> The 324-page report did not reach a conclusion about the risks of lower levels of fluoride, saying more study is needed. It also did not answer what high levels of fluoride might do to adults.
It also does not address the effects to children (and/or adults) when exposed to additional neurotoxins.
What's often not mentioned in the context of Fluoride's "success" is how improved diets have contributed to oral health.
I think the assumption that diets have materially improved needs to be clarified and challenged. I very much doubt that in the West, our diets have 'improved' since (say) the 50s/60s. The increase in sugars in just about everything, the increase in consumption of highly processed foods and acidic drinks - none of this is good for oral health.
You underestimate food insecurity in the 50s, especially at the lower end of the economic scale. Heck, it's still an issue today. Worse in the sense, that diets are under nourished *and* packed with sugar. Let's not forget meth.
Also dramatic changes in the availability and cost of fresh produce.
Depending on time, geography, and species, it might be a choice between canned and nothing at all. Getting an orange for Christmas was a rare treat, not simply a healthier filler to displace candy.
OP isn’t arguing about volume. Of course there’s more food today, and it probably is thanks to cheap processed foods that we can have so much of it. But in solving scarcity we invented new problems.
> Heck, it's still an issue today. Worse in the sense, that diets are under nourished and packed with sugar.
The passive voice is always an accomplice in deception, have you noticed? "Diets" are not under-nourished. People choose to purchase unhealthy food. Progressives insist that food stamps should pay for sugar water, candy, chips, etc. Meanwhile in the real world, 10 pounds of rice costs less than a bag of Doritos. Four pounds of lentils costs less than a 12 pack of soda.
If progressives were interested in good outcomes for the poor, they could radically improve the lives of the poor overnight by enforcing healthy standards of food stamps spending. But outcomes aren't the point--the point is to buy votes--so don't expect it to change any time soon.
Yeah, sort of. I’m immediately reminded of reports of health problems of people in countries that traditionally grow quinoa. The global demand for this amazingly nutritious food has priced it so high that many of the poorer in the regions that grow it have switched to cheaper, less nutritious foods.
I am also reminded that if I want to buy “peasant food”, I have to pay a huge premium over much cheaper, crappier, less nutritious processed food. That is to say, foods that were commonly cheap and readily available many centuries ago, are no longer cheap.
I find it slightly disengenuous to simply say that people choose to purchase unhealthy food without acknowledging that individuals are presented choices that are often suboptimal. I cannot reasonably buy bread without added sugar. That is not a choice I have made, that is the landcape I live in. I choose to buy less bread as a result. But I alone cannot change the economic landscape, even though you are absolutely correct that there are food which are cheaper and more nutritious than alternatives.
I would also be really cautious about “enforcing healthy standards”. I don’t know how old you are, but I’m old enough to have seen some pretty shitty “healthy standards” pushed en mass, and then codified through major lobbying by interested parties.
They were almost certainly referring from a Western perspective. People in the West were not regularly dying from pellagra in the mid-20th century. In the US, the disease had become almost non-existent by the 1950s.
You can’t overturn that argument with a one dimensional quip about fortified foods not existing. Imagine a diet with less sugar, more whole foods _and_ fortification?
There's plenty of studies that compare locales with fluoride in the water to those that don't, eliminating time-based correlations like improving diet. There are other things to criticize in the data though (most of the data shows results with children, and not a lot that accounts for fluoride toothpaste).
Tangentially: I own property in Wonder Valley by 29 Palms, where the municipal water district received a fluoride levels variance and federal assistance in building a water treatment facility to remove excess naturally occurring fluoride from the groundwater.
I dunno what's worse, the excess fluoride or hexavalent chromium...
I grew up on spring water from a (small?) cavern system in my backyard. People can say what they want about fluoride, but I truly believe it makes quite the difference in dental health based on my experiences.
It's largely not controversial that it is beneficial to dental health in low concentrations. The issues arise when the concentrations are higher, due to fluoride's neurotoxic potential and it's potential to compete with iodine.
Isn't that like saying steel armor doesn't improve ship battle resilience, it just replaces wood? There are multiple aspects of oral health that it might not help, but it can e.g. help prevent cavities and infections from them.
It replaces hydroxide ions between phosphates in the calcium hydroxyapatite
crystal structure of the enamel. This reduces the loss of calcium due to the mild solubility of the mineral and neutralization reaction of the hydroxide with acids.
West Virginia isn't too bad incest wise. About the same as California honestly. However they are in fact dirt poor. Poverty is the main indicator of "Low IQ." Along with race of course. IQ is kind of a shit measurement.
Some of the most affluent parts of the country still rely on well water. Look at horse country 45min outside of Philadelphia, they seem to have pretty good teeth.
There is a lot of anti fluoride hysteria that wants to eliminate water fluoridation, which has eliminated a cash cow for dentists = frequent cavities = fillings. The rise in fluoride made dental incomes decline as dental health improved. (sugar in soda drinks kept them alive). This paper notes that cleaning teeth and applying a topical solution and holding for 5-10 minutes and then washing is best. High fluoride toothpaste is also better than adding to water. The water method is automatic, while tooth painting = dental visit costs.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK587342/
There are areas with high natural fluoride, that can stain teeth, but there is no apparent reduction in IQ in those areas. Most free fluoride is grabbed by teeth from the blood and is laid down as hydroxy fluoro apatite where it makes the tooth structure more competent as a solid by minutely filling the matrix so it has fewer flaws that bacterial acids can use to open gaps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorapatite
I have never seen any study showing that the fluoride from the blood can have any influence on the teeth.
The enamel of the teeth does not have blood vessels, so it cannot "grab fluoride" from blood. As far as it is known, the biomineralized calcium phosphate is always hydroxyapatite. When the hydroxyapatite of the enamel of the teeth is in contact with a solution containing fluoride ions, there is a passive ion exchange process (i.e. not mediated by biological enzymes) which results in partial replacement of the more soluble hydroxyapatite with the less soluble fluorapatite.
There is no doubt that using a tooth paste with fluoride or washing the mouth with a fluoride solution can prevent caries.
However there has never been any evidence whatsoever that drinking fluoride has any beneficial effect, beyond that of the teeth being washed by the fluoride solution before ingesting it. On the contrary, it is well known that too much fluoride in the drinking water interferes with bone growth, as it happens in some countries where the drinking water is naturally rich in fluoride.
If dentists are so interested in challenging the water fluoridation narrative so that they can do more fillings - why do they offer that tooth painting?
Probably because cavities aren't a cash cow for dentists. More expensive crown and veneer procedures, and other elective procedures, are the cash cows.
We have wisdom teeth as a natural backup for losing a few; other animals have similar strategies, though details vary.
What is different is that we cook — evolution still hasn't fully caught up with that, though it does seem to have resulted in our mouths being too small for all the teeth.
