Do adults need more fluoride?

Question

We as adults drink a lot of bottled water. There is no fluoride in bottled water. Why doesn't insurance cover fluoride treatments and why must I buy a fluoride rinse to get the necessary fluoride for healthy teeth? Has anyone else experience this or thought of this?

Answer 1

Here's the deal with fluoride.

Fluoridated water has been proven one of the most sucessful public health policies implemented in many countries. It has helped to significantly help reduce the number of instances of caries(teeth decay) in the population.

HOW? Our teeth is made of enamel(outermost layer) & dentine (inner layer, just surrounding the pulp). Both enamel and dentine are basically structures with crystallised hydroxyapatite. A small amount of fluoride helps to change the structure slightly to form fluorohydroxyapatite which is much stronger than original hydroxyapatite crystals. When bacteria in our mouth (living in the plaque) digest the food remants, they secrete acids as a by product that dissolve away the hydroxyapatite crystals and start to form small cavities (demineralisation). If we have a source of fluoride e.g. floating in our salivan & oral fluids, the demineralisation of our enamel may be reversed because fluorohydroxyapatite remineralises the enamel. This remineralisation helps to prevent new cavities to form. Unless the persons' own diet & habits are so bad, that demineralisation occurs too quickly.

But it's true high doses of fluoride may cause fluorosis & fluoride poisoning. I personally think that fluoridated toothpastes/mouthwashes 2x a day is sufficient enough. We need these small amounts of fluoride for our entire lifetime, for the remineralisation process to occur. Along with good oral hygiene!

Answer 2

Aren't there people who want to ban floride? I thought I heard that floride can really mess your sh*it up? Ill be back, I have to google it...

When fluoride levels are too high, it causes bone-forming cells to produce more skeletal tissue, which increases bone density but also bone brittleness. The condition leads to a disease called skeletal fluorosis and may result in bone pain, stiffening of ligaments, bone spurs, fused vertebrae, and difficulty in moving joints.

"When fluoride gets into your bones, it stays there for years, and there is no established treatment for skeletal fluorosis," says researcher Michael Whyte, MD, professor of medicine, pediatrics, and genetics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, in a news release. "No one knows if you can fully recover from it."

What?
Well, in case you didn't know it, fluoride is highly toxic. In fact, before fluoride was deemed a "cavity fighter," it was used as insecticide and rat poison. It's true. Even more surprising is that when it comes to dental hygiene, fluoride actually does more harm than good.

Everything you always DIDN'T want to know about fluoride

For decades the message that fluoride safely prevents tooth decay has been considered sacrosanct. This idea came from the same "chemicals for better living" era that also told us that smoking cigarettes soothed the throat.

Now for a brief history lesson: please switch off the lights and turn on the projector...

Fluoride is a pollutant - a by-product of copper, iron and aluminum manufacturing. The problem of how to legally dispose of fluoride was solved in the 1930's when a study (funded by one of the country's largest aluminum companies) concluded that fluoride prevented tooth decay. A successful public relations effort, helped along with some cooperative government cronies, resulted in the good news going out: this miracle chemical, when added to water supplies, will give everyone healthy teeth and brighter smiles.

Got fluoride?
But does fluoride actually prevent tooth decay? Not according to the largest study ever conducted on fluoridation and oral health. 39,000 school children in 84 areas around the U.S. were studied in the mid-80's, and the results showed no statistical difference in tooth decay rates between fluoridated and non-fluoridated cities.

Meanwhile, tooth decay trends tracked by the World Health Organization from 1970 to the present show that the incidence of decayed, missing or filled teeth has been steadily in decline with each passing year in the U.S., France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Austria, Belgium, Portugal, Iceland and Greece. And why are the numbers of decayed teeth on the decline? Better oral hygiene and improved dental practice is the most obvious answer. It's certainly not the fluoride. Because of all of those countries, only one adds fluoride to the public water supply: the United States.

A few of the countries listed above used to put fluoride in some of their water, but they eventually wised up to the dangers of this aluminum by-product. And here's some truly radical thinking for you: many of those countries simply refuse to run fluoride through every citizen's faucets based on the idea that health treatments should be a personal choice and not mandated by the government. What a concept!

Downside takes a down turn
So how is fluoride bad for you? To start with, the irony is that when you consume too much fluoride, your teeth can become discolored and crumble. But that's nothing compared to the other ways that fluoride attacks your mind and body.

In tests on laboratory animals, fluoride has been shown to enhance the brain's absorption of aluminum - the substance that's found in the brains of most Alzheimer's patients. Three different osteoporosis studies have associated hip fractures with fluoridation. And excessive fluoride has been shown to damage the musculoskeletal and nervous systems, leading to limited joint mobility, ligament calcification, muscular degeneration and neurological deficits.

And finally (I saved the worst till last), a number of different studies have linked fluoride to as many as 10,000 cancer deaths per year, with a high incidence of bone cancer among men exposed to fluoridated water.

In the meantime, local, state and federal government agencies across the U.S. do their best to simply dismiss all this bad news. Unlike their European counterparts, they're sticking to their outdated and baseless claims that the stuff is good for you. Why? If I had to guess, I'd say it's because they're terrified that if they admit that fluoride is poison, the deluge of resulting civil law suits just might wash them away.

Answer 3

Stay away from fluoride. It's a cover up.

Answer 4

flouride is a chemical byproduct of the aluminium creation process, it is a polutant and it is very VERY bad for you. There is ZERO proof that it is good for teeth. Many studies have shown that people in non flouridated areas have better teeth than those in flouridated areas.

Flouride is a toxin and does massive damage.

Answer 5

Use flouride mouthwashif your worried.Trust me,your'e probably getting enough of it in your tap water(ice,cooking,the shower..)and you just don't realize it....