How safe is fluoride

HOW SAFE IS FLUORIDE

18th Sept. 2000 FM Radio 786 Radio interview with Noori Domingo.

IF FLUORIDE IS A” NATURAL”SUBSTANCE, WHY DON’T WE WANT IT IN THE WATER?

Lead and arsenic are also natural substances but we know they are toxic. If I offered you tea with an arsenic supplement in it, would you drink it? How about some cookies with a trace of lead or mercury? How about fluoride? Fluoride is toxic, full stop. It is not as toxic as arsenic, but it is certainly more toxic than lead. Fluoride is highly electronegative and even in the natural state: calcium fluoride or fluospar, it can interfere with energy fields inside the body.

Minute quantities of toxic substances do form part of our chemical make up, but we don’t need arsenic, lead or fluoride supplements! We get enough! We are being systematically poisoned by them as they enter our systems via the environment, our food and our drinking water. Fluoride is present in ever – increasing amounts in all our foods, beverages and oral hygiene products. Why waste money trying to poison us any further?

DO ANY OF US SUFFER FROM A FLUORIDE DEFICIENCY?

There are no known clinical cases of any fluoride deficiencies, anywhere in the world. Natural calcium fluoride leeches out of minerals and rocks and finds its way into some our underground water supplies. People who drink this water can develop dental and skeletal fluorosis. We see good examples of this in the Northern Cape and closer to home, in Kraaifontein, near Stellenbosch where dental professionals are beginning to show some concern. They are not happy about fluoride supplements in these areas and advised us to make a safer toothpaste with a minimal dose of fluoride for children.

We did one better: a Junior toothpaste for kids with a homeopathic form of fluoride that is totally non toxic. They can even eat the stuff! Just the right amount of fluoride is necessary to form a strong, even coating of tooth enamel. An excess of fluoride causes uneven tooth and bone formation, leaving irregular surfaces that contain both hard and soft patches. Teeth and bones may then become brittle because the weakened collagen tissue inside collapses and does not bond sufficiently to other minerals like calcium, magnesium and phosphorous.

Have you seen people with severe fluorosis – weak, blackened brittle teeth that snap off at the roots? They have to have their teeth capped or wear falsies for the rest of their life. So much for preventing tooth decay. Even with very hard tooth enamel, more teeth are being lost than ever before, due to gum disease. We have created a new disease and we can thank fluoride for most of the gum disorders we have today.

Although fluoride is involved in tooth development, it is only Mother Nature who knows how to supply just the right amount! As usual, we try to interfere and end up wrecking our teeth, our bones and our health in general.

HOW DO WE GET FLUORIDE NATURALLY, IF WE DON’T TAKE SUPPLEMENTS?

Most of our food contains traces of fluoride. Even a packet of potato chips, contains fluoride. Three cups of ordinary tea or coffee yield about 1mg of fluoride and this is sufficient unto the day. Apart from tea and coffee, our wonderfully denatured fruit and vegetables that grow under the influence of super phosphates now provide extra fluoride at the expense of zinc, boron, molybdenum and other trace minerals. These essential micronutrients are left out of the equation in modern agriculture.

The curse of the modern fertilizer industry is the production of a waste product known as sodium fluoride. Phosphate fertilizers contain about 1% sodium fluoride. When this is tilled into the land, it bonds to boron and renders it inactive. Without boron, the plants cannot absorb enough calcium and magnesium from the soil. They look gorgeous and green from all the phosphates they are sucking up, but they no longer supply sufficient minerals for tooth and bone formation. You can see this tell-tale boron deficiency when you look at the broccoli in the supermarket. If the stem is hollow, there is a boron deficiency, and thus a calcium and magnesium deficiency.

ARE THERE ANY SAFE FLUORIDE SUPPLEMENTS?

If you feel you have to give your young children a fluoride supplement, then it is best to use tissue salts. You can get these little white pills at most health shops and the more enlightened pharmacies. CALC FLUOR D6 is what you can call a “natural” fluoride. The pills are made out of lactose, also known as milk sugar and they contain the frequency of fluoride that activates the correct fluoride metabolism in the body. These pills are different to the fluoride tablets containing sodium fluoride.

I know of a small child who died after eating half a container of those ones, you are familiar with them? We got them from the nursing home and clinics when our children were born…….. We tend to forget about the other minerals we need for teeth and they include calcium, magnesium and phosphorus. We don’t ever need to take phosphorus supplements, especially as it is the main ingredient of modern fertilizers. All these extra phosphates tend to displace the sulphur in our diets. We were given a spoon of cod liver oil every day when we were young. I can still squirm at the thought, but my mother insisted it was good for shiny hair and strong teeth and bones. She was right, the vitamin D plays a key role in tooth and bone formation.

WHAT ABOUT ANTIDOTES TO FLUORIDE?

We are told that “There is no known antidote to fluoride poisoning!” I have found a number of ways to help people to cope with some of the adverse effects of fluoride. Do not despair, there is a lot you can do to prevent disaster.

1 When it comes to mouth pain after fluoride treatment at the dentist, we find that applying a paste of calcium and magnesium to the affected gums and sensitive areas immediately stops the pain. In an emergency, chew an antacid like a Rennies tablet. One lady had been in agony for many weeks and after yet another fluoride pack from the dentist, she heard me talk about fluoride on the radio and drove directly to my house. I gave her some of my gum therapy toothpaste to put into her mouth and she sighed with relief. No more pain. I phoned her a week later and she was fine. So simple.

2 Antioxidants are very important. Fluoride depletes antioxidants, especially vitamin E that is responsible for controlling plaque deposits on teeth. Many patients tried taking Vitamin E supplements and found that the plaque on their teeth stayed away once it had been cleaned off. We also find that people using fluoride free toothpastes containing natural ingredients like Tea Tree oil, Miswak or Aloe extracts have less plaque and don’t need so many visits to the oral hygienist.

3 Vitamin C is essential to protect your gum tissues, especially the periodontal layer that connects the tooth to the socket in the gum. If your gums keep bleeding, stay away from fluoride, it eats up collagen tissue, and that causes gum recession. Do not suck Vitamin C lozenges. It strips away the tooth enamel. Take a pill or drink it in a beverage.

4 If you know you are going to have fluoride treatment at the dentist, load up on antioxidants beforehand and even take a good tonic or stress remedy, something like an adaptogen because going to the dentist can be very stressful to the body. Not only the fluoride, but also the fumes from the mercury in the amalgam. The anaesthetic is not exactly a health product either and once you have an amalgam filling in your mouth, you have a steady source of lead and mercury for life. Many of the symptoms of amalgam poisoning are contained in the Homeopathic materia medica under: Mercurius Solubidis, Plumbum and Argentum Nitrate. There are hundreds of symptoms, including mouth ulcers, bad breath, suppurating wounds and even genital sores that look and feel like a herpes infection.

Lead can make you crazy. With me, that explains a lot! But I take loads of calcium and magnesium every night to pick up heavy metal particles in my body and flush them away. If you suffer from a calcium deficiency, these toxic particles can sometimes stay bonded to the calcium that then gets deposited back into your teeth and bones. They once found lead deposits in a child’s tooth, next to an amalgam filling. Now you know how it got there. Calcium and magnesium can overcome the electronegative effect of fluoride and they help to flush out heavy metals as a bonus.

5 A heavy onslaught of fluoride also affects the thyroid gland. It displaces the iodine that is needed for the production of thyroid hormones. If you are worried about your thyroid gland, try to protect yourself as best you can. Take anti – oxidants and supplements containing calcium, magnesium and boron. If your boron levels get critically low, you are unable to make stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. X-Rays can also damage the thyroid gland, especially when your teeth have to be examined at odd angles. Iodine is sensitive to radiation. If there is damage to the thyroid gland, scar tissue starts to grow. Excessive scar tissue blocks the areas that release the hormones and suddenly you find yourself having to take thyroid supplements one day. Vitamin E prevents scar formation inside damaged endocrine glands. Vitamin C prevents the destruction of the connective tissue.

HOW DOES FLUORIDE AFFECT OUR TEETH AND BONES?

Fluoride is essential for the formation of good, hard tooth enamel. Bones become harder with fluoride keeping minerals like calcium, phosphorous sufficiently attracted to each other. The truth is: our teeth and bones do need a little fluoride. What we don’t need, is too much fluoride as this is what causes all the problems. As you know, dental fluorosis is the result of too much fluoride, especially whilst the teeth are forming between the age of three and thirteen.

When fluoride gets out of control, it is almost impossible to undo the damage. Fluoride sets off such a strong negative impulse, it attracts a volley of positively charged calcium molecules around itself. This phenomenon has inspired the use fluoride to strengthen teeth and bones, by setting off little depth charges of fluoride to attract alkaline minerals. Unfortunately, if food and muck mix with this fluoride on your teeth, deposits of plaque, tartar or calculus soon develop. Fluoride also destroys antioxidant vitamins like vitamin E. Dr Frank Bertrand of the Safe Water Foundation of S A says that: a Vitamin E deficiency is the major cause of plaque accumulating on teeth. As you know, a Vitamin E deficiency is also associated with plaque deposits on blood vessels. This plaque keeps both the oral hygienists and cardiologists busy.

Fluoride is good business! If you are battling with plaque, think about antioxidants. There are some very good combinations available and you can fight back at fluoride as well as plaque with these. Foods like sunflower seeds are rich in vitamin E. Chewing these makes a good alternative to sweets and starchy things that encourage fermentation and the growth of bacteria and slime on the teeth. Sucking Vitamin C lozenges is not a good idea, because ascorbic acid can erode tooth enamel. Lemon juice does the same. It is best to encourage the natural flow of saliva over the teeth as it is the best mouthwash in the world – even better than a fluoride mouthwash!

Doctors give huge doses of sodium fluoride to ladies with osteoporosis, thinking it to be a smart way to increase bone density. Apart from the horrendous side effects of all that poison, such lethal doses of fluoride weaken all the connective tissue in the joints, tendons and ligaments, whilst the bones become very hard and brittle in places. Perhaps we need to pick at a few bones to see what is going on inside there.

We lose bone density at an alarming rate without understanding what minerals like calcium, phosphorus, magnesium and fluoride have to do with this process. Somehow you just take a pill and you either do or don’t recover the bone loss, but lots of people can make money in the process! Especially when you have to scan the bones, it’s a sure way to wipe out pension funds. Of course, when you break a hip, you can be set back for a sum of over R150, 000. At least a third of the patients die as a result of this type of surgery, so it’s like playing Russian Roulette with your bones.

If you know how to look after your bones and joints, you can run and skip and jump as hard as you like, even in your nineties. Bones have to be strong and they must be able to bend slightly under pressure. To achieve this, they consist of an inner structure, or matrix of organic collagen tissue that relies on proteins and vitamin C for its strength and flexibility.

Apatite

A composite crystalline mineral called apatite grows all over this foundation, like a grape vine on a pergola. Apatite has a hardness of 5: that is, halfway between a piece of chalk and a diamond. Apatite consists of calcium phosphate, magnesium, sodium and a minute smidgen of fluoride. This stuff all has to be cross linked through the collagen and then back onto itself. A natural electrical field generated by zinc and copper facilitates this bonding: somewhat like a little battery. Does this make sense to you? Bones are semiconductors of electricity. Broken bones heal very quickly when they are surrounded by the correct energy fields.

The collagen/apatite has a lacy structure like Aero chocolate, full of cavities. This is where the calcium is kept, all along these cavities, so it can come and go without disturbing the scaffolding. In all these structures, fluoride can cause trouble. Fluoride is highly electronegative and it can interfere with the delicate field of energy that bonds the collagen and apatite together, causing it to collapse and degenerate. It also has the nasty little habit of attacking collagen tissue by shredding the tightly coiled fibres that impart elasticity to it. We like to think of osteo/arthritic complaints as calcium deficiencies but collagen, zinc and copper also play key roles that can be disrupted by fluoride. It’s no wonder that magnets and metal bracelets are so popular. Perhaps they help to zap away the fluoride! Little do people know that the real troublemaker is invisible!

ARE YOU SAYING THAT FLUORIDE COULD CRIPPLE US?

As you know, the skeleton is the calcium warehouse of the body. The tips of the bones, the hips and the vertebrae contain the most “Aero chocolate” or trabecular bone rich in available calcium and this is where the dreaded osteoarthritis and osteoporosis strikes. The collagen and the apatite crystals are like the grapevine and the pergola. The grapes are the minerals that are contained in bone cells called osteoblasts. They contain the calcium that has to tip into the bloodstream at short notice whenever blood levels become too acidic. If this calcium cannot be supplied to the heart in time, you will develop tetany of the heart muscles and you will drop dead.

How does calcium arrive at its destination? Bone resorption cells known as osteoclasts jump on top of the osteoblasts and spit hydrochloric acid all over them until the calcium is released into the blood. Whenever this calcium is taken, it is done on an I.O.U. basis. It has to be returned, so: during the digestion of food, calcium is once again picked up by transporter proteins from the colon and returned to the bones. We think we have so much calcium in our bones that we never spare a thought for all the little bits that get snitched away over a lifetime, until it’s too late.

Whenever the body needs to neutralize acidic waste or deal with extremely electronegative fields from substances like fluoride, calcium is required. If this supply of calcium is not maintained, the body becomes too acidic and this sets the scene for cancer and other diseases to develop. Ironically, many of the drugs that we use for bone and joint diseases also help to rob the body of calcium. All the steroid drugs like prednisone and cortisol, are calcium thieves. Even the so-called healthy foods like bran and many of our proteins like meat and milk can strip the bones of their calcium. Nobody has died from taking a calcium supplement, but too many people die because they don’t.

CAN FLUORIDE SUPPLEMENTATION BE OF ANY BENEFIT TO US?

Nobody has ever really benefited from fluoride supplements, no matter how hard they try to convince us. At least they should warn us that the stuff is toxic. If you want strong teeth, try vitamins, minerals and a healthy diet. They are now trying to use fluoride to attract the calcium back into the bones without realizing how destructive fluoride is to collagen tissue. Now that’s a joke. Maybe they give fluoride to rats, in the rat poison, to cure “rodent osteoporosis”. It’s the same stuff: sodium fluoride. It kills the rat by making it bleed itself to death. The fluoride collapses the collagen tissue around all the tiny blood vessels until the blood leaks into the tissues, causing uncontrolled bleeding so that a shortage of blood to the heart causes a heart attack! So you see, cardiovascular disease is a real killer.

Warfarin, the medication given to prevent blood clotting also contains fluoride. What a co-incidence. The National Osteoporosis Foundation recommends a fluoride tablet containing 25mg of sodium fluoride to be taken two or three times a day (that is, 50mg – 75mg a day) as a treatment for osteoporosis. Ossiplex Retard has recently been approved by The Medicine Controls Council. When I protested, the manufacturers of this product reassured me that the doctors prescribing the “medication” knew what they were doing. Patients have a different story to tell: after one dose, one lady I spoke to nearly died. Others refused to take it, or to continue using it after experiencing gruesomely adverse side effects. Maybe it’s good for lizards?

WHAT DOES FLUORIDE DO TO SOFT TISSUE, LIKE GUMS?

Fluoride destroys collagen tissue, the connective tissue that we find all over the body, from inside your bones and blood vessels to between your teeth and gums. Have you ever wondered about bleeding and receding gums? It’s funny how some dentists will try to remedy the situation with fluoride packs. The patient keeps returning for more punishment and the dentist keeps wondering why there is no improvement. After a good brush out with fluoride and an extra rinse, you go to bed. Meanwhile, back in your mouth, all the freshly executed mouth and gum cells begin to rot and set off the putrid odour of death. Fur and plaque creep onto your shiny teeth and by the time you wake up, you have to rush to the bathroom before you say good morning.

Once you change to a natural toothpaste, the first thing you notice is: how clean your teeth feel when your tongue does its morning inspection. No more sore and bleeding gums. Funny how you never read: “Good for teeth and gums” on packs of fluoride toothpaste. If these products were to contain calcium and vitamin C, it would be legal for them to make such a claim. If they left out the fluoride, they could say: NON TOXIC. Unfortunately fluoride toothpastes carry no toxic warnings despite the fact that each tube of toothpaste contains enough fluoride to kill a small child.

People who swallow toothpaste every day could be ingesting as much as 25mg of sodium fluoride or fluorophosphate. Fluoride accumulates in the body like a dump of toxic waste and we wonder why our children battle with their health. The most awful thing is the effect that fluoride has on the brain and nervous system. As you know by now, fluoride has a sedative, destructive effect. Drugs like prozac contain fluoride. Side effects of fluoride ingestion can include hand tremors and shakiness, confusion, forgetfulness and a general fuzzy feeling. The sort of thing that happens to children with learning disorders. But not to worry, there are plenty of drugs and medicines they use to remedy the situation! Ritalin, for instance, known on the street as “speed” and many other harmful amphetamines that are also used for slimming because they buzz and fuzz the brain so effectively.

HOW DOES FLUORIDE AFFECT THE THYROID GLAND?

If you begin to feel fatter and more sluggish than ever, you are not alone. You can now blame it on fluoride. The number of patients with weakened thyroid glands is growing throughout South Africa in direct proportion to our fluoride ingestion whether accidental or intentional. Professor Douw Steyn of the university of Pretoria has been investigating this damaging effect that fluoride has on our thyroid glands.

Fluoride disrupts the output of thyroid hormones by interfering with the iodine that is essential for this process. Both fluoride and chlorine occupy receptors that are designed exclusively for the uptake of iodine within the cells of the thyroid gland. If this gland does not release enough hormones into the system, the whole metabolism slows down and this causes one to gain weight. As soon as levels of thyroxine and trithyonine drop, we experience a rush of estrogenic hormones, including the toxic xenoestrogens that clamber onto hormone receptor sites on the cell membranes. Now we really begin to pick up weight: weak thyroids and a flood of estrogen and subsequent attacks of low blood sugar. The fat formula, even when you just look at food.

HOW CAN FLUORIDE AFFECT THE REST OF THE ENDOCRINE SYSTEM?

To add insult to injury, too much fluoride also mucks up your sex hormones, especially during the menopause. The most common complaint is: hot flushes. Although they are nice to have on a cold day, if your body could make enough of it’s own estrogen, you would not flush at all. Now how does fluoride get the blame? At the menopause, the ovaries go on strike and estrogen levels can drop by as much as 90%. The adrenal glands have to take over the role of estrogen production and a hot flush is like a wake up call for them. They have to convert cholesterol into a string of steroid hormones and eventually into estradiol, the good estrogen.

This process cannot take place if boron and other key nutrients and antioxidants are absent. Thanks to all the fluoride present in the soil, our foods and us, most of us have severe boron deficiencies. Without enough boron, we cannot make our own estrogen. The good news is that women who are given adequate boron supplements as well as a few other nutrients can start to make these hormones again. You could say that boron can help to wipe out hot flushes, but remember that fluoride wipes out boron. You can’t rely on vegetables to supply the boron anymore. If you eat your veggies and you have hot flushes and osteoporosis and arthritis and other degenerative diseases it should be proof enough that you need to take another look at your supplementation.

If your adrenals are weak, stress will take its toll on you. We also require boron to make adrenal hormones like adrenalin and cortisone. There is a connection between boron deficiencies and arthritis. This is because the fluoride has caused a boron deficiency and thus a need to take cortisone because you can’t make it by yourself anymore. Once you take hormone supplements, the body gets lazy and you have to keep taking cortisone. Plus you have to put up with all the unwanted side effects like weight gain and bloating. Ironically one of the side effects of taking cortisone is osteoporosis! It is much easier to avoid fluoride and take boron supplements.

HOW CAN FLUORIDE ADVANCE THE AGING PROCESS?

In addition to screwing up bones, fluoride attacks connective tissue around the joints. Collagen tissue is a springy, elastic substance and it keeps joints in place so they can move properly. Even with hard bones, fluoride can get to you by snipping up strands of this supportive tissue. Given half the chance, it collapses your brain tissue , blood vessels and fine blood capillaries as well. You all know that fluoride is used as a rat poison. The idea is to make the rat bleed to death from the inside by weakening all the blood capillaries and preventing the blood from clotting. Fluoride is the answer for this. People on blood thinning drugs take note, rat poison is much cheaper! Ginger also prevents blood coagulation very safely and effectively, but it doesn’t kill people and it’s even cheaper than fluoride.