Fluoride in Water

So the issue of fluoride in water is something that a lot of people know about, but they only know what they've heard from someone, somewhere, sometime. What most people think is that fluoride is good for people's teeth - that it makes them stronger so they won't have as many dental problems. And they have never really questioned that.

But there is a fairly large, but scattered group of scientists and other people who have checked into it further and found that what most people believe is wrong. Fluoride is good for your teeth, as a topical chemical treatment (such as in toothpaste - and even that tells you not to swallow it). And that's only as long as you don't get too much fluoride on your teeth - because then it starts to cause pits and discoloration in your teeth. But ingesting fluoride does not do anything good for you, and in fact it is poisonous! Among other things, it can reduce the strength of your bones causing an increased risk of bone fractures, bone pain and tenderness. And recent studies show that it might cause hypothyroidism too which causes you to gain weight, have higher cholesterol, and all kinds of other health problems. Many of these people are trying to get the word out about this so that people will know the truth about fluoride.

Here are some pretty interesting articles and a documentary about fluoride:
http://documentaryheaven.com/an-inconvenient-tooth
http://www.fluoridealert.org
http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/fact_sheets/cwf_qa.htm#5
http://www.naturalnews.com/030123_fluoride_babies.html
http://thyroid.about.com/cs/toxicchemicalsan/a/flouride.htm

Now I am not a scientist, but what these people are saying makes sense to me. And I haven't found anything that shows with scientific studies that fluoridated water has helped to decrease the rate of tooth decay and cavities in people in who drink that water, or anything else that shows that fluoride is good for you when ingested. I have on the other hand found scientific studies that show that fluoride is bad for you when ingested. That's not good...

The EPA, CDC, and other organizations even say themselves that getting too much fluoride is not good for your health. And they have lowered the amount of fluoride they recommend be the maximum allowed amount in drinking water recently because there is fluoride in toothpaste and other stuff now too. But that doesn't really do much to stop people from ingesting too much of it. They can't control how much water you drink. In fact, they keep telling us that we should be drinking more water because most of us don't drink enough to stay properly hydrated. So you can definitely get more than the recommended maximum amount by drinking too much water if your water is fluoridated, and not even know that you are basically over-medicating yourself. And to go one step further, if your water is fluoridated, your basically being medicated without your consent by your local government that has allowed or even mandated fluoridated water for your area. That just seems a little bit unethical to me...

The water where I live in Kentwood, MI is fluoridated. In fact, Grand Rapids, MI was the first artificially fluoridated city in the country, and I've lived here for almost my entire life... And unfortunately typical charcoal based home water filtration systems don't remove fluoride. Boiling water doesn't do anything either. The only way to get it out is to use a reverse osmosis or distillation filtration systems are needed to remove fluoride - and those are expensive. We recently bought a Zero Water Filter pitcher which does remove fluoride, and lots of other stuff from water that we try to use for all of our drinking water. That is an affordable solution I recommend to anyone and everyone. Heck, the water even tastes better after it's been filtered!

I'm not one of those super-activists that claim the government is trying to poison us on purpose, or that this is all part of a huge conspiracy by the New World Order to decrease the population of the world back down to however many millions of people (rather than the over 7 billion there are now, which is supposedly the ideal amount of people or something), or any other radical group. I'm just a normal, conscientiousness person who wants to do what I can to keep myself and my family and friends healthy. So that's what this blog post is intended to do, for anyone who reads it.