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But you will brush your teeth anyway, and then you apply fluoride topically. It works. Here in Sweden we decided against fluoride for this reason and the fact
by impossiblefork 2y ago
But you will brush your teeth anyway, and then you apply fluoride topically. It works.
Here in Sweden we decided against fluoride for this reason and the fact that it is in fact toxic. It isn't sensible to use systemic exposure when we can use topical exposure and can improve mouth health by education, so that people do what they're supposed to.
The fluoride approach achieves a basic level of health, but you can do so much better.
- zouhair 2y agoJust an FYI, water is also toxic.
- belter 2y agoIndeed: "Water Intoxication" - https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/water-intoxication https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/water-intoxic...
- abrookewood 2y agoThere was an infamous death in Australia when a young girl drank too much water after taking MDMA. It's blamed on the drug, but the thing that actually killed her was water intoxication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Wood_(born_1980) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Wood_(born_1980)
- mongol 2y agoIt happened to a Swedish girl too. Not sure if it was after taking MDMA but it was after drug use.
- abrookewood 2y agoYes, I was going to mention this. Had a friend who went down the coast for a day trip with a bunch of mates. On the way back on the train (1.5 hour ride) they had a competition to see who could drink the most water and most of them had several litres, a few of them managed a bit more. My mate also had a bunch of chips/snacks, but not everyone did. Later that night, he got a desperate phone from his friends mum, screaming at him "What did you take! What drugs did you take!!!", he replied that they hadn't taken anything, but wasn't really believed. His friend was rushed to hospital with severe seizures and convulsions. The doctors eventually put him on a saline drip and he recovered. Basically his friend lowered the salt content in his body so much that his body could not pass electrical signals. My friend was fine because he had consumed a bit of salt in his snacks. Kinda crazy.
- prox 2y agoIs this why after a day on the beach you want both drinks and salty snacks?
- iamacyborg 2y agoIt’s why electrolyte drinks are a thing for sports.
- baobabKoodaa 2y agoYou know what has electrolytes?
- scarface_74 2y agoThree DJs and 7 other employees got fired for running a contest where whoever could hold their pee for the longest after drinking too much water would win a prize and someone died. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna16660273 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna16660273
- bell-cot 2y ago> But you will brush your teeth anyway, and then you apply fluoride topically. It works. Relatively few of the poor have the disposable income, time, education, and long-term worldview needed to reliably do that. EDIT: This comment is about America's poor. Though the same applies in much of the world.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- NomDePlum 2y agoI agree with this in an American context. In Sweden, it will be much less true. This difference can also however be attributed to government "interference" with higher taxation supporting better social care for those at the poorer end of the scale. Freedom comes at a cost, the US and Sweden are paying that cost in different ways.
- impossiblefork 2y agoYour GDP per capita is 50% higher than ours. You have money for this. If there's no will to raise up the poor, you it should be straightforward to use the state directly to ensure that everyone is taught how to brush their teeth and ensured to have access to brushes and toothpaste.
- fireflash38 2y agoWelcome to the USA, where using the stare to help with dental care would be communism, or socialism, or big government, or violations of freedoms.
- stavros 2y agoI agree with you, but GDP per capita isn't the correct measure here when the bottom 8% in the US has no health insurance compared to Sweden's 0%, which I have to assume because I didn't even find this measured anywhere due to universal healthcare.
- 2y ago
- PartiallyTyped 2y ago> Here in Sweden we decided against fluoride for this reason and the fact that it is in fact toxic. How? Please don't express that it damages development. That's trivially refutable by statistics. We can compare Canada's and UK's IQs for example, or some other proxy to the G factor, said countries were chosen for their similar cultural demographics, we find then that the metrics are mostly identical, while the difference in consumption of fluoride is staggering.
- impossiblefork 2y agohttps://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP14534 https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP14534 is one study. We did earlier studies in the 50s when we made the decision to only use fluoride orally.
- cyanydeez 2y agodoesn't discuss any confounding variables that may also correlate with the use/disuse of flouride.
- PartiallyTyped 2y agoSo anyone willing to tell me how this constitutes a low quality comment that warrants this reception?
- imacomputertoo 2y agoFluoride is not "in fact toxic". A substance becomes toxic in high amounts. Vitamin D becomes toxic in high amounts. The level of fluoride in drinking water is well below the toxic level.
- logicchains 2y agoFluoride exposure beyond a small amount has a statistically significant effect on childhood IQ: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2828425?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
- bolognafairy 2y ago[flagged]
- logicchains 2y agoI can't believe so many people would downvote a peer-reviewed paper just because it doesn't sit well with their politics, it really shows how cult-like science discourse in the US has become.
- impossiblefork 2y agoI really don't agree with that Paracelsian view. Some substances are Paracelsian, other are like lead, and I'd place fluorides in-between these two, a neither fully Paracelsian or non-Paracelsian poison.
- roywashere 2y agoSomewhat related, as a teen in the 90s I worked at McDonald’s in The Netherlands. Because of the diet in the US, the bread used for hamburgers contained extra calcium to be more ‘healthy’, because many people did not get enough calcium intake. In The Netherlands, where people drink much more dairy products, especially back in the 90s, people would get plenty of calcium so there was no need to put extra in the bread. But because a hamburger should be a hamburger no matter where you buy it worldwide, the Dutch McDonald’s hamburger bread still had the added calcium
- theGnuMe 2y agoYou have to drink 32 ounces of milk per day to get enough daily calcium.
- meetingthrower 2y agoThey drink A LOT of milk! I went to a business meeting in the Netherlands and the cafeteria had buttermilk machine on tap like an elementary school in the US. They set the meeting table with pitchers of milk and buttermilk. And breakfast / lunch always has cheese.
- jjice 2y agoI was surprised when I realized that milk didn’t have that much calcium by volume, relative to how it was promoted to me as a kid. I found that almond milk had a good bit more by volume and the US dairy industry probably just had some good marketing in the 2000s with the Got Milk campaign.
- ryao 2y agoToo much calcium is a bad thing. I had enormous amounts of milk as a child, a multivitamin containing calcium and a calcium supplement. I probably had 2 to 3 people’s recommended daily amount of calcium per day. Now as an adult, the calcium is in my muscles and it occasionally causes me to feel like my arm has been dislocated from my socket for days whenever there is a flare up. Moving my arm during a flare up makes it worse. It occurs in my dominant arm and the pain is so bad that during flare ups, I sometimes contemplate amputation. There is no cure for this condition. The “get enough calcium” stuff really backfired in my case since I clearly overdosed on calcium because of it. On the bright side, I have excellent bone health.
- graemep 2y agoIn the UK at least some areas have fluoridated water, despite almost all toothpaste being fluoridated. I suppose it most benefits the minority of people who do not brush their teeth. That benefit has to be balanced[1] against some evidence of risk. IMO the right fix is better dental hygiene, and a better (less sugary) diet. These are in turn are in part symptomatic of other problems (poverty, long working hours with regards to lack of supervision of children). [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/water-fluoridation-statement-from-the-uk-chief-medical-officers/statement-on-water-fluoridation-from-the-uk-chief-medical-officers https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/water-fluoridatio...
- pbhjpbhj 2y agoGood link. There a really unfortunate use of "significant" in that document. The scientific meaning and the general meaning will cause very different interpretations from laymen.
- hilbert42 2y ago"Here in Sweden we decided against fluoride for this reason and the fact that it is in fact toxic." All water collected from natural sources contains some level of fluoride and other salts (which varies greatly from place to place). Does then your local water authority remove these naturally-acquired chemicals?
- impossiblefork 2y agoGenerally not, but we choose where we take our from water from. If there's too much fluoride in the rock water we take soil or surface water instead, for example. If there's too much fluoride in the water we do not supply it to people's taps, but this is for values like 4 mg/L. So we mostly don't take any measures. In Stockholm it's apparently less than 0.2 mg/L though.
- hilbert42 2y agoIs 0.2 mg/L the upper limit in Stockholm?
- pbhjpbhj 2y agoWater is also toxic.
- sieabahlpark 2y ago[dead]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]