Is Fluoride a Mind Control Conspiracy? A dentist explains how to strengthen your teeth, even while losing your autonomy to the government and Bill Gates
The Future is Bright.
Disclaimer: The information presented in this article is for educational purposes only and is NOT intended or implied as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from your dentist, physician, or any other healthcare professional. You should NOT use the information presented here for diagnosing or treating any health problem or disease. Never disregard advice from your personal medical care provider(s) or delay contacting your dentist/other healthcare providers because of anything you read or heard here. Reading this article and/or utilizing any of the information presented in any way does NOT create a doctor-patient relationship between you and the article creator or with any of the healthcare professionals in any way affiliated with this article. You use this information at your own risk. You should contact your dentist/healthcare professionals before beginning any new treatment or practice to address a health problem or improve your health. The author is not responsible for information on external websites linked to from this article or for the information on external websites that link to this article.
If you spend any time googling “fluoride,” you will come across lots of information about how you are being lied to by people like me.¹ As a dentist, I’m a drug pusher for the corporations and the government. I want to trick you into ruining your children’s teeth with fluoride poison so that you have to pay the big bucks for me to white knight in and save the day. Maybe you’ve protested the fluoridation of the water supply in your city. “Government overreach! What’s next? Microchips in my brain to tell me to quit smoking cigarettes?!”
You’re perfectly free to protest the way your tap water is prepared. I like mine free of poo-poo particles and with a little fluoride to make my teeth stronger. Maybe you want the maximum freedom to filter or to distill your own water and remove all the microorganisms and chemicals your neighbors dump in there all by yourself. I’ve got a little libertarian streak in me too. I can empathize. Honestly, I can. I’m writing this article so you can be properly informed about what fluoride does and does not do. Then you can make an informed decision about how to interact with the devil’s juice (fluoridated water).
What does the devil’s juice even do for you? Fluoride gets absorbed by our teeth. It binds with calcium to form “calcium fluorapatite,” which is a fancy sciency way of saying “more durable tooth.” Our teeth get broken down by acid that comes from our diet or up out of our stomach. If your teeth are fortified with fluoride, it takes more acid to break them down. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I like keeping my teeth in my head and maintaining them in their healthy angelic state.
We started putting fluoride in the water supply because it was recognized that people with naturally occurring fluoride in their water supplies ended up with fewer cavities. Wowee. What an easy solution to a really rotten problem. Let’s just give everyone the magic water. We’ve fiddled with the right concentration of magic water over time, but the principle is the same. You drink fluoride. It gets on your teeth, both initially and when it is redistributed by saliva that you excrete after absorbing the fluoride. Your teeth get stronger.
The only downside was that if you overdid it and put too much fluoride in the water supply, people ended up with fluorosis. That sounds scary; what’s that? It means your teeth end up discolored. Mild fluorosis is common and unnoticeable (you get a few little extra white spots on your teeth). Severe fluorosis is rare (not a problem with modern regulated fluoride levels) but results in much more noticeable brown stains. Fluorosis in any form does not harm the teeth from a health standpoint — it makes them more resistant to decay. Still, I’ll readily acknowledge that severe fluorosis is not a good cosmetic health outcome and that our physical appearance can affect how we interact with society and thus impact our mental health. Physical health, cosmetics, and mental health are inextricably intertwined in my profession.
You won’t see me in any picket lines calling for the de-fluoridation of our water anytime soon. To do so would be pretty blatantly self-serving and ethically dubious: “I’ll join the anti-fluoride movement and cash in when all these new patients show up at my door with fresh cavities! Yippee!”
Guidelines have been adjusted as to how much fluoride is appropriate over time. I think it is perfectly reasonable to continue scrutinizing and modifying those guidelines as we gather new information. People do get more fluoride exposure via other means besides in the water supply compared to when these policies were first put in place. What I’m trying to get across is that if fluoride were as dangerous as some people would have you believe, there would be a lot more people dropping dead in dental offices around the country. Be a reasonable skeptic, but don’t immediately conclude that if I’m wrong about something it automatically means that the anti-fluoride writer on that other blog is 100% right about everything else.
Our understanding of what is healthy for us shifts over time. We live in ignorance. That’s life. Science isn’t perfect because people run it, and all people are imperfect. Is that really news to anyone? We changed the fluoride guideline in 2015. This doesn’t just happen in the teeth fixer-upper business. Guidelines regarding heart disease, diet, cholesterol, cardiac stents, and medications have been in flux based on more thorough reviews of old research as well as new research in recent years. It’s perfectly reasonable for you to question the health care you are receiving, but you have to realize that no one in any of these fields is omniscient. We do our best to follow evidence-based guidelines, but cannot ever offer more than highly educated guesses. We don’t have final answers. There is no certainty in this life. Sorry if I’m the one to break that bad news to you.
At the same time, I’ll be the first to admit that many scientists and doctors do have ego problems. I think this results from a grueling educational system that punishes you for being wrong or taking chances. It has a lot to do with well-documented research biases toward publishing positive results which distort scientific exploration. We don’t like being wrong. Us academical types need to have a little more humility when the public questions our ideas, but we struggle with that because we all grew up as nerdy little McNerdersons. Our intellect is very preciously attached to our self-worth and ego. “We have extra letters after our names for Pete’s sake! Respect our authoratah!” We like to sit upon a high horse and wield our “superior” knowledge when y’all say some ignorant shizz. Of course, that just shuts down the conversation and doesn’t really help anyone. I hope I’m walking a reasonable middle road both sides can appreciate here.
As far as I can tell, we are currently fluoridating our water supply an acceptable amount. I think the benefits strongly outweigh the harms in almost all cases. I still drink tap water without worrying about it. That being said, if you are still dead set against imbibing fluoride via public water supplies, there are some other ways to protect your teeth with lower levels of exposure.
Ways to Get Your Fluoride on if It’s Not in Your Water Supply:
Fluoride Toothpaste — Brushing with a fluoride toothpaste twice a day is a great idea to protect your teeth. For children age 3 to 6, use a rice-sized smear. This is a tiny amount. You can upgrade to a pea-sized amount past age 6 and as an adult. Again, this is a small amount. Don’t go for the giant globs you see on the toothpaste packaging or in commercials. Think about how small rice grains and peas are. It doesn’t take a lot to do the job. If you struggle with having lots of cavities or dry mouth, I would first suggest taking a look at your nutrition, but you could also consider a prescription-strength fluoride toothpaste from your dentist. If you want to get some extra mileage out of that toothpaste, don’t rinse with water when you’re done brushing. Just spit a bunch into your sink. Let a little bit of that toothpaste hang around on your teeth and give it time to soak in and get absorbed.
Fluoride Mouthwash — Does the idea of not rinsing with water after you brush your teeth sound insane to you? No worries. Once you rinse with water after brushing with fluoride toothpaste and flossing, swish around with some fluoride-containing mouthwash for 30 seconds to a minute for good measure.
Professionally Applied Fluoride Varnish — You’ll have to brave a trip to the dental office for this one, but applications 2–4 times a year of this concentrated fluoride can help protect your teeth from acid attacks
I don’t want to mislead you. Fluoride is NOT a cure-all solution to your dental cavity woes, but it can give you a little extra protection against the sugar onslaught on our health. Fluoride is like wearing a helmet when you get on a motorcycle. People are getting furious that they are being forced to wear helmets. I get that. Seatbelts are government communism. I don’t particularly appreciate having my hair all messed up against my will by a coward’s hat either. However, I think you should be more concerned about how unsafe the motorcycles we are riding are. I’m not saying don’t ride the motorcycle. Life is a motorcycle ride. I’m not a coward. I’m just saying you should be properly informed that the motorcycle you are riding is filled with sugar and that sugar is causing you way more harm than fluoride ever will. Is fluoride the devil? Maybe. I have my doubts. Personally, I’m much more confident that sugar is the devil. Ride your sugar motorcycle like a real man should, but also be informed that it is killing you and making you angry and depressed more than you need to be. That’s all I’m saying. Is this article still about fluoride, or have we transitioned to an article about defining masculinity and my relationship with my dad? I’m not sure. I’ll let you be the judge of that. If reading this paragraph has felt like riding a dangerously out-of-control sugar motorcycle, that was the point.
So, bottom line, what’s my opinion on fluoride? That’s complicated. I agree it is a little weird that we put this drug in our water supply. We don’t really do that with other drugs (although I’d argue that we have poisoned our food and drink supply with insane amounts of sugar in ways that are infinitely more damaging to our health, both mental and physical, than any of the damage potentially caused by fluoride). Still, it is hard to deny how beneficial fluoride has been for most people’s teeth. It is also hard to demonstrate strong evidence that fluoride is hurting anyone, other than occasionally discoloring patients’ teeth at high exposure levels. The trade-off seems balanced in favor of fluoride to me, but I’m a person who sees how terribly damaged people’s teeth can get day in and day out, so that is a more salient issue for me. You won’t see me in any picket lines calling for the de-fluoridation of our water anytime soon. To do so would be pretty blatantly self-serving and ethically dubious: “I’ll join the anti-fluoride movement and cash in when all these new patients show up at my door with fresh cavities! Yippee!”
What I’m trying to get at is that, as a society, we have to pick a baseline. Fluoridate the water or don’t. Historically, this has been decided at the local level democratically. I think that’s how it should be. If you live in a community that fluoridates its water, you have options to remove fluoride from yours (read the comments on this article if you want to understand the weirdly defensive tone of my writing here). If you live in a community that doesn’t fluoridate its water, you have options to give your teeth a little extra fluoride boost. Your freedom is maintained along with a little hassle from everyone else’s freedom wherever you happen to live. That’s life in a pluralistic society. Grown-ups have to compromise with each other.
As usual, if you don’t believe what I have to say, you can read up on this topic more from my propaganda machine overlords over at the American Dental Association.
Hopefully, this was helpful. Please don’t throw fluoride-infused animal blood on me in the streets. I wish you well.
Thanks for reading.
Also dogs. Not dogs either. And ya better wear shoes!
Footnotes:
¹ This article is actually pretty balanced in tone, and you should read it if you want a counterpoint to how I’m approaching this topic. There is a section where the author cites an article from Healthline discussing fluoride’s relationship to bone cancer, but if you actually read the article, the conclusion is that they are unrelated. Here’s the American Cancer Society’s hot take on the topic. Similarly, this study he cites only shows a correlation between ADHD and water fluoridation. If you know anything about statistics, which is sort of important when you are interpreting a scientific study, correlation does NOT equal causation. This study that fluoride may have a minimal effect on IQ in developing children is the most compelling I read that was cited, but it still isn’t a big effect. The authors note, “The estimated decrease in average IQ associated with fluoride exposure based on our analysis may seem small and may be within the measurement error of IQ testing.” “May be within the measurement error of IQ testing” = may not actually be an effect at all.