Yet another established medical/dental procedure that I have always declined for my family is the routine use of fluoride treatments in the dentist office. Don’t let them get near you with this toxic substance!
Fluoride is a Poison And Does Not Belong In Water
Fluoride is xenobiotic — it is a poison — not a nutrient. According to Dr. Kennedy (a speaker at the Healthy Mouth Summit), fluoride is harmful to the microbes that live on teeth and it damages the way the body makes energy, teeth, bone and blood. It increases mineral content but lowers the tinsel strength of bone and gets into the marrow and lowers the blood cell count — wrecking havoc with blood cell production and the strength of the bones and teeth.
He’s not just saying that — a 2000 review of the literature by the British Government (University of York) found that there has not been a single properly conducted, high quality study to demonstrate that water fluoridation has benefits — in spite of over 50 years of water fluoridation.
CDC 2001 Review
In 2001 The Centers for Disease Control summarized the use of fluoride to guide health care professionals, health officials and policy makers in the use of fluoride. They cite many studies that prove the effectiveness of fluoride in preventing dental caries. However, they do not present the studies that show how toxic it is to the many systems in the body.
Published in Environmental Health Perspectives in 2012, Choi and colleagues conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of published studies to investigate the effects of increased fluoride exposure and delayed neurobehavioral development. This had never been addressed before.
They found that children in high-fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ scores than those who lived in low-fluoride areas. They concluded that,
The results support the possibility of an adverse effect of high fluoride exposure on children’s neurodevelopment. Future research should include detailed individual-level information on prenatal exposure, neurobehavioral performance, and covariates for adjustment.
According to Dr. Kennedy, there are studies that were not included in Choi’s review that also indicate a much greater impact of fluoride on neurodevelopment.
Fluoride is an Industrial Waste Product
Fluoride is a hazardous waste product of the aluminum industry and the phosphate fertilizer industry. These companies need a cheap way to get rid of this ground water pollutant. The old solution to pollution — is dilution – right into the drinking water. It is illegal to dump this waste into rivers and lakes or release the parent gases into the atmosphere. Does it make sense to purposely release it into our drinking water or put it in the mouth?
People living in the vicinity of aluminum, phosphate, steel, clay, glass and enamel manufacturing plants are exposed to high levels of fluoride in the air. Areas around these types of industries show extremely high lung cancer rates that decrease as you get away from the downwind plume of the steel mills.
Fluoride Warning Issues For Infants
In 1997 the Institute of Medicine set the level of fluoride for infants at .01 mg per day, as that is the amount found in breast milk. However, infants may get much more that that amount when they are formula feed and the formula is reconstituted with fluoridated water. They may get more than 0.7 mg a day — the tolerable upper intake as set by the IOM.
In 2006 the CDC and the American Dental Association finally admitted that infant formula mixed with fluoridated water increases the child’s risk for developing enamel fluorosis.
To find out the fluoridation status of your water click here, or call your local water authority and ask for your Water Quality Report. You will get a full report of many things in your municipal water.
Children Are Most At Risk For Fluoride Consumption
While may authorities support the use of fluoride in the water supply, the fact is that by adding it to the water and encouraging use of all kinds of fluoridated products such as tooth paste, mouth wash, fluoride treatments, etc. they are supporting the overuse of this toxic element.
Children don’t know how to spit and should not be given fluoride toothpaste because they swallow it! According to Dr. Kenendy, and FluorideAlert.org there is a lethal dose of fluoride in just 40% of a family sized tube of (flavored) toothpaste for a 40 pound child.
Main Sources of Fluoride Toxicity
- Water Fluoridation — waste product of industry
- Oral Hygiene products — toothpaste, mouth wash, fluoride treatments
- Medications
- Non- organic foods because of pesticide residue (cryolite is sodium aluminum fluoride) — EPA has set the MRL (minimum risk levels) which are way above the levels that are toxic to people. For example, iceberg lettuce can now contain a whopping 180 parts per million (ppm) of fluoride—that’s 180 times higher than what’s recommended in drinking water! Romaine and leaf lettuce may contain 40 ppm. This pesticide is very sticky and difficult to wash off. Grapes are a huge source of cryolite as they are heavily sprayed as well as black and green tea and cereals. (source)
- Other food sources — any commercial drinks such as soda, soft drinks, juices (especially with grape juice as a base), soups, mechanically deboned meats and chicken (chicken nuggets), beer and wine (unless they are imported from Europe or other areas that don’t fluoridate the water), coffee and tea (if made with fluoridated water), packaged and processed foods, cereal grains.
Is Fluoride Beneficial At All?
According to Dr. Kennedy — not at all. The body uses calcium to bind fluoride to become calcium fluoride. As the bones remodel they release the fluoride into your system — removing the rest through the urine which can damage the kidneys. The elderly and people who have damage to their kidneys and decreased kidney function are at risk.
Fluoride accumulates in the body. Healthy adult kidneys excrete 50 to 60% of the fluoride ingested each day. Any remaining fluoride accumulates in the body, typically in the bones and pineal gland.
This study by J. Luke in 1997 found that fluoride accumulated in the pineal gland of gerbils and was associated with a significant acceleration of pubertal development in the females. They felt that this was the result of low levels of melatonin, due to the inhibition of fluoride on the four enzymes needed to convert tryptophan into melatonin.
Babies and children excrete less fluoride from their kidneys and absorb up to 80% of ingested fluoride into their bones. The concentration of fluoride in the bones increases over a lifetime.
Dental Fluorosis – a True Risk
The definition of fluorosis is the first outwardly visible sign of an overdose of fluoride in children under 8 years old. In children you can see it in the teeth — in damage to the enamel where the teeth were developing. Because of overuse of fluoride there is no hard enamel and so the teeth will pick up stains from food eaten daily.
With fluorosis there can also be neurological impairment and lower IQ. Four out of ten children or 41% of children in the US show damage to their teeth. In 1998 it it was only 22%.
Dental fluorosis in children may lead to crippling skeletal fluorosis in adulthood. The bones become very brittle and prone to fractures. There has been much written about the association of hip fractures resulting from too much fluoride.
Other Fluoride Related Injuries
Fluoride can negatively affect the thyroid gland by displacing iodine. Ritalin and Proazc are fluoridated drugs to name just two.
European Countries Do Not Fluoridate Their Water
In the United States, 74% of the country fluoridates the water. European countries do not.
What Causes Tooth Decay
- Eating sugar
- Leaving scum on teeth
- Bacteria — Streptocuccus Mutans
Some Studies show that topical fluoride lowers tooth decay. However, fluoride is not particularly lethal to Strep Mutans the bacteria that causes dental cavities.
Effects of fluoride are predominantly post eruptive and topical (CDC 2001). According to Dr. Kennedy, the prevalence of dental caries in a population is not inversely related to the concentration of fluoride in the enamel. A higher concentration of enamel fluoride is not necessarily more efficacious in preventing caries.
How To Avoid Fluoride
- Move to Europe or the countryside and dig a well — well water is low in fluoride.
- Choose organic foods that have lower pesticide exposure.
- In your garden, water the roots not the plant and there will be less uptake of fluoride — there is highest uptake in the leaf.
- Chamomile tea, black tea and green tea uptake fluoride but most fluoride is in instant tea.
- Diets high in animal fats and proteins are protective against fluoride exposure.
- To detoxify fluoride use the following supplements:
- Calcium and Magnesium in a 2:1 ratios; Vitamin C; Selenium (200 – 400 mcg); Iodine — use Lugol’s or Iodoral — it is a nutrient form of 50/50 potassium iodine and iodide. Take it slowly because there can be a detox reaction as it knocks fluoride and bromine out and you will detox.
Fluoride Treatments
The American Dental Association and other health officials still insist that topical fluoride is beneficial to tooth enamel. Fluoride treatments are typically applied at each 6 month dental visit for youngsters.
According to Dr. Kennedy, Topical applications of fluoride will cause a dramatic increase in blood levels of fluoride even if it is not swallowed — it is always absorbed through the mucosa of the mouth.
According to Dr. Kennedy the dose of a fluoride treatment is 100mg/kg. The toxic dose of fluoride is 5mg/Kg. This is a toxic dose for a 40 pound child if ingested. The instructions are to NOT swallow the sweet sticky gel — but it will remain in the mouth and some will be absorbed.
As stated earlier, fluoride impairs brain function and decreases IQ. Too much fluoride causes fluorosis of the tooth enamel. Do you really want this for your child?
Be Your Own Advocate
As I have stated before many times, in any medical or dental situation, you have to be informed and be your own advocate. You have to be confident about your decisions.
I love my dentist (and I am very grateful for dentists in general), but sometimes some of the things he recommends are not on my list as safe, no matter who or what agency endorses them.
In spite of tremendous pressure from my child’s dentist (and assistant) I NEVER allowed my child to take fluoride supplements or have fluoride treatments. (Thankfully we do not have fluoridation here and prescriptions for fluoride were routinely given to babies and children). Now that I know even more about the toxicity of fluoride I am happy I made that decision.
As far as cavities go, as soon as we started a real food diet there have been no more cavities and thankfully the only cavities (3) he had were in baby teeth.
Further reading:
The Case against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics That Keep It There by Paul Connett
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