Fluoride is a topic I discuss at length in Go Low Tox with the wonderful Holistic dentist and wellness educator Dr Ron Ehrlich and BMed Science, Naturopath, Clinical nutritionist and lecturer Tabitha McIntosh. Activist Erin Brockevich in the USA does a lot of work to raise awareness on fluoride in the water too. You can check a post out she wrote just today on the subject HERE.
It just seems rather crazy to put a known neurotoxin into the drinking water – especially when the ‘dose’ can’t be regulated by size of human being. What about little bubs on formula for example? I have a big question mark around this in particular for new parents who can’t breast feed and many more that I’m looking forward to exploring detailed answers for. That is why I’m thrilled to share an upcoming Sydney seminar that Ron has put together debating Fluoride – the history, the for and the against. The event is being recorded so stay tuned about potentially accessing it wherever you are.
Nearly 5 years ago I had $3,500 worth of dental work for cavities – 9 cavities, 4 nearly down to the root. I’d used Colgate all my life, eaten pretty ‘healthily’ (low fat, high grain) with the 2 years prior moving towards wholefoods and my dentist was shocked but couldn’t offer real reasons other than lemon juice in the water too often. It had to be more than that, surely. It was the last time I went to that dentist and discovered Ron a year later for the next check up. In between, being keen to stop that experience from being repeated, I’d found and read Cure Tooth Decay, and literally began strengthening my teeth from the inside out through diet and a twice daily low tox dental regime. I haven’t had a cavity since and my teeth feel really ‘strong’ where they used to often ache and wobble.
Here I will hand over to Dr Ron Ehrlich to share his concerns about Fluoride in the water and reason for his decision to put on the upcoming day.
Take it away Ron…
The human body needs some basic elements to support life. These include carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. A few dozen other elements and a vast number of compounds are essential to our daily functioning—fluoride is not one of them. Fluoride is not required for any of the thousands of processes that are continuously regulated in our bodies to keep us balanced and healthy.
Some substances are used in water treatment to make it safe to drink, e.g. chlorine. Fluoride is the only substance added to our water supply to treat people. It is therefore being used as a medicine. Fluoride is the only medicine being prescribed without patient monitoring; and it is the only medicine being prescribed for all people, regardless of age, health or nutritional status.
Fluoride is also the only medicine being administered without any control over the dose. A glass of tap water makes no distinction between an 80 year-old woman weighing 50 kg and a 30 year-old man weighing 100 kg. And what of an outdoor worker who, in sweltering conditions, consumes in excess of 10 litres of water per day?
To grasp the foolishness of fluoridation’s “any-dose-fits-all” assumption, we may look to the best nutrition we know of—baby’s first meal. Fluoride is down-regulated in a nursing mother’s body to eliminate all but a miniscule amount from being passed to her baby. We would be arrogant in the extreme to think we could improve upon breast milk. Yet that is what fluoridation tries to do. By comparison, a formula-fed infant receives about 250 times as much fluoride as a breast-fed baby when the formula is reconstituted with fluoridated tap water.
This is a serious concern, given fluoride’s known neurotoxicity. Multiple studies have demonstrated neurological damage, impaired learning and memory, and permanent behavioural changes in animals exposed to moderate doses of fluoride. The impact of infant exposure to fluoride may be further appreciated by considering that:
A young infant’s blood-brain barrier is not properly formed, and the infant is therefore particularly vulnerable to toxic exposure. Infants consume proportionally more fluids than adults, relative to body size. Infants absorb and uptake a higher proportion of ingested fluoride than adults
To date, 49 studies have investigated a possible link between fluoride exposure and IQ. 42 of those 49 studies found elevated fluoride exposure is associated with reduced IQ. In 2012, a team of Harvard scientists reviewed 27 of those studies and found an IQ drop of 7 points between the ‘high’ and ‘low’ fluoride groups of each study on average. The authors of the Harvard review concluded that this should be made a high research priority, and in 2014 one of those lead authors, Philippe Grandjean, classified fluoride as a developmental neurotoxicant.
Most countries around the world have chosen not to fluoridate their water supplies, and many countries that did introduce the practice realised the mistake and stopped it, citing questions over fluoridation’s safety and effectiveness. According to World Health Organisation (WHO) data, over the last 40–50 years non-fluoridated countries have shown the same decline in rates of tooth decay as fluoridated countries.
Imposing any medication on whole populations is ethically questionable. In water fluoridation, we have a medicine prescribed for all people which is unregulated by any health agency, unmonitored for patient side-effects, untested for safety and unproven for effectiveness.
I believe the situation needs the public’s attention, and many others share that conviction. For this purpose I, together with my co-organiser Simon De Pomeroy, a concerned High School teacher, have organised a first-class public seminar: Water Fluoridation – exploring the science. We have invited the Australian Dental Association and Sydney University Dental Faculty to argue the case “for”, along with 5 PhD scientists in chemistry and toxicology, and medical and dental practitioners to argue the case “against”. This unique event will explore the science behind water fluoridation and equip you with the knowledge to make your own informed decision on the issue.
Thanks Ron. Super well said.
Happy people. Happy planet.
