that. We may know perfectly well which way is
| better on the net. But since masses can't handle uncertainty,
| you can't just say "doing this is more beneficial on the net"
| - you have to project certainty, or else people will
| interpret your lack of confidence as indicative of scheming,
| and do the opposite.
| osigurdson wrote:
| What related problem domains are understood "perfectly
| well"?
|
| I think until we can accurately simulate the human body,
| there is essentially no hope for these areas. Unless it is
| possible to run highly controlled multi-generational
| studies with large numbers of people, statistical
| significance cannot be attained. Various meta analysis are
| funded and completed, but these do not count as strict
| definition science requires actual experiments to be
| independently replicated.
| Garvi wrote:
| >it's worth asking why
|
| It's been a popular and wide spread conspiracy theory that the
| "shadow government" is either trying to lower the IQ or the
| total population numbers using fluoride in the water supply.
| And since politicians don't get chosen on a basis of
| competency, but rather popularity, you have the vast majority
| being relatively severely logically challenged and thus unable
| to read scientific papers and understand complicated topics
| like child dental care.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Or any topic that involves more than one interacting
| decision, a graph, or any numbers at all.
|
| COVID made it pretty clear that neither the general
| population nor most politicians are remotely qualified to
| make decisions. Not just medical decisions, just...
| decisions.
| shrx wrote:
| EU citizen here, they're not putting it in salt here, but in
| toothpaste.
| [deleted]
| cinntaile wrote:
| He's probably confusing it with iodide.
| Timon3 wrote:
| My german salt has both iodide and fluoride.
| neuronic wrote:
| '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.
| raverbashing wrote:
| 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
| tpush wrote:
| Salt is definitely commonly supplemented with fluoride, say
| least in Germany.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Does it noticeably change the taste?
| neuronic wrote:
| It's on the label and you can decide to just buy the non-
| fluoride version. Not sure how salt in processed food or
| restaurants is used though - this is the 'out-of-control'
| factor here.
| taskforcegemini wrote:
| so salt would not only be bad for my heart but also for my
| brain?
| adrian_b wrote:
| 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 fluoride must be added only to tooth paste and mouth
| washes, which provides all the benefits and none of the risks.
|
| Intentionally ingesting fluoride is incredibly stupid and it is
| beyond my power of understanding how this could be mandated by
| law in USA and in some other countries which imitated USA
| irrationally.
| levzettelin wrote:
| Some people lack the self control to use toothpaste
| regularly. For those people it's beneficial adding flouride
| to water.
| x-complexity wrote:
| > Some people lack the self control to use toothpaste
| regularly. For those people it's beneficial adding flouride
| to water.
|
| At some point, we can't just replace individual personal
| responsibility with the State as a solution. This attitude
| just reeks of infantilization of the total populace just
| because a certain percentage of them lack such self
| control.
|
| If you still want to provide support to them, make it
| targeted towards those individuals in need of such help. Do
| not drag down the rest of the populace in order to make the
| lives of a few easier.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > At some point, we can't just replace individual
| personal responsibility with the State as a solution.
|
| Have we reached that point? If so, why?
| levzettelin wrote:
| I don't think I was expressing much of an attitude in my
| comment. Just a factual statement that seeks to explain
| why the intervention is successful even though better
| alternatives clearly exist.
|
| I don't think water should be flouridated and I don't
| think we should provide support for people lacking self
| control.
| oblak wrote:
| This has to be satire. What sort of incredible self control
| does something like this require? Where does it end?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's not satire. It takes enough self-control/willpower
| that, for example, a lot of people suffering from ADHD
| have problems with it. There are a lot of people out
| there who just aren't capable of habituating the tasks of
| brushing their teeth to the point of being done on
| autopilot - they have to consciously make themselves do
| it every time.
|
| And that's _after_ more than half a century of brushing
| teeth being a cultural expectation _and_ something kids
| are taught in schools.
|
| And that's not counting people in dire economic
| conditions, where frequency of brushing teeth with
| fluoride toothpaste is something to trade off against
| e.g. _eating_.
|
| It's the 21st century. If we know anything about people,
| we know that self control and "free will" are overrated,
| and you can't rely on them at scale. On the contrary, you
| can rely on people having very predictable reactions to
| right nudges and incentives. It's the basis of modern
| economy and policymaking. It's the entire reason
| marketing and advertising are as big and well-paying jobs
| as they are. Etc.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I can imagine that there might exist people who cannot
| brush their teeth.
|
| However, for such people the solution is not to drink
| fluoridated water, but to use fluoridated water to wash
| their mouth and then spit it.
|
| If they cannot take water in mouth and spit it, then they
| certainly cannot feed themselves and they need permanent
| care. Whoever does that should also take care of their
| teeth.
|
| Regarding money, I cannot believe that to be an obstacle.
| I eat relatively cheap food, because I buy only raw
| ingredients that I cook myself. Therefore in most days
| food costs me at most $5. I doubt that anyone who is
| really poor succeeds to spend much less for food. I wash
| my teeth after each meal with rather expensive tooth
| pastes from Colgate or Sensodyne. Even so, the daily cost
| for the tooth paste is at least 30 or 50 times less than
| the cost of food, so unless there is some remote place
| where the price of tooth paste is much more than 10 times
| more expensive than in Europe or North America, I cannot
| believe that being poor would prevent someone to brush
| their teeth. They would die of hunger much sooner than
| that.
| nwiswell wrote:
| You think it's satire that there are people that don't
| brush their teeth but do drink water?
| Moru wrote:
| You could give targeted help to the ones that needs it,
| it would be more efficient to help them brush their teeth
| than just adding fluoride to the water that everyone
| drinks.
| Timon3 wrote:
| How would you target them, and what would make it more
| efficient?
| Moru wrote:
| We do it by noticing who needs help on the free dental
| checkups during the first years of life usually. If they
| have some sort of handicap, they can get help physically
| brushing or support to do it themselves every day. Helps
| a lot more than adding something that might work a little
| in everyones water.
| Timon3 wrote:
| On what basis have you evaluated that it "helps a lot
| more"? What if your method doesn't lead to more people
| actively brushing their teeth, thus reducing the amount
| of people with properly protected teeth (since they are
| also missing fluoride now), increasing amount of dental
| healthcare required?
| elif wrote:
| You have to consider that these people have lost some
| cognitive faculty by ingested fluoride so they may not be
| capable of rational self interested decision-making.
| [deleted]
| triyambakam wrote:
| The parent stated clearly it doesn't work by ingestion.
| mihaaly wrote:
| 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. : )
| jstanley wrote:
| 1e10 people is about 10% of everyone who has ever lived.
| It's more than the current global population.
| mihaaly wrote:
| One can score multiple times! : )
| adrian_b wrote:
| If you judge the truth of the information you receive based
| on the claimed authority of those who provide it, instead
| of using your own mind to discern whether that information
| is logically consistent or inconsistent, that is sad and I
| believe that this should be a cause of concern for you.
|
| Consider the following facts, which can be easily be
| verified in countless sources, e.g. in books written by
| real chemists or "health scientists":
|
| The mineral component of the teeth and bones grown by a
| human body is made of hydroxylapatite.
|
| When a hydroxylapatite crystal is immersed in a water
| solution of fluoride ions, in the superficial layer of the
| crystal, which is in contact with the fluoride solution,
| some of the hydroxide anions from the crystal are dissolved
| in the water and they are substituted by fluoride anions,
| thus converting the superficial layer of the
| hydroxylapatite into fluorapatite.
|
| The fluoride ions bond more strongly to apatite than the
| hydroxide ions, so once formed the fluorapatite layer is
| more resistant to dissolution than the parent
| hydroxylapatite.
|
| In the conversion of hydroxylapatite into fluorapatite,
| like in any other chemical reaction, the converted amount
| increases with the concentration of the reactant, i.e. of
| fluoride and with the time of contact between
| hydroxylapatite and solution.
|
| All of the above explain how the contact between the tooth
| enamel and a fluoride solution creates a superficial tooth
| layer that is more resistant to dissolution, which
| decreases the likelihood of tooth cavities.
|
| The dependences of the conversion efficacy on fluoride
| concentration and on contact time explain why tooth
| brushing or mouth washing are far more effective in enamel
| hardening than drinking fluoridated water, when the
| fluoride concentration is low and the contact time is very
| short and most of the fluoride never enters in contact with
| the tooth enamel to have a chance to harden it.
|
| After the fluoride is ingested, it never comes again in
| contact with the tooth enamel, so there is no way for it to
| harden the enamel.
|
| Please tell us how your "1E10 health scientists throughout
| the world and history" have told you that ingested fluoride
| from inside your body can harden the tooth enamel from
| outside your body.
|
| Perhaps the fluoride ions use _The Force_ to harden the
| enamel from a distance?
|
| The fluoride ions are carried by blood in most parts of the
| body, but the tooth enamel does not contain blood vessels.
| Even if it had blood vessels, they would have been buried
| in it and they would not have reached the external surface
| of the teeth, which is where the fluoride is needed for
| protection against dissolution.
|
| Moreover, the fluoride ions spread uniformly in the entire
| blood volume. Only a small part of the ions pass close to
| the teeth, most of them pass through the bigger organs,
| including through the bigger bones, which, unlike the tooth
| enamel, contain numerous blood vessels.
|
| Because the fluoride ions have high affinity for apatite,
| many of those passing through the bones stop there and
| remain incorporated in the mineral part of the bones.
|
| While at the surface of the teeth fluoride is desirable, in
| bones it is harmful because it makes the bones more
| fragile, increasing the likelihood of fractures.
|
| In conclusion, when drinking fluoridated water, only very
| little fluoride is retained in the tooth enamel, but most
| ends in the bones, so this method is much more effective in
| making the bones fragile than in hardening the tooth
| enamel.
|
| There are only 3 ways in which the ingested fluoride could
| protect against tooth cavities: eating one's own excrement,
| washing the mouth with one's own urine or biting one's own
| body and drinking one's own blood or washing the mouth with
| it.
|
| Whoever does not have such habits will not receive dental
| health benefits from ingested fluoride.
|
| I look forward to see how "all the professionals of the
| world" can explain the magical ingested fluoride effect
| claimed to exist by the proponents of drinking water
| fluoridation.
| mihaaly wrote:
| I am so very sorry stepping on something so sensitive.
| adrian_b wrote:
| It is not something sensitive, but I dislike the fact
| that the camp who has introduced water fluoridation does
| not have any rational or experimental argument in its
| favor, yet there are many who believe that water
| fluoridation is supported by "health scientists", so I
| believe that it is necessary to speak against such
| disinformation.
|
| Hardening the tooth enamel by fluoride is exactly like an
| anti-corrosive treatment of a steel surface.
|
| If someone would propose that instead of applying the
| anti-rust layer on the external steel surface, a hole
| should be made in the steel, then the anti-corrosive
| coating should be put inside, then the hole should be
| plugged, enclosing inside the anti-corrosive material,
| and after all this they would expect that the external
| untreated steel surface will not rust, they would be
| laughed at. But this is equivalent with the theory that
| one should drink fluoridated water to harden the tooth
| enamel.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Putting water in your mouth is external application.
| [deleted]
| elif wrote:
| >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_.
| ..
| kodah wrote:
| At the time Republicans reported much better mental health
| than Democrats [1]. iirc, this study was reproduced with
| children as well (in terms of kids raised under a political
| ideology).
|
| Moreover, as someone else pointed out, watching commercial
| airliners fly into skyscrapers and having our world upended
| with military guards at airports and new governmental
| snooping powers that we just had to accept is all pretty
| much enough for the things you mentioned.
|
| 1: https://news.gallup.com/poll/102943/republicans-report-
| much-...
| drewcon wrote:
| Or, hear me out, watching terrorists kamikaze a few
| commercial airliners into a couple of buildings in downtown
| Manhattan and the Pentagon live on TV was actually kind of
| a nerve racking on its own irrespective of what the
| dissolved minerals in our tap water might have told us.
| elif wrote:
| Yet we didn't question the non-involvement of the 7
| nations we invaded, nor question the lack of invasion of
| the responsible nation.
|
| Society comforted themselves with the official narrative
| while branding whistleblowers conspiracy theorists.
| elif wrote:
| Also calling it a "dissolved mineral" is pointlessly
| euphemistic. Fluoride is sold as a poison.
|
| You may as well call the following "dissolved minerals":
| lead, arsenic, uranium, mercury, asbestos
| hgsgm wrote:
| Table salt kills slugs.
| dash2 wrote:
| Given that the health bureaucracies of many countries seem to
| disagree with you, you need to cite more evidence and sources
| to support this claim. You can't just do it by strong
| assertion.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Having the health bureaucracies in many countries all
| agreeing on something would have been convincing enough for
| me three years ago. Now, it means nothing.
| tnel77 wrote:
| >>You can't just do it by strong assertion.
|
| Sir, this is the internet. Sources are for the weak. Just
| type your response so it's passionate and angry and people
| will believe you!
| hkt wrote:
| My father was a fluoride ion and was added to a city
| water supply! Are you telling me his sacrifice was in
| vain?! >:(
| jjcon wrote:
| > it is beyond my power of understanding how this could be
| mandated by law in USA
|
| It isn't mandated by law in the USA. All water contains some
| naturally occurring fluoride, some localities choose to add
| additional fluoride to their water in the USA but certainly
| not all. I'm pretty sure it is added in something like 60% of
| city water supplies.
| blackhaz wrote:
| 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?
| adrian_b wrote:
| 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 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.
| threeseed wrote:
| > which will provide no further benefits
|
| Source please.
| jtbayly wrote:
| I'd say anybody claiming the opposite would need to
| provide a source.
|
| Or even just a theoretical reason to _think_ it could be
| beneficial. All I've ever heard is that the benefit is in
| tooth contact.
| hgsgm wrote:
| When you assume the reality that many people don't brush,
| the benefits of brushing have no impact.
| webworker wrote:
| That's before even considering topical application
| through the gums
| tomatocracy wrote:
| Yes - in the UK at least that's one of the reasons why the
| ultra high fluoride toothpastes are effectively only
| available when prescribed by a dentist.
| mihaaly wrote:
| It is on the digestive system, but the benefits are much
| greater.
| Semaphor wrote:
| > (like those 5000 ppm specialized ones)
|
| Those also come with a warning to only use it once a week,
| and to limit contact to 2-5 minutes. At least, all I've
| seen in Germany.
|
| edit: Okay, apparently those I'm talking about have 12,500
| ppm, I don't know about 5000 ppm as I have not seen those.
| aatd86 wrote:
| They give that to babies in France...
|
| I have swallowed my fair share of fluoride pills.
|
| Are you to tell me that I should have been a galaxy brain but
| am now a smooth brain? Fvck!
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Wow WTF I've found french baby products to be quite nice
| but somehow child birth it's a weird industry there. I
| remember there was heavy lobbying to increase people's
| wishes for c sections there.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| C sections are more profitable!
| dharma1 wrote:
| 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 novel delivery mechanism but still) but considering
| switching to BioMin C (nanohydroxyapatite)
| opan wrote:
| I've used both apagard and boka toothpastes with
| nanohydroxyapatite and I've enjoyed them, though my tooth
| sensitivity is not totally cured. I still get a jolt of
| pain from sweet things on certain teeth occasionally.
|
| These n-Ha toothpastes seem at least equal to if not
| greater than high-fluoride options (in effectiveness) I
| tried previously like sensodyne and prevident
| (prescription-strength). I would say the boka mint
| toothpaste tastes better also, and as a bonus their
| electric toothbrush is much nicer than the old one I'd used
| a few years ago.
|
| I still drink water with fluoride in it as well, mostly
| because it's the best tasting water I've come across. (From
| a city I grew up in, and I still fill jugs full to drink at
| home) I have well water at my house, which is safe as far
| as I know, but I still feel hesitant to swallow it.
| krackers wrote:
| Boka only has 2% nHAP, compared to the 7% of apagard
| premio or 10% of apagard royal.
| gregwebs wrote:
| 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...
| elif wrote:
| > 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.
| concordDance wrote:
| It really isn't.
|
| Lower cognition is strongly associated with dissatisfaction
| and violence, not to mention much lower economic
| productivity (less taxes!).
| xtian wrote:
| Who cares about taxes when you can print money?
| concordDance wrote:
| Money has value because of what it buys.
|
| If a society is making 400 widgets it doesn't matter
| whether each is priced at $2 or $999, the government will
| only be able to get 400 widgets.
|
| A stupider population makes much less widgets.
| xtian wrote:
| What if a country's economy doesn't make widgets at all
| but merely controls the system of international finance
| which is premised upon its own debt?
| webworker wrote:
| Do the people at the top care if the population can make
| 400 widgets, or that they maintain their status?
| elif wrote:
| It's only a hypothesis and all cognitive impairment is
| not uniform.
| 8note wrote:
| You might prefer the term "conspiracy theory"
| drekipus wrote:
| > strongly associated with dissatisfaction and violence,
|
| dissatisfaction and violence are the easiest problems for
| a state to deal with.
| thrashh wrote:
| 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.
| elzbardico wrote:
| 1. We know that topic fluoride usage increased resistance
| to caries.
|
| 2. It is kind of difficult to consume fluorinated water
| without exposing your teeth topically to the fluoride.
|
| 3. Ingesting fluorine is definitely not good for you and
| recent studies seem to confirm this.
|
| So, it seems to me that while fluorinating drinking water
| would incidentally topically expose teeth to its beneficial
| effects, we don't really need to fluorinate our drinking
| water as there are other ways to expose teeth topically to
| fluorine that don't involve drinking fluorinated water.
|
| And no, fluorinating water was not a good decision because
| of the cautionary principle. Even from the beginning, they
| knew that the effects came from topical exposure, adding it
| to drinking water was reckless.
|
| But hell, this was the time where we added lead to
| gasoline.
| Alexqw85 wrote:
| > Same reason why they stared iodine to salt... because
| people were having mental development issues.
|
| This is not directly related to the topic of Fluoride, but
| Iodine was actually initially introduced to reduce goiters.
| The mental benefits were a wonderful, unexpected side-
| effect. Studies have put the effects anywhere between 8-15
| IQ bump for populations that were Iodine deficient. Pretty
| jaw dropping when you think about it.
| psychphysic wrote:
| About 2.5% of the population has an intellectual
| impairment (if mean IQ is 100, and SD 15, 2.5% have IQ
| less than 70 the WHO cut off). Of this 2.5% some will
| have social/adaptive impaitment similarly 2SD below the
| mean and have an "intellectual/learning disability".
|
| Move that mean down one SD (15 IQ points). And now OVER
| 15% of the people meet the intellectual impairment
| criteria.
|
| Put it another way, due to the shape of the normal
| distribition moving IQ down 10-15 points amounts to 2-3X
| increase in the number with abnormally low IQ.
|
| Cut to the modern era, where fewer and fewer jobs are
| available for those with intellectual impairments, and
| the world requires more and more technical prowess and
| the situation is far worse than the figures appear.
| koboll wrote:
| 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/Tooth_brushing
| Retric wrote:
| Different communities added fluoride at different times,
| it's not hard to adjust for other factors when you're
| drowning in such data.
| koboll wrote:
| It actually seems like it is hard:
|
| >Water fluoridation reduces cavities in children, while
| efficacy in adults is less clear.[9][10] A Cochrane
| review estimates a reduction in cavities when water
| fluoridation was used by children who had no access to
| other sources of fluoride to be 35% in baby teeth and 26%
| in permanent teeth.[9] However, this was based on older
| studies which failed to control for numerous variables,
| such as increasing sugar consumption as well as other
| dental strategies.[9] Most European countries have
| experienced substantial declines in tooth decay, though
| milk and salt fluoridation is widespread in lieu of water
| fluoridation.[11] Recent studies suggest that water
| fluoridation, particularly in industrialized nations, may
| be unnecessary because topical fluorides (such as in
| toothpaste) are widely used, and caries rates have become
| low.[3]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation
| hef19898 wrote:
| Outsife the US, fluoride is added to tooth paste. Sounds
| like a better idea to me.
| 8note wrote:
| Outside the US, it's added to water too
| hef19898 wrote:
| Africa: 400,000 people out of 1.1 billion get fluorides
| in there water.
|
| Asia: close to none in China (didn't find any hard
| numbers), none in India, less than 1% in Japan. Only
| Malaysia is doing it at any resonable scale.
|
| Europe: 2% of the population get it, roughly 14 million
| people with 10.5 million of those being in the UK and
| Ireland.
|
| So that leaves North America, with the exception of
| Mexico which jas high natural fluoride levels and
| fluorides salt, Australia and Latin America.
|
| Going by these numbers, the majority of people get
| fluoride through different means from drinking water.
| Afroca of cpurse has a lot of other issues regarding
| drinking water, starting with the exostince of clean
| drinking water itself.
|
| Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridatio
| n_by_countr...
|
| So techinicalls you are correct, overall much less so.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _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...
| spacephysics wrote:
| Hot take: why don't we stop the root cause of the
| problem, instead of the insestuous habit of layering on
| symptom management on top of symptom management.
|
| Stop giving kids these insanely high levels of sugar. No
| soda is a great start.
|
| Same thorn in my side is this completely crazy trend that
| this new life-long injection Ozempic/Wegovy is being
| suggested for kids 12 and up. Like what? It also
| atrophies muscle, tendons, and bones.
|
| I hope with the next generation of leaders, we stop this
| madness of blindly trusting big pharma and corporations
| and ask where the money trail goes, and what may
| _actually_ be best for our kids and loved ones.
| api wrote:
| Sugar is everywhere in everything. Reducing kids intake
| of sugar requires a level of vigilance bordering on
| isolation from society, especially since human children
| seem genetically programmed to crave sugar and simple
| carbohydrates. If it's around most kids will eat little
| else.
|
| I kind of remember this from being a kid. Until I was a
| teen anything with complex or savory tastes was
| absolutely disgusting. Only carbs, sugars, and very
| simple flavors and textures seemed edible. It changed
| when I got to around 12-14 when suddenly a salad was okay
| and some vegetables started to taste good. Another few
| years and I'd eat all kinds of things. Became a bit of a
| foodie by college.
|
| It's got to be some relic of early hominid evolution. My
| speculation is that in nature there are a lot of savory
| things that are toxic. So kids have a natural aversion to
| them until they are old enough to have learned the tribal
| knowledge about what is okay to eat. Sweet and carby
| things are usually safe to eat. If a kid eats random
| berries or grains thats probably okay. Random mushrooms
| or plants might kill them. Random sources of protein can
| also contain parasites or nasty infections.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Reducing kids intake of sugar requires a level of
| vigilance bordering on isolation from society,
|
| You are a good parent for recognizing this and speaking
| up.
|
| This is why I praise my child and treat him (not with
| sweets) every time that he turns down candy at friends'
| houses or parties. When the parent stands between the
| child and sweets, he is considered neurotic by other
| parents. When the child stands his ground, he is praised.
| I've been fortunate that all three of my children have
| stood with me on this stance.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| > Reducing kids intake of sugar requires a level of
| vigilance bordering on isolation from society
|
| No, it requires... parenting and education? And stopping
| children from being exposed to ads for sugary crap 12
| hours a day.
|
| Habits are a huge part of it. Kids who "would only eat
| sugar if they could" are already used to consuming lots
| of sugar. They will definitely not starve themselves to
| death if no sugar/carbs are easily available in the
| house.
|
| Here in the Netherlands a lot of (but not all) kids
| choose to snack on cucumbers etc and are quite reserved
| in how much candy they eat. School doesn't allow high-
| carb foods. Parties will have fries, lemonade and cake,
| no soda or infinite amounts of candy. Mine is approaching
| the early teens and hasn't ever drank soda, without
| suffering any peer pressure (yet).
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Is this a worse is better argument? I'm having a hard
| time understanding how it makes this a better solution
| than fluoridated water. It sounds like a moral argument
| against sugar rather than a practical solution to fight
| tooth decay.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "worse is
| better". Fluoridation came about as a stop gap for bad
| dental hygiene and eating habits. We have all the
| resources to make this a non-issue in most of the world.
| I don't consider this a moral argument, it's a public
| health issue.
|
| I see this like mandating using a helmet and HANS device
| when driving drunk. Surely it might help reduce
| casualties, but is not addressing the problem that people
| are inflicting unto themselves.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I've always found this guy's work interesting.
|
| https://www.lotusdental.com.au/post/effect-of-western-
| diet-o...
|
| Previously, I've found the anti-fluoride argument to be a
| little shaky but I'm a scientist and some of the data in
| the report might make me reconsider that stance. That's
| what science is. I must say that personally I haven't
| drunk fluoride in my tap for decades really, since I use
| a reverse osmosis filter for my tap. So if you don't want
| to drink fluoride you don't have to.
|
| I haven't noticed more cavities in periods when I don't
| drink fluoride vs when I do. But I brush my teeth twice a
| day (teeth bathed in fluoride toothpaste residue) and go
| to the dentist every six months. I don't really have
| cavities.
|
| I found this paper an interesting history on water
| fluoridation-
|
| Debating Water Fluoridation Before Dr. Strangelove
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4504307
| user_7832 wrote:
| It's probably worth noting that genetics is probably a
| significantly big factor than affects cavities, similar
| to lots of other stuff. Some folks can eat sugar foods
| and not brush twice a day and have no issues, while
| others who even floss daily end up with bad teeth.
|
| Not saying you shouldn't reduce sugar intake, that's not
| my point - but - factors like genetics are very important
| too, and fluoride might help for such people.
| viraptor wrote:
| So this may be useful to someone - I lost that genetic
| lottery and had lots of issues / most teeth patched up /
| painful cleans. Until recently, when I moved to a new
| dentist who said "oh, you've got lots of calcium buildup,
| you should be taking vit D+K2". This sorted out most of
| my issues almost immediately. I wish someone told me that
| 30 years ago...
|
| So apparently there's a few things that trivially impact
| your dental health besides usual cleaning and few people
| seem to know about them.
| gymbeaux wrote:
| Novamin is another "dental secret". US toothpaste doesn't
| have it, but studies consistently show it's more
| effective than just fluoridated toothpaste and protecting
| teeth from decay.
|
| You would think that in a "capitalist, free-market" such
| as the United States, an innovation with a clear and
| pronounced benefit over the status quo would take the
| marketplace by storm and quickly become the new status
| quo.
|
| Last I checked, you can get Sensodyne with Novamin
| toothpaste on Amazon, but it does come from Canada.
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7068624/
|
| "Review shows that Novamin has significantly less
| clinical evidence to prove its effectiveness as a
| remineralization agent in treating both carious and non-
| carious lesion. Hence, better designed clinical trials
| should be carried out in the future before definitive
| recommendations can be made."
| [deleted]
| kevviiinn wrote:
| People love treating symptoms because humans are
| notoriously shortsighted
| assbuttbuttass wrote:
| Not to mention there's a lot of money behind the real
| causes
| shlant wrote:
| there's money on every side of every issue. The people
| that lean hard on the "follow the money" angle are almost
| always those that only acknowledge it happening on the
| side they disagree with.
| shlant wrote:
| > why don't we stop the root cause of the problem,
| instead of the insestuous habit of layering on symptom
| management on top of symptom management.
|
| Super simple answer: one requires everyone change their
| individual habits. Difficulty - very hard. The other
| requires no change at all on the individual level.
| Difficulty - very easy.
|
| Be careful with falling into the "public health
| initiatives are just a bandaid" trap. I was going to say
| you probably wouldn't approach a pandemic by telling
| everyone to eat more healthfully but considering your
| last sentence, maybe you would have argued for that
| approach.
| politician wrote:
| A sugar tax would have the same effect, it's a single
| change that's very easy to implement. 10,000% should do.
| warning26 wrote:
| The problem is sugar tastes good. Taxing processed sugary
| foods will certainly help, but are you also going to tax,
| say, sugar in a bag? If so, you have effectively banned
| Grandma's cookies. Do _you_ want to be known as the
| politician who effectively banned home-cooked baked
| goods?
| p1esk wrote:
| Cheap sugar substitutes will be used. Long term health
| effects are not clear.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| What you want is a calorie tax. Possibly a liquid calorie
| tax.
|
| Or just every calorie?
| Gollapalli wrote:
| So why don't we just put fluoride in the excessively
| sugary stuff.
|
| Coca Cola, more fluoride, same classic taste!
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Liquid sugar is bad for teeth, but nowhere near as bad as
| something like potato chips. Food remnants that are high
| in carbs that get stuck in your teeth and then break down
| into simple sugars cause way more problems.
| webworker wrote:
| From another study done in Canada:
|
| > In this study, maternal exposure to higher levels of
| fluoride during pregnancy was associated with lower IQ
| scores in children aged 3 to 4 years. These findings
| indicate the possible need to reduce fluoride intake
| during pregnancy.
|
| "Association Between Maternal Fluoride Exposure During
| Pregnancy and IQ Scores in Offspring in Canada"
|
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullartic
| le/...
| justsee wrote:
| 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/?p
| age=1
|
| [3] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/05/01/20
| 15-10...
| [deleted]
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| >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.
|
| What I heard (but did not verify) was that cavities reduced
| similarly in countries that did not have fluoride in the
| water around the same time.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| I always found it bizarre that health care is so expensive, and
| yet here we are given unlimited, free medicine, on tap!
| nathanwh wrote:
| Don't you have the same problem with the salt that you have
| with the water, no way to tell what dose everyone is receiving?
| para_parolu wrote:
| My guess it easier to buy different salt but hard to get
| second water pipe.
| Thorrez wrote:
| >A Reverse Osmosis (RO) system can remove 85-92%* of
| fluoride in your water.
|
| https://www.paragonwater.com/does-reverse-osmosis-remove-
| flu...
| elif wrote:
| RO water is demineralized and the pH is impacted. It is
| not a healthy drinking water outside of occasional use.
| It is also not appetizing and thus it's easy to become
| dehydrated.
|
| After years of RO water I switched to spring water due to
| health issues and I will never look back.
|
| Of course, it is insanely expensive to drink 3L of spring
| water and so frustrating to not have unpoisoned water
| from the tap.
| webworker wrote:
| There are certain models which have a sixth stage to
| remineralize the water and balance the pH.
|
| Also relying on municipal water for mineralization is a
| bad argument. The minerals in water supplies is highly
| localized, or drinking tap water could leave you
| deficient in one or more minerals depending just
| depending on where you live.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Huh, I drank RO water for most of my liquid intake
| growing up and loved the taste. I like it a lot more than
| tap water.
| sp0rk wrote:
| RO systems waste something like three gallons for every
| usable gallon they produce.
| Thorrez wrote:
| It won't be used for showering, bathing, flushing
| toilets, washing clothes, washing dishes, watering
| plants, washing cars, filling pools, or other outdoor
| water usage. How much does it increase a household's
| water usage?
| 20after4 wrote:
| I think that's improved, at least according to product
| literature (I haven't tested it myself), however:
|
| The latest generation of small under-sink reverse osmosis
| filters claim to waste only 1 gallon for every 2 gallons
| of usable water. Still bad but much better than before.
| mixedCase wrote:
| An RO filter is not accesible to the majority of the
| population.
| Thorrez wrote:
| But it's a lot cheaper than "get[ting a] second water
| pipe."
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| 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)
| dtech wrote:
| Everyone in the Netherlands is using fluorided toothpaste and
| brushes twice a day, cavities are really low.
| theodric wrote:
| Good thing I left NL or I would have invalidated your
| statement! Actually, I don't know anyone who brushes twice
| daily.
| distances wrote:
| Why don't you, isn't that a recommendation where you come
| from? I also don't know anyone who doesn't brush twice
| daily (I'm from Nordics).
| Wh1zz wrote:
| I don't know anyone that doesn't brush twice daily. Am
| quite a sociable person and have lived in multiple
| European countries
| [deleted]
| threeseed wrote:
| > Everyone
|
| Defined as a completely made up percentage of people that
| is in fact < 100%.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Don't you brush your teeth?!
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| [flagged]
| mbg721 wrote:
| [flagged]
| hkt wrote:
| [flagged]
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| 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.
| a_bonobo wrote:
| >No credible scientific evidence exists that ingesting
| fluoride is beneficial.
|
| ???
|
| >Regular toothbrushing with fluoride toothpaste is the
| principal non-professional intervention to prevent caries,
| but the caries-preventive effect varies according to
| different concentrations of fluoride in toothpaste, with
| higher concentrations associated with increased caries
| control.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6398117/
|
| Higher concentrations lead to better caries control (unless
| you go too high), what other evidence do you want?
| levzettelin wrote:
| rofl
| arcticbull wrote:
| Caveat that I have no issue whatsoever with fluoride.
|
| The parent poster said "ingestion" of fluoride, but
| brushing is strictly not ingestion but rather topical
| application - you are directed to spit it back out. I'm
| curious if there were studies that covered drinking it.
| satellite2 wrote:
| The amount is calibrated for the small part that you
| ingest despite spittingit out. Kids toothpaste have much
| less because most of the paste is assumed to be ingested.
| robbiep wrote:
| I am unsure if this - I grew up in rural australia and we
| took fluoride tablets as kids.
|
| N=3 but no fillings till post 25
| lovecg wrote:
| Case in point.
| sgoschi wrote:
| You're proving their point.
|
| Brushing teeth is a topical application of flouride, unless
| you swallow it, of course....
| bboygravity wrote:
| How is that not proving their point?
|
| Putting fluoride in water to topically apply it to teeth
| (and get a higher risk of brain damage and stomach cancer
| among other things due to completely unnecessary
| ingestion).
|
| The study you linked is indeed like proving that drinking
| sunscreen is great at preventing lip cancer. Or better yet:
| maybe we can start putting sunscreen in drinking water to
| prevent lip cancer?
| markmark wrote:
| Here you go:
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/003335491012500507
|
| We've been putting fluoride in water for a long time, and
| there are multiple studies that have looking in to it, I
| don't know why you think there aren't?
| throwaway8689 wrote:
| This study looked solely at impact on dental health. Other
| studies tell us it is associated with stomach cancer and
| infertility.
| dash2 wrote:
| Is dental health not beneficial?
| throwaway8689 wrote:
| Assuming you are not being disingenuous: there is a trade
| off with a lot of uncertainty - other things are also
| implicated in stomach cancer, and at the same time
| untreated dental disease causes other health problems
| too.
|
| But I prefer to rely on brushing my own teeth and
| avoiding certain foods to maintain my own health, rather
| than have a medication added to my water supply because
| the guy next door does not take care of his health.
| 20after4 wrote:
| I guess it's arguable whether better dental health, plus
| cancer, could be considered a benefit. Would heavily
| depend on the rates of cancer or other harms vs. the
| rates of improved dental health. Certainly without
| thinking too deeply about it, childhood cavities would
| seem vastly preferable to nearly any sort of cancer
| unless the risk is minuscule.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| There are studies for children, but from what I've seen
| there's no advantage for adults/permanent teeth. I don't
| really think it's worth potential harm for baby teeth.
| markmark wrote:
| It's harder to do studies that seperate out adults who
| didn't have fluoridated water as children, but for
| example from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23456704/
| "In this nationally representative sample of Australian
| adults, caries-preventive effects of water fluoridation
| were at least as great in adults born before widespread
| implementation of fluoridation as after widespread
| implementation of fluoridation."
|
| So if you didn't have fluoridated water as a kid, having
| it as an adult still provides a benefit. This particular
| study doesn't say anything about having it as a kid and
| then stopping, but again, it's hard to find significant
| populations that have experienced that.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Im interested in your take about how humans get water into
| their bodies without coating their teeth in it
| katbyte wrote:
| I have sensitive teeth, when I drink water or any liquid
| really, it doesn't touch my teeth.
|
| I'm more confused by how you would coat your teeth while
| drinking, do you swish it around in your mouth every sip?
| trallnag wrote:
| Sounds like your teeth lack fluoride
| katbyte wrote:
| the water here is thankfully unfluorinated.
|
| i also brush with a toothpaste containing fluoride and
| have a healthy diet.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| 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.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| > 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.
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| [dead]
| mihaaly wrote:
| >> 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.
| NeuroCoder wrote:
| Are places generally adding more than the recommended level of
| fluoride in their water? How much water do you have to ingest to
| reach the maximum recommended exposure? Given how bad people are
| at drinking the recommended level of water, I'm curious how they
| accurately assessed outcomes based on what I assume are
| relatively few data points
| yownie wrote:
| >But the report did find a possible link to cognitive harm at
| approximately two times the current recommended water
| fluoridation level, records show.
|
| This is more a report about consuming excess fluoride from other
| sources that water.
|
| >Because many common foods and drinks contain fluoride, consuming
| them along with fluoridated water could amount to harmful
| exposure levels, these experts say.
|
| I do wonder what the other common food and drinks could be
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Black Tea.
| cubefox wrote:
| > I do wonder what the other common food and drinks could be
|
| They are listed in the article
| paddw wrote:
| So we know that there is definitely little benefit from ingesting
| fluoride, and also that we can not rule out negative effects from
| ingesting fluoride. This seems like... a bit of a big deal?
| mc32 wrote:
| I think The Netherlands took it out of their potable/tap water
| some while ago (like in the '70s).
| esperent wrote:
| Because they added it to salt and toothpaste instead.
| mc32 wrote:
| Toothpaste, for the most part, isn't swallowed. Salt, you
| can get any kind you want. I think this gives consumers
| more discretion/control over what they want to or do not
| want to ingest.
| dmbche wrote:
| As an aside, your gums and tongue will absorb a lot -
| think about chewing tobacco, people putting cocaine on
| their gums, pills you leave under your tongue. This is
| also why resorts will tell you to brush your teeth with
| bottled water.
|
| While it obviously absorbs less than eating any compound,
| it still absorbs quite a bit!
| esperent wrote:
| Yes, I agree. I was just pushing back against the common
| false narrative that no fluoride in tap water equals no
| fluoride at all. It's brought up as a fact in every
| online discussion about fluoride.
|
| Usually it's alongside _that one study_ that shows
| naturally occurring fluoride in water is harmful to
| children 's mental development. Which is true, but
| neglects to mention that the areas studied (in rural
| China) had levels of fluoride twenty times higher then
| public water fluoridation programs and that the same
| study also included a control group at "normal" added
| fluoride level and found no negative effect.
|
| Heres the study. You'll start to recognize it if you get
| involved in a few of these discussions.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1852689/
| ricardobeat wrote:
| I can tell you that salt is not fluoridated in the
| Netherlands (most people who care about cooking use pure
| sea salt anyway). As for toothpaste, almost every
| toothpaste anywhere in the world has it.
|
| There is evidence both ways, the original reports were that
| children's dental health _improved_ after they stopped
| fluoridation in the 70s.
| jorvi wrote:
| 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.
| edg5000 wrote:
| I forgot about this. This was a total nightmare for me as
| a kid. The gel made me want to throw up badly. I think
| they offered two "flavours" you could pick from, both
| equally nightmarish.
| andruby wrote:
| That's interesting. Hadn't heard of that. How common is
| this practice?
| jaclaz wrote:
| In Italy, many years ago, when I was a kid, this fluoride
| bite was something that was given to us at (elementary)
| school, cannot remember if once or twice a year, they
| made a sort of quick medical checkup and while the doctor
| was visiting you, you had this bite.
|
| But the practice was later abandoned, as it seems that
| the 6-8 age is the worst one to supplement (too much)
| fluoride, that could later develop in dental fluorosis:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_fluorosis
| heyoni wrote:
| It's very common in the US as well. It's called fluoride
| treatment and is usually reserved for children.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| > There is evidence both ways, the original reports were
| that children's dental health improved after they stopped
| fluoridation in the 70s.
|
| Has that effect been persistent? I would think the news
| of flouride being removed from the water would cause an
| increase in dental health diligence, but I would also be
| surprised if that effect didn't wane over time.
| mvdwoord wrote:
| I remember growing up in the 80s in the Netherlands I
| used to get daily fluoride tablets, from a small pink
| bottle. Did not persist long I believe, but was
| definitely common back then.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't know what they do in the Netherlands, but in
| rural parts of the United States where people are on well
| water, fluoride treatments are common. Florida is
| directly applied to the teeth during a dental visit, then
| washed out.
|
| Anecdotally, this is what I had and I have great Dental
| Health despite for brushing hygiene. I often skip
| brushing my teeth and almost never floss and haven't had
| a cavity in 40 years
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Fluoride in salt? I know they put iodine in table salt, but
| not fluoride.
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| It's available online, and stores in many countries carry
| it.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=fluoridated+salt&tbm=shop
| Timon3 wrote:
| In Germany you can definitely buy table salt with
| Fluoride in a supermarket.
| xk_id wrote:
| Not from ingestion, but exposing the enamel periodically during
| the day to fluoride and having trace amounts of it on your
| saliva supports remineralisation.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I would think it's pretty much impossible to have it in your
| mouth and not ingest any of it.
| Rufbdbskrufb473 wrote:
| Sure, but to achieve equal remineralization, you'll likely
| end up ingesting orders of magnitude more fluoride when
| delivered via drinking water vs toothpaste.
| [deleted]
| koheripbal wrote:
| 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
| Natsu wrote:
| 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.
| david_l_lin wrote:
| 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.
| heyoni wrote:
| You guys have anything on the market yet?
| david_l_lin wrote:
| Indeed we do! We have an oral microbiome test you can
| find here: https://www.bristlehealth.com/pages/products
|
| and our first probiotic here:
| https://www.bristlehealth.com/pages/probiotic
|
| All the species in the probiotic have been clinically
| studied with evidence that supports improvement in the
| oral microbiome and reduction of oral disease. Although,
| for transparency, the mechanism of action of some of the
| probiotics is still unclear, and we're working on
| figuring that out to improve oral probiotics and products
| in the future.
| dharma1 wrote:
| 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).
| Natsu wrote:
| 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.
| cardamomo wrote:
| There are oral probiotics available, which aim to do just
| this. I'm not sure if any clinical trials have investigated
| their efficacy, however.
| darkerside wrote:
| Is there a reason we don't just rinse with a base?
| rthomas6 wrote:
| Actually, the article says the report says harm happens at 2x
| the current recommended fluoridation level.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| > But the report did find a possible link to cognitive harm
| at approximately two times the current
|
| Keyword possible.
| XorNot wrote:
| Also a long history of spurious statistical correlations
| where you find "possible" links.
|
| e.g. for a while there was a scare for RF from overhead
| powerlines causing brain cancer.
|
| Turns out, the issue is the statistics used to try and
| isolate an effect from a general population sample have
| bias: plug in _any_ effect, and _any_ grouping factor,
| and you 'll probably observe a doubling of the risk.
|
| This effect was the cause of a whole spate of "X may
| cause cancer" reports in the 2000s.
| [deleted]
| chaorace wrote:
| There are lots of "big deals" in the environment that we
| silently tolerate -- things which studies conclusively and
| repeatedly show are substantially detrimental:
|
| * Roadside air pollution
|
| * Lead pipes
|
| * Indoor CO2 buildup
|
| Studies relating to flouride are nowhere near as conclusive and
| show nowhere near the same magnitude of effect. _If_ flouride
| is contributing negatively in a similar way, it 's doing so to
| such a small extent that it very nearly falls within the margin
| of error. Anyone genuinely worried about flouride should
| consider double-checking that they've already taken more
| meaningful action regarding their health, such as going on a
| walk, getting a full night's rest, or opening a window.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| It's been known for awhile, but you'd get labelled as a
| conspiracy theorist for any mention of it.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| It goes all the way back to _Dr. Strangelove_ at least. There
| 's a whole bit in there about it.
| desiarnezjr wrote:
| This organisation was big on that conspiracy (??) theory:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society
| vharuck wrote:
| An article about their role in the original referendum on
| fluoridation in Wichita:
|
| https://www.kansas.com/news/article1101667.html
|
| And a Fresh Air interview with a historian who recently
| wrote a book about the John Birch Society:
|
| https://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-
| air/2023/05/17/1176658584...
| valianteffort wrote:
| [flagged]
| theknocker wrote:
| [dead]
| suction wrote:
| [dead]
| nathias wrote:
| maybe just brush your teeth
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| maybe do some basic thinking about public health policy
| jscipione wrote:
| Once again the conspiracy theory has become a conspiracy. If you
| get your news and information from Alex Jones you would know
| about this since at least 2008 making you a well-informed
| citizen, but if you only get your news from places like Salon you
| have been misinformed.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I learned this too late: after brushing, don't rinse your mouth
| clean with water, leave the toothpaste residue on your teeth all
| night to improve effectiveness.
| thsksbd wrote:
| [dead]
| hammock wrote:
| What is it about this report that no one is calling it a
| conspiracy theory anymore?
|
| Edit: why am I being downvoted for this?
| ajkjk wrote:
| > Edit: why am I being downvoted for this?
|
| I think because you presumed that everybody was calling it a
| conspiracy before, which is patently untrue? (Correct would be:
| some people were, and some people still are)
| ahahahahah wrote:
| Science.
| hammock wrote:
| There are 85 studies... The science has always been there. A
| Salon article hasn't been though. Is that it?
| thsksbd wrote:
| [dead]
| colpabar wrote:
| [flagged]
| ttctciyf wrote:
| This reminded me of an old CAQ/CAIB article I read in the '90s on
| the impact of fluoride as an industrial pollutant. I found a
| copy[1] hosted at a site operated by the "Fluoride Action
| Network", which is also hosting other alarming claims such as:
|
| > * As of July 18, 2022, a total of 85 human studies have
| investigated the relationship between fluoride and human
| intelligence.
|
| > * Of these investigations, 76 studies have reported that
| elevated fluoride exposure is associated with reduced IQ in
| humans.
|
| - https://fluoridealert.org/studies/brain01/
|
| There's a historical link between fluoride alarmism and the far
| right, famously parodied in Kubrick's _Dr Strangelove_ in the
| person of Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper[2,3] who instigates a nuclear
| response to the communist conspiracy to impurify America 's
| bodily fluids via fluoride.
|
| The CAQ article at [1] explains this:
|
| > Oscar Ewing, as Federal Security Agency administrator, was a
| Truman "fair dealer" who pushed many progressive programs such as
| nationalized medicine. Fluoridation was lumped with his
| proposals. Inevitably, it was attacked by conservatives as a
| manifestation of "creeping socialism," while the left rallied to
| its support. Later during the McCarthy era, the left was further
| alienated from the opposition when extreme right-wing groups,
| including the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan, raved that
| fluoridation was a plot by the Soviet Union and/or communists in
| the government to poison America's brain cells.
|
| > It was a simple task for promoters, under the guidance of the
| "original spin-doctor," to paint all opponents as deranged-and
| they played this angle to the hilt. For example, one widely
| distributed dossier on opponents "listed in alphabetical order
| reputable scientists, convicted felons, food faddists, scientific
| organizations, and the Ku Klux Klan."
|
| I should note that CAQ has itself been attacked as communist
| propaganda, (and for that matter, some of the studies linked on
| the fluoridealert site are Chinese in origin.) Nonetheless the
| article[1] has some interesting and (to me) surprising
| information on the politically entangled history of fluoride. An
| excerpt:
|
| > One thing is certain, the name of the company with the biggest
| stake in fluoride's safety was ALCOA-whose name is stamped all
| over the early history of water fluoridation.
|
| > Throughout industry's "roaring 20s," the U.S. Public Health
| Service was under the jurisdiction of Treasury Secretary Andrew
| W. Mellon, a founder and major stockholder of ALCOA. In 1931, the
| year Mellon stepped down, a Public Health Service dentist named
| H. Trendley Dean was dispatched to certain remote towns in the
| West where drinking-water wells contained high concentrations of
| natural fluoride from deep in the earth's crust. Dean's mission
| was to determine how much fluoride people could tolerate without
| obvious damage to their teeth-a matter of considerable concern to
| ALCOA. Dean found that teeth in these high-fluoride towns were
| often discolored and eroded, but he also reported that they
| appeared to have fewer cavities than average. He cautiously
| recommended further studies to determine whether a lower level of
| fluoride in drinking water might reduce cavities without
| simultaneously damaging bones and teeth, where fluoride settles
| in humans and other animals.
|
| > Back at the Mellon Institute, ALCOA's Pittsburgh industrial
| research lab, this news was galvanic. ALCOA-sponsored biochemist
| Gerald J. Cox27 immediately fluoridated some lab rats in a study
| and concluded that fluoride reduced cavities and that: "The case
| should be regarded as proved."28 In a historic moment in 1939,
| the first public proposal that the U.S. should fluoridate its
| water supplies was made not by a doctor, or dentist, but by Cox,
| an industry scientist working for a company threatened by
| fluoride damage claims.29 Cox began touring the country, stumping
| for fluoridation.
|
| 1: https://fluoridealert.org/content/fluoride-commie-plot-or-
| ca...
|
| 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4XhhTF7vRM
|
| 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKR32ImWYzw
| wyldfire wrote:
| Wow, I'd previously scoffed at anti-fluoridation stuff,
| thinking that everyone who made these claims sounded like
| General Ripper. But this was an interesting historical
| perspective.
|
| But ... what then keeps us in the status quo of fluoridated
| water supplies? Aluminum companies, still? seems unlikely that
| their influence would hold sway for a century. A century during
| which we have found other environmental pollutants and
| enacted/enforced regulation to reduce or eliminate their
| influence.
| simoom22 wrote:
| > But ... what then keeps us in the status quo of fluoridated
| water supplies?
|
| > ...thinking that everyone who made these claims sounded
| like General Ripper.
| wyldfire wrote:
| So ... it's all Kubrick's fault?
|
| The film didn't come out until half way into that century.
| And now we have generations who've never heard of it.
| tylersmith wrote:
| No, it's the fault of people who scoff at concern about
| fluoride in tap water without having researched it.
| hello_computer wrote:
| Just about every minerals business is going to have loads of
| fluoride to discard--aluminum, uranium, gypsum, NPK, etc. A
| few years back I watched a documentary about a fertilizer
| plant in Morocco, dumping the fluoride they discarded from
| their NPK mix into the water supply. All of the children near
| the plant had spindly, twisted arms and legs from skeletal
| fluorosis.
|
| It is also peculiar that a toxicologist becomes a dentist,
| and ends up at the atomic energy commission[0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Hodge
| pkphilip wrote:
| Health officials, believe it or not, are like any other human
| beings - in that they also have their own agendas and sometimes
| those agendas may be in direct opposition to the well being of
| others. I am surprised that anyone is surprised when news like
| this comes out.
| [deleted]
| vallismortis wrote:
| 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 are two problems with tooth decay in Mississippi:
|
| 1. They don't use fluoride in their water. 2. No decent dentist
| would ever work in Mississippi.
|
| Fifteen years later, with no changes in dental hygiene in my
| entire life, and I've had no other problems with my teeth.
| Anecdotal evidence, maybe. But that is my experience.
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| Once again, this is akin to drinking sunscreen having a
| positive effect on lip skin cancer.
|
| Yes, but... no.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| For other people moving to Mississippi now, they make fluoride
| mouthwash that you can use daily to help counteract a lack of
| fluorinated water.
| dtech wrote:
| Is brushing twice a day with fluoridated toothpaste and floss
| or similar not a thing in the US? In Europe most countries
| don't fluoride tap water and there's not a massive tooth decay
| problem.
| s0rce wrote:
| Genetics plays a huge roll. As does your daily dental hygiene
| routine. Based on you posting here means you probably have
| access to tooth brush, floss, tooth paste and somewhere to use
| them daily and effectively, this reduces the impact of water
| fluoridation variables.
| rlt wrote:
| > No decent dentist would ever work in Mississippi.
|
| This sounds like some elitist BS.
| [deleted]
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| [dead]
| dosman33 wrote:
| 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.
| adrianN wrote:
| Maybe because people prefer earning money over interesting
| work?
| VectorLock wrote:
| Thats a very HN opinion. Sometimes people pick careers for
| factors other than how interesting they are.
| jtbayly wrote:
| And sometimes they pick locations based on something other
| than "statistics" and "rankings."
| arcticbull wrote:
| > Why wouldn't someone go to where the most interesting work
| is to be found though?
|
| Well, Mississippi is ranked 34th in crime, 41st in education,
| 49th in healthcare, 49th in economy, 40th in fiscal
| stability, 47th in infrastructure and 36th in opportunity.
| Assuming a medical professional cares about anything other
| than "natural environment" in which they rank 16th, I suspect
| there's a long list of places they'd rather end up.
|
| [1] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings
| yCombLinks wrote:
| Because if you're educated, you generally don't want to move
| to Mississippi. I grew up there!
| [deleted]
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| because you're gay, or black, or not Christian, or don't want
| to be shot?
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Or black? Are you aware that there are quite a lot of black
| people in Mississippi?
| heyoni wrote:
| What's your point? Mississippi hasn't exactly been
| receptive to the civil rights movement.
| manmal wrote:
| Not to refute your n=1, but reviews are a safer way of
| establishing whether something actually works. Eg here, from
| 2015:
|
| > There is insufficient information to determine whether
| initiation of a water fluoridation programme results in a
| change in disparities in caries across socioeconomic status
| (SES) levels.
|
| > No studies that aimed to determine the effectiveness of water
| fluoridation for preventing caries in adults met the review's
| inclusion criteria.
|
| > Over 97% of the studies were at high risk of bias and there
| was substantial between-study variation
|
| From here:
| https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...
|
| TLDR: The existing research is low quality.
| rixary wrote:
| Is caries the Spanish word for it or is that actually an
| English word for cavity as well?
| ghoogl wrote:
| [dead]
| dhbanes wrote:
| I think the fact that fluoride is beneficial to your teeth is a
| settled fact. However, the issue being discussed is fluorides
| impact on brain health.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Fluoride is beneficial only when applied externally on the
| dental enamel, where it converts the hydroxyapatite
| synthesized by the human cells into fluorapatite, which is
| less soluble in the acids contained in food or excreted by
| bacteria.
|
| On the other hand, ingested fluoride has no benefits, because
| it cannot reach the tooth enamel and when in too large
| quantities it has bad effects, e.g. it may cause bone damage.
|
| Brushing the teeth or washing the mouth with something
| containing fluoride is very good, drinking water with
| fluoride is very stupid.
| XorNot wrote:
| Can you point to one single data point which has found
| _any_ negative effect on human bones from excess
| consumption of fluoridated water at town water
| concentrations?
|
| This should be easy since it's been done at enormous scale
| for decades so a huge quorum of people have spent their
| their lives drinking fluoridated water.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Skeletal fluorosis is well known to occur in regions
| where the natural drinking water has high fluoride
| content, e.g. in some regions from India and China.
|
| You need search no further than Wikipedia.
|
| I am not aware of any study about the incidence of
| fluorosis in places where the drinking water is
| fluoridated artificially, but it would be very difficult
| to do such studies, due to the lack of comprehensive past
| statistics, to the many confounding factors and because
| only few of the existing cases are detected. When someone
| heals a bone fracture they almost never do additional
| complex tests to determine if it was normal for the
| fracture to happen or its likelihood was increased by a
| condition like fluorosis.
|
| In any case no such studies are really needed, because
| when you have an activity like _ingesting_ fluoride, for
| which there is absolutely no evidence of benefits and no
| known mechanism by which it could provide benefits, but
| there is weak evidence that it might be harmful and there
| are known mechanisms by which it may be harmful, then
| there is no rational doubt whether that activity should
| be done or not.
| XorNot wrote:
| My dude people have died from ingesting too much _water_.
|
| So you don't get to say "well obviously it's dangerous
| just cuz".
|
| The dose makes the poison, and you are making a very
| specific claim about the dose.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| And since oral hygiene seems to be linked to eg. Alzheimers
| (https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/264164) and flouride
| seems to be indispensable oral hygiene thing the issue is not
| so straightforward...
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| The link you mention is from the mouth bacteria/plaques and
| their leakage into the blood stream near the brain.
|
| Fluoride is not an antibiotic, so there is no plausible
| mechanism for it's known topical benefits to prevent
| bacterial growth that might lead to Alzheimer's (itself a
| theory, but an interesting one)
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Fluoride reduces disease by reducing acid that bacteria
| poop out. Diseased gums and decaying teeth is great for
| things to leak into blood.
| napier wrote:
| Municipal water fluoridation is problematic for a range of
| reasons but as a toothpaste and mouthwash it has merit and
| it actually does demonstrate direct bacterial growth arrest
| effects in addition to indirect substrate permissiveness
| inhibition via mineralisation.
|
| "Fluoride acts to enhance membrane permeabilities to
| protons and compromises the functioning of F-ATPases in
| exporting protons, thereby inducing cytoplasmic
| acidification and acid inhibition of glycolytic
| enzymes.Basically, fluoride acts to reduce the acid
| tolerance of the bacteria. It is most effective at acid pH
| values. In the acidic conditions of cariogenic plaque,
| fluoride at levels as low as 0.1 mM can cause complete
| arrest of glycolysis by intact cells ofStreptococcus
| mutans.Overall, the anticaries actions of fluoride appear
| to be complex, involving effects both on bacteria and on
| mineral phases. The antibacterial actions of fluoride
| appear themselves to be complex but to be dominated by
| weak-acid effects." https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/m
| 95-133#:~:text=Basica....
| epgui wrote:
| As a biochemist, this seems to be a very complex issue that has
| been unnecessarily politicized. What happened with this report is
| interesting in and of itself, but I would not draw any
| conclusions (or make any inferences) from this, frankly.
| yeeeloit wrote:
| 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? - Can tooth decay be prevented by
| diet and brush/floss with good quality toothpaste?
|
| Presumed safety of chemicals (at the behest of organizations)
| to human/environment until proven otherwise is shocking to me.
|
| They irony of all this is that if you want to buy good quality
| toothpaste you are forced to import it from overseas, due to
| the FDA limiting ingredients in toothpaste.
| andrewmutz wrote:
| [flagged]
| mgiampapa wrote:
| It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is
| introduced into our precious bodily fluids, without the
| knowledge of the individual, certainly without any choice.
| That's the way your hard-core Commie works.
| [deleted]
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _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? - Can tooth decay be prevented
| by diet and brush /floss with good quality toothpaste?_
|
| When evaluating those points, be sure to assess what
| _actually happens_ , in real life, to real people, and not
| what could happen in theory.
|
| For example, even if tooth decay could be effectively
| "prevented by diet and brush/floss with good quality
| toothpaste" _in theory_ , the effect might be smaller
| (possibly much smaller) in practice, as people in general
| suck at lifestyle changes, dieting being a prime example, and
| then a noticeable subset of the population has problems with
| regularly brushing their teeth (for some reason, this is
| surprising to many). Unless you have a way for fixing that
| (so far no one has), this may well make fluoridated water
| come out ahead in comparison.
|
| --
|
| EDIT: The above is similar to the argument for, e.g., opt-out
| health insurance and social retirement savings plans - you're
| still free to choose an alternative or decide to stay with
| the default, but if for some reason you can't understand the
| choice or can't be arsed to make one, you and everyone else
| are better off with you having some insurance and savings by
| default. The similarity is that we _know for certain_ that
| the "incapable of making a choice" bucket will contain a
| substantial segment of the population, so at policy level,
| making health insurance/retirement savings opt-in with
| nothing as default, is just deciding to screw all those
| people over.
| armitron wrote:
| Nobody is screwing anybody over when the water supply is
| not poisoned (which is the case for nearly every European
| country). The basis of "contract over status" that let us
| advance beyond feudalism is mutual assent (or do no harm to
| the counterparty). What you're describing is essentially
| centralized tyranny and comes in many forms ("think of the
| children!")
|
| And no, your health insurance / social retirement example
| doesn't fit. Sticking to the default in these cases does
| not amount to willingly poisoning oneself.
| trws wrote:
| What do you consider necessary for "good quality toothpaste?"
| xk_id wrote:
| I'm not OP or american, but i can comment. >1,500ppm
| concentration of fluoride is prescription only (so you
| either pay for a pointless dentist visit or get it on the
| grey market), despite being safe and much more effective at
| remineralisation. There are also experimental ingredients
| such as nanohydroxyapatite and Novamin which are difficult
| to find on the american market due to the FDA
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| Novamin works wonders. It took me the last 30% of the way
| to not being sensitive to heat/cold/acid.i got about 20%
| there with just normal sensodyne toothpaste and another
| big chunk with vitamin k complex and vitamin d
| supplementation (this took about six months to be really
| noticeable). The order was dictated by me figuring out
| what i wanted to try and general availability in the case
| of novamin. So i cant really say if the relative help
| from each intervention would be different if tried in a
| different order unfortunately.
| xk_id wrote:
| For the record, the only clinical evidence about Novamin
| is very vague.
| xarope wrote:
| Just try it for a week. The glassiness feeling it imparts
| to your teeth is real.
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| For the record, the rest of the stuff I mentioned has
| middling evidence for effectiveness as well, it's just
| the things that worked out of the myriad of things I
| tried that didn't. The vitamin k complex and d thing
| especially has limited evidence (and recently a paper
| came out that showed k2 increasing artery calcification,
| which is concerning but maybe not as bad as one thinks
| since the really dangerous part of arterial calcification
| is when it is in process. it also didn't control for
| vitamin d status and the hypothesis of k2 causing
| bone/teeth remineralization and not soft tissue
| mineralization usually hinges on d status being
| adequate).
| ianai wrote:
| Reminds me a lot of my struggle with migraines before the
| recent, good treatments came out. I was facing a
| certainty of at least one migraine per day everyday of my
| life. Led me to trying all sorts of stuff. Not exactly
| the best experience but better than migraines.
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| I just tinker as a hobby. If i live long enough even the
| minor annoyances in my life will eventually get iterated
| on and improved. The teeth thing was a medium to major
| annoyance so got attention first.
| analyte123 wrote:
| Carifree sells (expensive) hydroxyapatite toothpaste in
| the US.
| girvo wrote:
| > >1,500ppm concentration of fluoride is prescription
| only
|
| Man that's silly. Where I am (Australia), 5000ppm is
| chemist-only, but doesn't need a prescription
| voisin wrote:
| Novamin used to be available via Sensodyne Pronamel in
| Canada. I was surprised to see that at some point it
| disappeared from our market - no longer able to buy at
| any grocery store or pharmacy or on Amazon, whereas it
| used to be available in all of these places.
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| It's now in Sensodyne repair and protect and I usually
| buy it from walmart.ca 6-10 tubes at a time. There was
| about 2 years there where I had to buy it on ebay shipped
| from India though. I did try Biomin and I think that even
| if the material performs better than novamin, the rest of
| the toothpaste is so inferior to sensodyne that as a
| whole it works worse, for me at least.
| waboremo wrote:
| It's still available, look for "Sensodyne Repair and
| Protect" (no other name). Shoppers Drug Mart has it,
| Superstore, Walmart, etc. Most everywhere. We also have
| other options here with nanohydroxyapatite that are easy
| to get too, from X-Pur to Davids Toothpaste. Those
| products tend to be more expensive though due to higher
| %, whereas Sensodyne tops out at 5% Novamin.
|
| Also as a Canadian you should avoid Amazon for groceries
| and most hygiene goods, they're overpriced even compared
| to Shoppers Drug Mart most of the time, half of the time
| the goods aren't even offered by the company but instead
| by a random middleman charging absurd markup.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| IME high fluoride can agitate the digestive system, so
| perhaps the limit is for good reason?
| orangepurple wrote:
| Don't swallow the toothpaste!
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I don't.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Warning: Excessive fluoride is known to stain teeth with
| white steaks. You see it a lot in people who drink
| certain types of Chinese tea, high in fluoride.
| xk_id wrote:
| This is called fluorosis and it only affects children.
| Ingestion of excess fluoride in early life changes the
| development of permanent teeth and causes white speckles.
| rexarex wrote:
| My understanding is that some water sources naturally contain
| fluoride anyhow so this isn't a great comparison. From the
| sources I read awhile ago they started fluoride additives
| because it was known that certain areas like Texas had bad
| teeth.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| It's a circle that all people talk about in regards to
| caries is fluoride.
|
| And literally, no one will talk about molybdenum. Maybe
| Texas has low levels of molybdenum?
|
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/22294112201602
| 0...
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| It seems pretty simple. Stop putting toxic waste in the
| water. If you're worried about dental health, cut the sugar
| and use those little interdental brushes in addition to
| flossing and brushing well.
| CodexArcana wrote:
| [flagged]
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Can you imagine? Definitely abbreviates the "sweet tea"
| making process
| d0mine wrote:
| In theory, obesity can be solved with diet. In practice, it
| is a complex issue.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I always thought anti fluoridation sentiment in Utah was
| related to them having the highest dentist count per capita.
| It's the only state that I know of where fluoridation isn't
| common.
| hammock wrote:
| Dentists are the ones who are pro-fluoridation ... at least
| it was a dental trade group that fought the release of this
| report (maybe they are funded behind the scenes by a
| different interest group)
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Maybe. At least the Dental academy and association of LDS
| Dentists thinks so:
|
| https://www.deseret.com/2000/9/29/19531458/fluoride-
| brochure...
|
| It was a weird position against back then similar to the
| anti-vax position today.
| dotancohen wrote:
| The cynical position would be that dentists in areas
| without fluoridation have more work.
| xupybd wrote:
| 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.
| ux-app wrote:
| >That's one data point that I have observed.
|
| As with many things genetics plays a big part.
|
| I neglected going to the dentist for 15 years and take just
| ok care of my teeth (brush at least once per day, don't
| floss).
|
| I was expecting bad news, lots of cavities, but my teeth
| are perfect. After some plaque removal, not a single
| cavity.
|
| Asked the dentist about this, he shrugged and just said
| "genetics".
| xupybd wrote:
| 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.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| It might not be a fluoride, it might also be a lack of
| molybdenum.
|
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/222941122016
| 020...
| xupybd wrote:
| Interesting, I didn't know about molybdenum.
|
| Her home city of Hanoi doesn't have tap water that the
| locals like to drink. Even after boiling I think it can
| taste bad. So she grew up with heavily filtered water or
| bottled water. I would guess her diet was lacking in many
| trace minerals from this.
| epgui wrote:
| Dentists don't do genome sequencing, so they have no way
| of ruling out genetics.
| [deleted]
| xupybd wrote:
| Sometimes you don't need to rule everything else out to
| be confident in a diagnosis.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| In this case it's more "when all you have is a hammer
| (fluoride)..."
| xupybd wrote:
| The therapy appears to be improving her teeth. Is there
| something I am missing?
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Just because a treatment works doesn't mean it's the best
| treatment, or is treating the "cause." To say that a lack
| of fluoride is the cause of their bad teeth is silly. Not
| eating sugar/acidic foods, Novamin, or a different set of
| bacteria in her mouth would also improve her teeth.
| xupybd wrote:
| We used a toothpaste with novamin in it. That didn't help
| her. She doesn't eat much sugar. She's 40 something kg
| and eats very healthy.
| eloisius wrote:
| 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.
| bsder wrote:
| Citing: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24308394/ which
| recommends flouridating salt.
|
| "Children and adults of the low socio-economic strata tend to
| have substantially more untreated caries than higher strata.
| Salt fluoridation is by far the cheapest method for improving
| oral health."
|
| Sure, good for you that you're in one of the higher
| socioeconomic strata who can take care of their teeth. Not
| everyone else is.
| hammock wrote:
| >recommends flouridating salt
|
| That is a scary recommendation. Would be very hard to avoid
| fluoride if restaurants, packaged food etc all used
| fluoridated salt
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| It already is that way. Your steak came from a cow that
| drank fluoridated water, the salad was watered constantly
| with fluoride. Your bread was baked with fluoride water,
| same with your coffee/beer/tea. Your Mayonnaise even.
| hammock wrote:
| Doubtful on the steak and salad. That water typically
| gets pulled from different kinds of wells, not municipal
| drinking water supply
| epgui wrote:
| It's not particularly scary. In fact almost all salt has
| added iodine for public health reasons.
| hammock wrote:
| Iodine and fluoride aren't really the same thing.
|
| Iodine is essential, you cannot survive without it, and
| it is added to supplement a deficiency.
|
| Fluoride is not essential, you can survive without it,
| and its addition is purely therapeutic, not due to some
| deficiency
| epgui wrote:
| As a biochemist, I know this perfectly well. But the
| motivation behind your "this is terrifying" was left as
| an exercise to the reader, so there was no way of
| distinguishing it from "omg the chemicals".
| zackees wrote:
| [dead]
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| They irony of all this is that if you want to buy good
| quality toothpaste you are forced to import it from overseas,
| due to the FDA limiting ingredients in toothpaste.
|
| I never heard such a thing. Can you be more specific? Plus
| you can buy Darlie toothpaste in most Chinatown's around the
| world, even if unapproved by local dental orgs.
| dannyw wrote:
| International versions of Sensodyne contain Novamin, which
| is a teeth-material-like compound that layers over your
| teeth to protect it.
|
| It has been proven in many clinical trials to not only
| reduce sensitivity, but also protect against tooth decay
| and cavities.
| lettergram wrote:
| Why isn't it in the US?
| klooney wrote:
| You can get it on Amazon, since they don't do a ton of
| vetting or enforcement. You can also get toothpaste with
| Biomin, a substantially similar deal (its manufacturer
| claims it's better).
|
| For me, novamin/biomin didn't seem to make a difference
| with tooth sensitivity.
| ars wrote:
| See here: https://medium.com/@ravenstine/the-curious-
| history-of-novami...
|
| Basically FDA won't let them label it without studies.
| Other countries consider toothpaste a cosmetic and don't
| requite studies.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Interesting. I use Sensodyne for a completely unrelated
| reason: it does not contain Sodium Laurel Sulfate. I have
| not had a cavity in my entire life, and I'm over 45.
| 2rsf wrote:
| What's the connection between the first and second claims
| you make? does SLS cause cavities?
| ianai wrote:
| Not sure for them but SLS can irritate sensitive skin.
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| Toothpaste with SLS causes ulceration (canker sores) in
| some individuals (myself included). See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphthous_stomatitis
| dotancohen wrote:
| SLS does not cause cavities.
|
| I mention that I like this toothpaste due to the lack of
| SLS - not for the cavities prevention. But I've not had
| any cavities, so that is another datum on top of the
| others who mention using this toothpaste and not having
| dental problems.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| I guess you need to pay more attention when you read:
|
| > I use Sensodyne for a completely unrelated reason
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Ever since I started brushing with Novamin my dentist has
| started being really positive about the condition of my
| teeth in a way I've never experienced - even though I
| haven't had a cavity in at least 20 years. I didn't tell
| him what I've been doing.
| zackees wrote:
| [dead]
| mkoubaa wrote:
| [flagged]
| bawolff wrote:
| You can talk about something without drawing conclusions from
| a single report.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Is that what politicized means?
| wrp wrote:
| Besides being politicized, views on this issue will also be
| affected by personal experience. I've lived much of my life in
| Oregon, where there is no fluoridation. It seems to be widely
| believed by dentists here that people growing up in Oregon have
| poorer teeth and that it's largely because of the lack of
| fluoridation. I'm not arguing the merits, just pointing out the
| cultural belief.
| bob_theslob646 wrote:
| It's fascinating. Having gone through 301 comments and there
| really hasn't been any deep discussion at whether or not fluoride
| has been linked to brain harm.... There are little debates about
| drinking water. I'm disappointed..I'm gonna to have to do some
| digging.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| This is unfortunately not the place for deep, thoughtful
| conversation on topics not directly pertaining to tech
| raverbashing wrote:
| Looks like the future neuralink test subjects have come into
| force against fluoride.
|
| But of course people forgot the history of water fluoridation and
| the risks of dental cavities
|
| (of course, for modern countries I guess it makes more sense to
| have it in dental products than just in tap water, but I don't
| buy the moral panic)
|
| > The report found that a link between typical levels of fluoride
| added to water and possible harm to brain development is
| unclear... the report did find a possible link to cognitive harm
| at approximately two times
|
| Well good think we are at the current level and not at two times
| it then
| yarg wrote:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6923889/ -
| Developmental fluoride neurotoxicity: an updated review
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3956646/ - Water
| Fluoridation: A Critical Review of the Physiological Effects of
| Ingested Fluoride as a Public Health Intervention
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8930857/ - The use
| of hydroxyapatite toothpaste to prevent dental caries
|
| > In vitro and in situ studies are demonstrating promising
| results of HAP toothpastes on the remineralization of enamel
| lesions and preventing/reducing demineralization. Specifically,
| research appears to demonstrate either its superiority or
| equivalency to fluoride toothpaste as anti-caries agents.
|
| I'm not sure how conspiratorial I'm being, but for years I've
| felt that the fluoridation of water was more about the dilution
| of neurotoxic industrial waste product and not oral health.
|
| Regardless of whether I'm on or off base in that regard, I see
| little reason to continue to use something that - at best - will
| only react with pre-existing enamel, when hydroxyapatite
| toothpastes can actually fix damage (albeit to a limited degree).
| verisimi wrote:
| > I'm not sure how conspiratorial I'm being, but for years I've
| felt that the fluoridation of water was more about the dilution
| of neurotoxic industrial waste product and not oral health.
|
| "CITIZEN, please check yourself into a fema retraining
| facility! The government is there to serve us all for the
| greater good."
|
| Nevermind the double speak, where the term 'the greater good'
| means the good of those people who consider themselves to be
| greater than you.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There are significant lobbies now trying to put both statins and
| lithium into the tap water.
| [deleted]
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Lithium based on studies that show that areas with higher
| lithium levels in the water tend to have less crime?
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Statins on a wide scale could make for the single greatest life
| expectancy increase we could get anywhere...that would be
| awesome.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I hear that every few years from press releases written by
| people who sell statins.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Doesn't make it wrong.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Not wrong, merely irrelevant.
| logicchains wrote:
| The effect of statins is incredibly modest at best: https://j
| amanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl... .
| Anyone telling you otherwise is doing so because of financial
| incentive, not from following the actual science.
| Valmar wrote:
| Statins are dangerous... they block cholesterol, which
| incidentally, is fundamental, crucial, even, to the formation
| of both cell membranes and innumerable important hormones.
|
| They are no solution at all. Just a fad.
| rlt wrote:
| My vote is for LSD.
| sakras wrote:
| [flagged]
| jahewson wrote:
| When did you first become aware of this?
| taejavu wrote:
| He's quoting Dr. Strangelove.
| sakras wrote:
| So is the person you replied to.
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| Wouldn't statins lower cholesterol in large populations of
| people who need it to, e.g., produce hormones? I can't imagine
| anyone wanting to inhibit the production of sex hormones
| (testosterone, estradiol, etc.) in children.
| lxe wrote:
| > These are just a few of the images we've recorded. And you
| can see, it wasn't what we thought. There's been no war here
| and no terraforming event. The environment is stable. It's the
| Pax. The G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air
| processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out
| aggression. Well, it works. The people here stopped fighting.
| And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to
| work, they stopped breeding, talking, eating. There's 30
| million people here, and they all just let themselves die.
| EMCymatics wrote:
| Sources?
| LispSporks22 wrote:
| I once found myself stuck in a biker bar west of Dallas. I had to
| listen to this old timer Hell's Angel go on and on about fluoride
| conspiracies. Some of them are pretty wild - "fluoride is created
| by nuclear weapons construction as waste and the government has
| to get rid of it somehow, so in the water it goes" for example.
| The rest of the evening is a little hazy but I remember that.
|
| Incidentally, I used to think Hell's Angels were just retired
| dentists.
| zkms wrote:
| > fluoride is created by nuclear weapons construction as waste
| and the government has to get rid of it somehow, so in the
| water it goes
|
| Like some wild conspiracy theories, there is a kernel of truth
| to this one. Namely, the fluoride used in water fluoridation is
| indeed an industrial byproduct -- except not from nuclear
| weapon manufacture, but from the production of phosphate
| fertilizer.
|
| From the CDC (which is definitely on the pro-fluoridation side
| of things) website
| https://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/engineering/engineering-sho...
|
| > The three fluoride additives used for water fluoridation are
| derived principally from phosphate fertilizer production.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| They (ADA) were sort of Mafia-ish in South Park
| kukkeliskuu wrote:
| Discussion on fluoride is interesting, but isn't the real news
| the censorship of the research results?
| emodendroket wrote:
| This seems like it is ultimately a result of the politicization
| of the issue: it becomes difficult to have an honest conversation
| of the merits and demerits of something if you know there's a
| political faction ready to seize on everything you say and take
| it out of context. Not saying that makes it right, but it's an
| outcome we could anticipate, I think.
| tonis2 wrote:
| All foods are full of sugar, government does nothing, children
| get teeth issues, government solves it, by adding fluorine to our
| drinking water, adding more to our toxic overload.
| snovymgodym wrote:
| It's worth thinking about the fact that virtually the entire EU
| gets by with non fluoridated water.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| I'm sorry but the difference you can literally just see between
| the teeth of US vs EU should disabuse you of the notion that
| they "get by".
| jcfrei wrote:
| Not sure if you are trolling but are you alluding that the US
| population has healthier teeth? The "difference you see" is
| most likely just the much more widespread usage of bleaching
| in the US (which actually worsens the health of your teeth).
| pedalpete wrote:
| Bleaching, braces, veneers, and genetics.
|
| I have no idea if there is a genetic difference in the US,
| but according to Wikipedia, it seems modern toothpaste
| first took hold in America.
|
| Colgate, a US company, introduced modern toothpaste in
| 1873. Later, toothpaste that had been developed by
| researchers in the UK and US, did not find commercial
| success in the UK, and they focused on the US where it took
| off.
|
| This suggests that the US were more interested in the
| appearance of their teeth.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toothpaste#:~:text=Pre%2Dmixe
| d....
| sunk1st wrote:
| Preventative dental care in the US is a thing. Have you
| lived in Europe? It's not really a thing in the EU.
| seszett wrote:
| I don't really know what this means for the US, but in
| Belgium you are required to go to the dentist at least
| once a year if you want to keep being reimbursed by
| social security.
|
| When I lived in Canada (which I assume isn't too
| different from the US) with poor social security due to
| my legal status, I never went to a dentist because it was
| far, far too expensive.
| olodus wrote:
| 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 easier
| to get the overview from imo: https://www.oecd-
| ilibrary.org/docserver/health_glance-2009-1...
| heyoni wrote:
| 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.
| bob_theslob646 wrote:
| Could it be difference in diet and or smoking?
| olodus wrote:
| WHO produced the exact same data but for adults. I did
| see similar results there (several EU countries above
| US). You gave no references as response, instead giving
| another personal experience.
| heyoni wrote:
| And? I was very clear that this was anecdotal and
| responding in a thread about the aesthetic aspect of
| teeth.
|
| I'm sorry I didn't dig any deeper than the link that was
| presented but it was about adolescent kids. And no one is
| saying that these differences show up in young people.
| olodus wrote:
| My original response were specifically about references.
| But sorry if it sounded more aggressive than it was. I
| mistook you for the original person I replied to, which
| made me answer more direct than maybe was necessary.
| Also, it was my bad for not linking the actual reference
| for WHOs adult data. I'll link it here instead [1]. That
| said, on second look it is from 2000, so it is much older
| than the one on children. Maybe not as reliable. I remain
| am quite sceptical to the claim that there is an actual
| difference between in oral health between EU and US
| though. And my original response were to someone saying
| preventive care is completely non-existent in EU, which
| is simply demonstrably wrong.
|
| [1]: https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/66521
| metadat wrote:
| [flagged]
| beezlewax wrote:
| As a European people here often make comments about American
| teeth being ridiculously white and unnaturally straight. You
| guys went a bit far on that one.
| pb7 wrote:
| Unnaturally straight? What is natural to you? My teeth are
| perfectly straight and so is my entire family's and none of
| us has ever had braces. Is that not natural?
|
| Corrected vision is unnatural. Did we go a bit far on that
| too?
|
| Europeans' teeth would be white too if they smoked less.
| beezlewax wrote:
| Touche! Maybe its just the blinding whiteness then.
| akiselev wrote:
| [flagged]
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| When people destroy their natural healthy teeth to put on
| veneers, it's very far on that.
|
| When people destroy their teeth enamel, it's very far on
| that too.
|
| Destroying your natural teeth for an extra shade of
| blinding white or marginally straighter teeth is insane,
| and quite common.
| borski wrote:
| We can all agree that somewhere in between is certainly
| the preferred option. Walking around with all veneers or
| crowns is a problem, but so is walking around with
| constant cavities and yellow teeth, so likely somewhere
| in between what the US does and the EU does.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Healthy teeth have nothing to do with veneers and crowns.
| The opposite of a decorated mouth is not a sick mouth,
| just like the opposite of a bright pink house isn't a
| burned down house.
| borski wrote:
| Sure, that's obviously true, but misses my point; on
| average, European teeth are less healthy than American
| teeth. At the same time, American teeth tend to have too
| much work done on them on average.
|
| Both of these things can be true simultaneously.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| Worse, a veneer decorated mouth is a maimed mouth, whose
| healthy tissues were destroyed.
|
| Veneers don't last forever, they will require lifetime
| commitment.
| borski wrote:
| Losing your teeth is also a lifetime commitment.
| mc32 wrote:
| Apparently anything man-made to modify natural outcomes
| is unnatural.
|
| There are extremes, like elective cosmetic surgery, fake
| tans, cranial implants, etc., but some things just make
| living as an ordinary person easier. Glasses, hearing
| aids, normal medicines, etc.
| pengaru wrote:
| > Europeans' teeth would be white too if they smoked
| less.
|
| err, maybe if they also didn't drink so much coffee
| and/or tea
|
| Let's not ignore the fact that Americans have largely
| embraced teeth whitening as a norm.
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| [dead]
| ttctciyf wrote:
| Their precious bodily fluids[1] retain their purity, at
| least.
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4XhhTF7vRM
| pessimizer wrote:
| They don't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars on
| their children's teeth to make sure that their kids can find
| professional jobs without being written off the first time
| they smile during the job interview. It's a symptom of our
| sick culture in the US.
| dypsilon wrote:
| There is a paper linked on Wikipedia stating that studies
| conducted in Germany showed that "Water fluoridation was
| followed by a decrease of caries, and interruptions in
| fluoridation were followed by increasing caries levels." but
| also "There was a significant caries decrease down to the
| lowest DMFT (2.0) since 1959 in spite of the fact that only
| F-poor water was available over years [...] explained by
| changes in caries-preventive and environmental conditions."
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1034/j.1600-0528..
| ..
| madsbuch wrote:
| this is interesting, can you refer any statistics?
| [deleted]
| esperent wrote:
| It's in other products instead. I think it depends on the
| country, but usually salt and toothpaste. I don't think there
| are any developed countries that have stopped fluoridation
| entirely.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Only two countries, Germany and Switzerland, have fluoridated
| salt.
| hammock wrote:
| Salt fluoridation schemes are reaching more than 100
| million people in Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Cuba as well
| as 85% of Switzerland and 67% of Germany.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| That was in the context of "the entire EU".
| makeitdouble wrote:
| France has some too, but it always was an option for those
| who care and not a default. As such it's clearly labelled
| and marketed (same for iode and other additives)
| hosteur wrote:
| It's in toothpaste but you don't eat that. I have never heard
| of it being in salt. Maybe you think of iodine?
| nulbyte wrote:
| Several countries have flouridized table salt.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24308394/
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| 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 four times higher fluoride exposure than adults,
| warned Lanphear. He added that before an infant's teeth erupt,
| there's no benefit to fluoride exposure. "There are vulnerable
| groups we have to be worried about," he said, "and that's not
| being brought out adequately by these agencies."_
| CrampusDestrus wrote:
| Every chemical imbalance in infants is going to have much
| greater effects than on adults. They are literally a fraction
| of our body mass
| s0rce wrote:
| 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.
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| 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.
| tzs wrote:
| > It's in the entire water supply
|
| Not quite. In the US about 15% of the population get their
| drinking water from private wells. I wonder if anyone has
| compared groups that are similar except for whether they
| are on a well or municipal?
|
| It shouldn't be hard to find such groups by looking at the
| boundaries of municipal water systems. For example on my
| street everyone east of me is on city water and everyone
| else is on wells. Both groups are demographically very
| similar.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > You were fed formula made with fluoridated water tuned to
| dose a 200lb man when you were 8lbs.
|
| Er, no. A baby only consumes 4-8oz of water per day while
| an adult is consuming 125oz. The concentration is the same
| in both cases so the adult is getting 30X more.
|
| > Then factor in the bell distribution and you are
| massively overexposing huge numbers of people a few
| standard deviations out.
|
| How are you defining 'overexposed' and 'highly' in these
| statements. Do you have any studies or evidence? How are
| you deciding this consumption isn't factored into how much
| is put in water?
| VectorLock wrote:
| Its kind of hilarious to picture what a new born baby
| taking in the amount of water a 200 lb man would in a
| day.
|
| And of course "overexposed" is exactly the dose that fits
| their narrative.
|
| I'm suspect they'd also have an opinion about not
| showering as much to not absorb the flouride through
| their skin.
| ifdefdebug wrote:
| > The concentration is the same in both cases so the
| adult is getting 30X more.
|
| That should read 15-30 times more, according to your own
| figures. And then, the baby's mass is about 15-30 times
| less than the adult, so at the end you are in the same
| ballpark again, percentagewise.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Yep, but the implication was that the child was getting a
| megadose. They're not. They would be if they were
| drinking 15-30X as much water per unit mass. That's not a
| child, that's a water balloon.
| yarg wrote:
| Possibly biased?
|
| It's two clicks away from an online shop for (fluoride)
| toothpaste.
| s0rce wrote:
| Didn't check conflicts of interest closely but here are
| more sources: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21701194/ htt
| ps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0528...
| . https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002203459207
| 100...
| wiredfool wrote:
| My n=3 test would tend to confirm this.
|
| First kid was born and lived for a year or so when we had
| city water, which was flouridated. 2nd and 3rd kid were born
| where we were on well water, with no flouride.
|
| First kid had no baby tooth cavities. Second and Third wound
| up with cavities on the front teeth, and we used topical
| flouridation for re-mineralization.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| I've heard from someone who worked in a water district that they
| didn't add fluoride to water for dental health, that was a spin
| they put on it. Not sure how true it is though.
|
| After the city treated and purified the water, they needed
| something to add in to keep it from reacting with the city's
| pipes. Otherwise the water will eat the pipe and you get dirty
| water full of pipe delivered to the tap.
|
| They needed something that was cheap, relatively safe to drink,
| and available in large quantities- fluoride checked those boxes.
| Supposedly they came up with the dental spin to sell the solution
| to the public.
| quinto_quarto wrote:
| "Mandrake, have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water?"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr2bSL5VQgM&ab_channel=Jacob
| alakep wrote:
| I don't brush my teeth because I don't want the residual fluoride
| there.
|
| It's healthier to just slosh some vodka around to kill the germs
| (this wouldn't work with kids, but hey they'll lose their first
| teeth so who cares).
| alliao wrote:
| whiskey work better apparently due to acidity
| s0rce wrote:
| Whiskey is only very weakly acidic, likely having no impact
| compared to neutral unbuffered vodka.
| jorvi wrote:
| Neither are a good idea but vodka is virtually pure water and
| alcohol. Whisky has a bunch of other stuff in it, including
| sugar.
| throwaway2990 wrote:
| 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 fluoride then
| look for calcium fluoride toothpaste which is not poisonous.
|
| 3) sloshing vodka or whiskey around doesn't remove plague from
| your teeth and you will suffer tooth decay regardless.
| s0rce wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway2990 wrote:
| 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.
| s0rce wrote:
| The fact that its produced from aluminum refining is
| irrelevant. Also everything is poisonous in high enough
| doses.
|
| I understand that calcium fluoride isn't going to harm
| you because its not soluble, its just like eating some
| inert rocks but its basically pointless to add to
| toothpaste.
|
| I'm not worried about fluoride, its very helpful for
| dental health, I did a bunch of my PhD on this.
| jancsika wrote:
| > but hey they'll lose their first teeth so who cares
|
| Just like learning best practices in computer language-- fire
| up that REPL and don't do shit because it's not a real
| application.
| AequitasOmnibus wrote:
| I hope this is poorly conveyed satire. If not... good God.
|
| Apart from the hygienic value in brushing, whether you agree
| with it or not, halitosis is an offensive smell to most of the
| public. Some of the worst breath I've ever had to smell came
| from alcoholics whose spirit of choice is vodka.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| This can also double as a sleep aid if you don't spit it out.
| tiberious726 wrote:
| That will just dehydrate your mouth and kill all the bacteria
| which is supposed to be there. I joke about it with my
| neighbors when we have a boil water advisory, do not actually
| do it in real life.
| rale00 wrote:
| Wait till you find out whats in mouthwash...
| tiberious726 wrote:
| Floor cleaner?
| heyoni wrote:
| I could smell this comment
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