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Fluoride: The mother of all band-aids
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Nobody gets tooth decay by drinking water, but Coca-Cola recently announced they were “investigating the possibility of including fluoride in some of [their] bottled waters”. A strange announcement given water drinkers are not the ones who need the tender ministrations of industrial medication. Juice and soft drink gulpers are the ones who need help with their teeth, but government and now Big Sugar are carpet bombing the water drinkers rather than laser targeting the sugar drinkers. Researchers have known since the 60s that tooth decay is caused by a little chap called Streptococcus Mutans (SM). It is one of the two to three hundred species of bacteria that inhabit our mouths. SM is a little unusual though. It’s rather like a koala in that it only really likes one thing to eat. No, not gum leaves. SM wants sugar. To be more precise, SM likes the two components of sugar, glucose and fructose in exactly the proportions they are found in sugar, 50/50. In hundreds of well controlled studies, scientists have been able to determine that feeding SM sugar causes it to produce plaque and lactic acid. Plaque is the gummy coating on teeth. If you feed SM pure glucose or fructose it can only produce the acid. It can’t make plaque without sugar and without plaque there is no decay. If you want to rot teeth, the most effective way is to give SM a constant wash of sugar solution (like soft drink or fruit juice). Eating sugar in food still works but it is nowhere near as effective at helping SM do its job. SM has really enjoyed our change in diet in the last few decades. The amount of sugar laden, soft drink, juice and flavoured milk we drink has risen from virtually nothing prior to the Second World War to almost 1 litre per person per day. Consumption of soft drink alone has more than doubled in the last 30 years. And with this our need for dental services has also risen exponentially. Unfortunately fixing decayed teeth is monumentally expensive, so our governments have been reluctant to include those costs in our “free” public health system. The number of decayed teeth in the mouth of the average six-year-old increased by 11.4 percent between 1990 and 1999. And Australia now spends one in every 10 health dollars on those white (well, yellowish) things in our mouths. The health cost is accelerating almost as fast as the sales of soft drink. Our Governments, desperate to avoid the popular demand for them to pay the bill for a disease that affects everyone (that consumes sugar), have increasingly turned to the quick-fix solution of mass medication using fluoride. And there is no denying that mass fluoride medication has an economic appeal. Victoria estimates that it has saved more than $1 billion in public dental services in the three decades since it started pumping fluoride into its water supplies. Big Sugar doesn’t mind some free marketing, so has clearly jumped on board with the message. The chemical used most commonly for water fluoridation is fluorosilicic acid. It is produced as a co-product from the manufacture of phosphate fertilizers. Because some people have concerns that putting such a thing in our water supply might not be a good thing, the World Health Organisation (WHO) conducted a thorough review of the health effects of fluoride in 2002. The WHO report concluded that there was at least a 12.5 percent reduction in the number of dental cavities in communities where water fluoridation had been introduced. These numbers are supported out by a recent Australian study which show that the average six-year-old will have one less decayed tooth (which still leaves two) if there is fluoride in the water. The problem is that 90 percent of swallowed fluoride is retained by the body. Fluoride accumulates in the bone (and tooth) internal structure and ultimately causes a disease called fluorosis. The WHO report noted that the risk of dental and skeletal fluorosis was significantly increased in areas where the water was heavily fluoridated. Over time, the accumulation of fluoride may result in increased brittleness leading to crumbling teeth and more easily broken bones. And WHO aren’t the only ones raising red flags. The risks associated with swallowing too much fluoride are so real that earlier this year the American Dental Association put out a warning to mothers not to mix infant feeding formula with fluoridated water. Not even the most wildly supportive research suggests that fluoridating water cures tooth decay. It merely defers the problem and the expense of treatment. The price for treating less decayed teeth now, is that someone in the future can deal with elderly people suffering continuous fractures. You don’t have to look too hard to see why. Fluoridation lets Government and Big Sugar alike look like they are doing something tangible about dental health without actually doing anything which challenges the status quo. At the same time politicians can justify the closure of public dentistry facilities (such as school clinics) because they have “solved” the problem. And they can defer discussion about who should pay for dental health until somebody else’s watch. Best of all, the “treatment” is administered without asking any voter to change their lifestyle. Strangely, neither government nor Big Sugar appears to be contemplating the possibility of removing or changing the sugary drinks that cause the problem in the first place. If mass medication is the way we solve society’s lifestyle influenced health problems, then why stop at fluoride? Bowel cancer is growing at unprecedented rates, so let’s back the Metamucil trucks up to the reservoirs and the bottling plants. Too many of us still smoke, so how about dumping a load of whatever they put in nicotine patches into the water as well. Maybe if we tip in a few hundred gallons of anti-depressant, we could even do something about our falling consumer confidence (there’s an idea, Kevin). The possibilities are endless. |
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9 Comments
Why are we still being fed these lies about fluoride (the industrial waste) occurring naturally? It is a poison and I DON’T WANT IT IN MY WATER !!!!!!!!!! This is a criminal act to dump it in the public water supply. Now they want to put it in bottled water too! It is in practically every toothpaste. How much are we suppose to need? Oh yes of course enough to slowly make us sick , jelly the brain, make us docile. The Fluoride Deception book by Christopher Bryson is a must read.
prozac is an ssri it works by stopping the brain from absorbing sertatonin too quickly. it is not a sedative. if the Germans used something in the water it would have been Bromide.
sugar man is writing about fluoride what next Kevin rudd’s cat on nature conservation?
Worth remembering: Typical softdrink is 10% sugar by weight. That is, one litre of softdrink contains about 100 grams of sugar. 365 litres would be 36.5 kg. Fruit juice is basically the same.
“The amount of sugar laden, soft drink, juice and flavoured milk we drink has risen from virtually nothing prior to the Second World War to almost 1 litre per person per day.”
In my little family (two adults & one child) we get through maybe 7 or 8 litres a year between us. My thanks to whomever is drinking more than a thousand extra litres annually to make up our contribution to the average.
Modern science shows that fluoridation is ineffective and harmful to health. http://www.FluorideAction.Net/health
The National Kidney Foundation withdrew their fluoridation endorsement and replaced it with a warning that all chronic kidney disease patients should be notified of the potential risk of fluoride exposure.
The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment now opposes fluoridation because modern science does not support it
Researchers report in the Oct 6 2007 British Medical Journal that fluoridation was never proven safe or effective and may be unethical.
Researchers reported n the scientific journal “Biological Trace Element Research” published in 2008 that a review of studies found a consistent and strong association between the exposure to fluoride and low IQ
Dr. A. K. Susheela an international expert on fluoride and fluorosis tells us in this video clip that US physicians are not trained to discern early signs of fluoride poisoning. http://tinyurl.com/Susheela
Dr. Arvid Carlsson,winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Medicine, says that fluoridation is obsolete and should be abandoned
Now over 2,000 professionals urge the US Congress to stop water fluoridation until Congressional hearings are conducted, citing scientific evidence that fluoridation, long promoted to fight tooth decay, is ineffective and has serious health risks.
See statement: http://www.fluorideaction.org/statement.august.2007.html
Cavity crises in fluoridated areas: http://www.FluorideNews.blogspot.com
Fluoride is neither a nutrient nor essential for healthy teeth. It’s a drug that should never be dispensed based on thirst and not need.
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“Too many of us still smoke, so how about dumping a load of whatever they put in nicotine patches into the water as well.”
That would be…nicotine. And would hardly help the problem.
You miss the point the WHO made in the 2002 report which was that on balance fluoridation of water is a good idea but, like all interventions, not without some side effects. However, your article is somewhat misleading about the side effects. Fluourois (dental or skeletal) refers to a condition that can occur with fluoride overdose, not at the relatively low levels that we are exposed to via drinking water. Overall skeletal fluorosis is an almost insignificant issue in the industrialised world, with only a handful of cases reported. Where it is a problem is in countries where significant numbers of people are exposed to fluoride overdose during industrial processes. There is no evidence to suggest that skeletal fluorosis is increasing in incidence and if you would like to find reasons for fractures occurring in older people vitamin D and calcium deficiency are both more common and more important.
Dental fluorosis is a little more common and is related to fluoride overdose in developing teeth. This is the reason the ADA have suggested not using fluoridated water for baby formula.
However, reducing the amount of highly sugared foods and especially soft drinks is a very, very good idea and that’s perhaps the most important point.
Prozac is 96% Fluoride. It sedates people.
It’s a matter of public record that the Nazis put IG Farben fluoride in the concentration camps water supplies. Naturally, we know the Nazis were concerned of the dental health of their prisoners - don’t we.
Wake up people. We’re being mass sedated. We’re being dumbed down by Dancing with the Stars, Australian Idol and a virulent poison in our water which many European communities are removing from their public water supplies.
Are Australians aware fluoride is an issue of national security? Come on what’s going on? The government needs to come clean. Our scientists need to inform the public. We need to protect our children and our elderly who are victims of this poison in our water. Get it out of the water supply now.
I am opposed to the introduction of Fluoride into water supplies. Because it removes an individuals freedom to choose. For over a decade our neighbouring council supplied fluoridated water into our area. Breaching the Fluoridation of Public Waters Act , which in part requires a water supply authority to inform consumers if Fluoride is in drinking water on more that 186 days in any 365 day period. The law is ignored while at the same time elected representatives choose to remain ignorant. Have you forgotten the Harvard Professor endowed by Colgate Palmolive. The corporate citizen is not going to finance any opinions or research for that matter which is detrimental to their revenue stream, this includes our governments.
Edward James writes thank you to David Gillespie
I agree with the drift of the article and it is refreshing to see a critical comment on fluoridation.
Fluoridating water is a travesty. It breaches a fundamental human right of access to clean water. We hate it and hence have paid a fortune for a reverse osmosis system to remove the poison from our drinking water. There is much material around to suggest that fluoride can have adverse long-term health consequences, but there is a conspiracy amongst the media not to publicise these, lest the vested interests are upset.