Why I Changed My Mind on Water Fluoridation
The effects of fluoride on the brain. Based on new research, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Toxicology Program reached a draft conclusion that fluoride should be “presumed to be a cognitive neurodevelopmental hazard to humans."
This is the fourth video in a five-part series on water fluoridation. If you missed any of the previous ones, see:
• Why Is There Fluoride in Water? Is It Effective? ( )
• Side Effects of Water Fluoridation: Dental Fluorosis ( )
• Is Water Fluoridation Safe? ( )
The final video, Medicine’s Response to the Changing Science on Fluoride Safety ( ), is coming up next.
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-Michael Greger, MD FACLM
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Is Water Fluoridation Safe? Check out the video: https://youtu.be/d39N34r5Dv0?si=4iSe4XNw14nympfs
The hubris of mankind astounds me! You can never change just one thing… there are always downstream effects. To think that we have the knowledge to univerally subject everyone to a forced policy of adding fluoride or anything to everyone’s water without consequences is insanity, especially when one man’s medicine can be another’s poison. And with their track record I certainly don’t want gov. agencies involved in my personal health decisions, especially after the covid debacle! Sure glad we have a well.
1/ignore
2/laugh
3/fight
Then you win.
Worst nutritionfact title ever.
No reason to be drinking fluoride
Truth. If it helps your teeth, brush your teeth with floruide toothpaste, but then spit that 💩 out.
@@spektred How did man develop and survive over the course of millennium without fluoride?
@@presterjohn1697just because humans survived without something doesn’t mean it can’t improve our health. Humans also survived without brushing teeth, yet everyone would agree that it improves human health. Careful with your lack of critical thinking, it will lead you to incorrect conclusions
@@presterjohn1697 Largely with shorter average lifespans, on limited variety diets and in the healthiest circumstance fruits naturally containing xylitol (berries), with basic tooth brushing but despite such on average bad teeth.
@@presterjohn1697 A good question, I let Googles AI answer it – Compared to modern standards, native peoples throughout history generally did not have -perfect- oral health. However, their teeth often fared better than those of Europeans during corresponding eras.
Native American Dental Care:
Natural Diet: Their diet consisted more of fruits, vegetables, and lean proteins compared to the refined sugars and starches prominent in European diets. This reduced the intake of fermentable carbohydrates that contribute to cavities.
Chew Sticks and Herbs: Native Americans used natural tools like twigs frayed at the ends or abrasive leaves as makeshift toothbrushes. They also chewed on herbs with antiseptic properties to freshen breath and potentially reduce inflammation.
Need to get it out of city water supply asap.
How many kids were born with hypothyroidism, because I was ! maybe there is a link ? in the 60 ‘s
One city in Finland tried it in 70s. Since then and before that fluoride has not been used in drinking water here. Good idea it seems
I never knew that finland doesn’t use fluorinated water? And I lived here my whole life… Weird gap in my knowledge.
same in Norway never had any extra flouride put in it. So maybe thats why Americans think euopre is a country 😀
@@Lukky_Luke 🤣🤣 they eat and drink very bad quality stuff and shout like they’re the best in the universe
But toothpaste has 1500ppm fluoride in it in Finland. Even toothpaste for toddlers has 1000ppm. It is rapidly absorbed by mucous membranes. Good luck finding non-fluoridated toothpaste here…
Drinking water in Finland contains 0.0-7.6 ppm fluoride in piped water and other sources of drinking water (National Board of Health, Finland, 1974). In Kuopio, drinking water has been fluoridated since 1959, up to 1.2 ppm.
If you can’t change your mind, you can’t change anything.
😀 when 1 can Not change there Mind, they change Nothing 😃
I mean you can not change your mind on anything and you’re still going to be changing things by default just by doing stuff. That said the grain of truth in that statement is that to make positive changes, in general, you most likely need to be open-minded when looking at the evidence with regard to any given subject.
Yes, fluoride , as well as chlorine & bromide are listed as inhibiting thyroxine uptake, a reason perhaps of our ubiquitous thyroid problems in our country!
They inhibit the intake of other halides too, including… drum roll… iodine.
Thyroxine is the most prescribed drug globally, according to Dr Helen O’Neill.
Listed by whom and at what levels? Regular milk probably inhibits uptake of 100+ substances found in food (yes, also thyroxine). I think we could save a lot of time and just blame all nutritional problems on people drinking too much milk.
@Craxxet Might still be good to know the next worst thing, especially if you don’t drink milk.
I’ve been avoiding fluoridated products for about 15 years now.
Same here but close to 20. My mother stopped buying toothpaste with fluoride and I continued
Noticed any difference?
@@JakeIsLearning nope
A developing fetus is sensitive to small amounts of fluoride, it seems.
Adults who aren’t pregnant can probably safely brush with fluoridated toothpaste if they spit it out afterwards.
It seems to primarily be a childhood neurological development issue. Too late now, I guess, but out of an abundance of caution, I also stopped taking it twenty years ago as an adult. I used polycarbonate plastic water bottles for several years, until I found out they leached BPA into the water…
No studies done on the build up of fluoride in the environment!!
Fluoride being used in WW2 concentration camps’ water supply convinced me first. What convinced me the second time, was the fact how fluoride water levels were introduced as a “norm” based on the impossibility to stop aluminium factories from contaminating groundwaters with fluoride. Plus, the accepted “dosing” of fluoride from tap water was iffy from the get go – with no differentiation on how much every man, woman and child drank…
> with no differentiation on how much every man, woman and child drank…
Because it literally doesn’t matter?? If you drink fluoridated water with a concentration of 0.7 mg/ml, your body’s water will approach 0.7 mg/ml over time. People who drink a lot of water (and probably contain more of it) don’t magically end up with more fluoride and vice-versa.
What was the concentration camp thing that convinced you?What was the reason?
Not that I disagree with your conclusion, and correct me if I’m wrong about this anyway, but I guess the dosage ingested is naturally proportional to water intake, which is more or less proportional to body weight, and the amount of effective exposure is proportional to the number of times the water passes by your teeth? So you can get an effective does regardless of age, but you’d have to adjust for whoever is the most sensitive, ie developing children.
@@reinuxthere can be huge differences in water intake based on activity level though. athletes / bodybuilders / runners can drink 3 gallons of water a day regularly, for example. considering it’s good to try to get people to exercise, it’s sort of an annoying thing that the more you exercise, the more water you need to drink, and that can get you into the dangerous levels if you drink enough of it. so like… i’d say if someone does like to exercise, it’s good to get a reverse osmosis filter.
@@rinkuhero I want to say they’d presumably account for that too to keep it under the upper limit, but… yeah, you’re right, that’s probably an oversight too.
Good turn Dr. Greger, keep fighting the good fight!
“rereviewed their redrafted draft” is all that I needed today 😂
That was gold😂😂
75 years before we get actual science. eek.
My personal belief on fluoride is depending on your genetic make up, your range on a scale from Very little, to statistically significant affects. Why not just fluoride the toothpaste which you do not swallow compared to drinking water where in the poorest group of society does not have bottled water or filters available. Fluoride is nasty stuff in build up over time. It does remineralize teeth, but when ingested the scale of side effects can be pretty substantial. If the poorest groups of society are affected the most, and their IQs have been going down for years, you would think people would be looking harder for an answer if they really cared. Fluoride was taken overtime has been 100% shown to either neutral or very negatively affectl, that’s enough for me
Too many people are late on this. Including many health advocates. Unfortunately this is why people will continue to throw their own conclusions out there because when stuff like this comes out, they’ll think they’re right. Science needs to be a lot faster when it comes to our health.
like 70 years too late? ha! we all saved so much time at the dentist.
“It must be healthy if it protects our teeth 🤤”
I opposed fluoridation in my region because it is medicating us without consent, we can’t control dosage and we don’t know enough about the effects. I’m a proponent of biomonitoring and the information that is gathered regarding plastics, chemicals, and other environmental toxins that accumulate in the body.
In the end: “Please review your research until it speaks on our behalf!”
So a fluoridated water supply seems like a risk but fluoridated toothpaste, which ideally isn’t swallowed, seems to be the best of both worlds. It’s worth mentioning that fluoride improves dental health and poor dental health is well associated with cardiovascular disease and death (Kotronia et al., 2021), likely via inflammation from bacteria and this is also a concern for stroke in particular (Sen et al., 2023). I will keep with the toothpaste and using filtered water but would be happy to have an effective fluoride alternative. So far, things like xylitol underperform (-0.4% remineralization vs fluoride’s +9%, though the combination was better – Tange et al., 2004). While I’d like a solution that doesn’t make people dumber, I would be curious to see an analysis comparing heart disease death risk with fluoridated water to compare these issues.
I guess I answered my own question with a Finnish study finding that fluoridated water was associated with lower heart disease: Kaipio et al., 2004. It was 16- 22% lower in the high fluoride group but as they say, causality can’t be determined but dental health is connected to heart disease. Ugh do I need to make a video?
Strengthening the teeth does nothing to a generally nasty mouth full of plaque except make it degrade less quickly. But it does nothing to the ongoing swallowing of inflammatpry plaques. You simply have to clean your teeth, that is how you reduce health issues from yucky teeth, remove the yuck. Drinking flouride is a completely insane thing to do, it would only be on the teeth for a short amount of time.
Mic, what about the effects of flouride on the oral microbiome and in particular nitric oxide production? You’re trading marginal tooth enamel gains for detrimental effects on your circulatory system.
@@MictheVegan Please make the vid
And even if toothpaste isn’t swallowed, it still is absorbed in the mouth. The amount may be insignificant?
How about avoiding the cause of tooth decay with a proper diet. Yes, damage from antibiotics and other drugs may be hard to avoid but diet is a choice.
Fluoride disrupts nitric oxide in the body.
We need another video on this angle.
1997 Noble Prize researchers showed nitric oxide is an important neurotransmitter, and essential for cardiovascular health. Disrupt it and you disrupt cardiovascular health.
Mylanta has Aluminum, im hearing aluminum hydroxide can chelate fluoride ,, and further Silicon dioxide too may bind fluoride . In the body Fluoride usually binds hard to Calcium and ends up as Calcium Fluoride or Calcium Fluorophosphate – both are insoluble in water and im not sure they end up in bone , renal stones or calcifying soft tissues. I dont know if high blood albumin levels or high BUN can mitigate this risk.
NO2 is a slave ossilator of circadian rhythm and epigenetic quality control. It’s not just a gastrotrasmittor.
I think it’s great that Dr Greger put this information out there — I wasn’t expecting him to essentially acknowledge that water flouridation is an issue. That being said, it was kind of frustrating that he didn’t actually state his opinion and how it changed to conclude the video. I’m not sure if he thought that would make him look unprofessional or something, but we clearly have more than enough data to show that fluoride shouldn’t be in the water supply. If people want flouride to prevent cavities, then get flouride toothpaste and brush you teeth well with it. Don’t make everyone drink it and effect the neurological development of children (and possibly/ultimately adults) just to prevent dental issues in people that don’t brush their teeth with flouride toothpaste.
@TheVeganHeathen 100% agree. I wish he would have acknowledged his change of position as well. I appreciate that he puts these studies up, yet I’d hate to see people lose confidence in him due to lack of transparency ~ which these days is prevalent!
I thought the conclusion was tacitly obvious.
@@reinux For something so important, I would have expected him to say that he thinks were shouldn’t have flouride in our water supply based on the evidence and/or acknowledge the errors that made him believe the opposite to highlight how he and others can learn from that. If it were any other topic he would have done that if you’ve watched his other videos. He pretty much never completes a series without summing up his own thoughts on the subject.
@@TheVeganHeathen Really? A ton of his videos take the format “X does Y to your body, but also does Z” and leaves the audience to make the obvious conclusion.
@@reinux Im talking about when he does a series — not just one video. And in most of the videos where he leaves it the audience to draw a conclusion its when there isn’t enough data to make conclusive statements — which there clearly is in this case.