image by: judge_mental

HWN Suggests

The Fluoride in Water Story: Part 1

Although fluoride is a naturally occurring, abundant mineral and the ionic form of fluorine, fluoride compounds are mainly ‘produced’ on a large scale by some industrial processes — they are, in fact, by-products of industrial waste...

It might sound unlikely, bizarre even, that the government would endorse the addition of chemical by-products to drinking water. But this type of fluoride — a by-product from the production of phosphate fertilizers — remains the prevalent source.

read full article

Featured

 The Fluoride Story: Part 2

The first thing to note is that these are two different types of fluoride. What’s added to your toothpaste and used in dental treatments is a medical grade version of fluoride which is different than the chemical by-product of industrial waste used in water fluoridation.

Articles of Interest

A Clinician's Guide To Fluoride

Fluorine is a naturally occurring element that does not often exist on its own in nature due to its high reactivity. Instead, fluorine is often bonded to other elements to make it into a fluoride compound. It is these fluoride compounds that we colloquially know as “fluoride”.

Fluoride and Your Patients – How to Start the Conversation

How fluent are you in fluoride? Learn how to talk about the benefits of fluoride with patients and staff – to ensure patient acceptance and healthier smiles.

Fluoride as a Micronutrient

Fluoride is an element that is naturally-occurring and was once considered a micronutrient for the body. However, with new facts coming to light, it has been found that fluoride may actually do more harm than good in the body.

Fluoride: Its Metabolism, Toxicity, and Role in Dental Health

Longitudinal studies by Levy et al12 have identified the following as major sources of fluoride intake: milk derivatives, water, fish and seafood, chicken, and toothpaste and other oral products containing fluoride. However, their results demonstrated that intake levels at early ages present wide ranges due to variations in consumption and the diversity of products available

Fluoride: Worse than We Thought

Fluoride is any combination of elements containing the fluoride ion. In its elemental form, fluorine is a pale yellow, highly toxic and corrosive gas. In nature, fluorine is found combined with minerals as fluorides. It is the most chemically active nonmetallic element of all the elements and also has the most reactive electro-negative ion. Because of this extreme reactivity, fluorine is never found in nature as an uncombined element.

Food & Nutrition

A 2015 Cochrane review questioned the impact of fluoride on cavities in adults, yet two government reviews concluded water fluoridation is effective in decreasing the prevalence and severity of cavities among adults and children. The CDC estimates fluoridated water reduces tooth decay by 25 percent among children and adults.

Fun With Fluoride

After 25 years of research, Frederick S. McKay of Colorado Springs, Colo., concludes that teeth marked by "Colorado Brown Stain" or similar mottling (e.g., "Texas Teeth") show "a singular absence of decay" and that both the staining and the decay resistance are caused by something in the local drinking water. In 1931, the substance is confirmed as fluoride; excessive levels in some regional water sources produce the staining known as "fluorosis."

JakeFood.com

At the beginning of the 20th century, the young dentist Frederick McKay opened his first dental practice in Colorado Springs. He discovered that many locals had terrible brown stains on their teeth. The cause of the stains remained unknown for another 30 years until McKay and his colleagues found out that fluoride had a role to play in tooth decay. Lucky for you, it will take you only five minutes to find out everything you need to know about fluoride.

The Nutrition Source

Fluoride is not considered an essential nutrient but plays an important role in dental and possibly bone health. A deficiency of fluoride can lead to dental caries and potentially bone problems.

What Do We Know About Fluoride?

The government has been drugging us for years. Since the 1940s, municipalities across the United States have been voluntarily adding fluoride to their water supplies. Fluoride, as we all learned in elementary school, protects teeth against cavities. You'll find it in toothpaste and in vitamin supplements. Children regularly get fluoride treatments at the dentist. We bathe in it, we eat it, and we drink it, knowingly or not, all of the time. This has been going on for nearly 70 years. Yet recently, it has become a source of contention for several communities across the country.

Resources

Fluoride News Tracker

Tooth decay: a sad national epidemic caused by lack of dentists who care and not a fluoride need. Extensive lobbying, political maneuvering and expensive public relations campaigns by organized dentistry sway legislators to add fluoride chemicals into public water supplies, 2/3 of which already are, to benefit those whom dentists neglect. Protecting their high-salaried monopoly, dentists lobby against dental groups offering quality, cheaper fixes. Fluoride product makers benefit most.

FluorideAlert.org

Broadening public awareness about fluoride.

NoFluoride.com

Citizens for Safe Drinking Water.

Linus Pauling Institute

Fluoride is the ionic form of the naturally occurring fluorine element. The anion increases the structural stability of teeth and bones through interactions with calcium phosphates

NIH

Fluoride, a mineral, is naturally present in many foods and available as a dietary supplement. Fluoride is the ionic form of the element fluorine, and it inhibits or reverses the initiation and progression of dental caries (tooth decay) and stimulates new bone formation [1]. Soil, water, plants, and foods contain trace amounts of fluoride. Most of the fluoride that people consume comes from fluoridated water, foods and beverages prepared with fluoridated water, and toothpaste and other dental products containing fluoride