any lentil weaver types come and talk to me about flouride

[Heathcliffscathy]

am i right in not giving it to ds at all (he doesn't drink tapwater and has a flouride free weleda toothpaste).

it's a toxin right?

lentil weavers only need apply

all i can say is, tooth decay is NOT nice. i just had two fillings replaced and another next week.

if i can avoid the dds going thru it, all the better.

i've had absesses, crowns, etc.

ALL my mother's molars are implants. she has awful teeth and i inherited that from here.

mine are coffee & red wine stained rather than the flouride effects.

I had a friend at school who had terribly crumbly teeth, filled with black fillings.

We do the unfluoridised toothpaste, too. Like you I am not sure whether it is totally right or wrong, but tend to err on the side of not adding unnecessary extras if I am not convinced of their advantages.

Franny I was counting on you as lentil weaver in cheif to give me more than that!

Hmmmm..

Really don't know who to ask about it that will give me a straight, unbiaised (both by training, ie either western or complementary medicine, or just by what they grew up with and assume) information.

Of course I don't want ds to have worse teeth, but equally, I'm not sure about the balance between health risks and benefits.

surely it's mostly about not bathing his teeth in acidic fruit juice from sippy cups as much as anything ???

Water here is virtually free of fluoride, but my kids have always used fluoride toothpaste and our dentist is very keen on it - it helps maintain and even repair enamel, especially if not rinsed off after brushing (you should only use pea-sized blob though).

My kids have no fillings FWIW.

Boots Smile toothpaste is lower in fluoride for kids to use and also has xylitol - I believe jasper approves of it. There used to be a version for under-6s too but I think they may have discontinued it, but any kids' fluoride toothpaste would do.

Quote from the very bottom of the bit you linked to, soph:

"Fluoride is fine in toothpaste, where it is directly applied to the teeth, but provides almost no dental benefit in water, while presenting serious health risks, particularly for boys," Wiles said.

excellent. now, is there a fluoride toothpaste without all the other crap in it (i'd like to know this for me and dh as much as for ds...

i'm thinking of the sodium laureth suphate parabens type stuff.

i'm a soft lentil weaver but had a major argy this w/e with my hard lentil friend, only it's not that simple (she's is quite unlentil re food but is hard green in almost every other way.) My family has rotten teeth so i'm keen on fluoride in the water. She is very very anti fluoride int he water. i think she's right really but absolutely can't get worried about it. surely plastic bottles for mineral water much more poisonous???

Sorry sophable

I've let myself down, I've let everyone down

hmm I was hoping someone would have come up with a compelling yes or no by now!
frannyandzooey, I was tending to do as you do and leave out anything unnecessary unless I am convinced it will do some good. But my teeth are awful and I'd feel terrible if ds ended up with rubbish teeth because he hadn't had fluoride.

what's a lentil weaving mummy to do???

it can cause terrible staining. My friend and her brother used to eat flouride toothpaste as children, so far more than others would have. They both had to have their teeth re-enamled in their late teens. I remember my mother in the 70's being very anti-flouride cos of some conspiracy theory about it being a bi-product of the aluminium industry and that the aluminium industry give a lot of money to the BDA. All tosh no doubt. Anyway I have very rarely used flouride toohpaste and have no fillings. I hate the idea of it being put in water as the amount of water you use for tooth cleaning (compared to all that you eat and drink) is miniscule. Am not sure if there are any studies on long term studies on the effect on you body. There was a big article a few years ago in the guardian. I buy this toothpaste for my son
secure.bickiepegs.co.uk/acatalog/Bickiepegs_on_line_Doidy_Cup_2.html\firstteeth}
\link{

ooops

firstteeth

My DDs (24 & 21 now) both took actual fluoride tablets for their first 5 years or so and they have beautiful teeth; they are among our dentist's pet patients, and that's despite having had tram-tracks for 2-3 years (or however long it took) in their teens, which often causes decay around the cement.

Yes fluoride is a poison in industrial quantities but people get a bit carried away with that idea. British Dental Health Foundation FAQ

okay, this is not going to be terribly well researched due to the hour, but I do seem to recall an article (or more than one) in New Scientist in the past few years saying that there is little evidence to back up the hypothesis that fluoride in water contributes to declining rates of tooth decay. They compared the US (which is, overall, pretty keen on fluoride, although I think deliberate fluoridation of water varies from state to state) to other developed countries with little to no fluoride in the water and found the same decrease in rates of tooth decay. I can't remember whether they talked about fluoride in toothpastes or not ,but the implication of the article was that dentists and others have absorbed the correlation as 'fact' just because they have heard it so many times, but that it hasn't really been tested properly.

okay, ds2 has just woken up so I can't finish this message properly. Those who don't mind reading scientific abstracts could check this link, which shows a positive correlation between fluoride levels in water and dental caries (i.e. higher fluoride levels lead to a higher incidence of tooth decay)
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids==11572269

I also seem to recall reading something about how fluoride strengthens your teeth - it does so by changing the mineral composition and it's an irreversible process, which worries me somewhat because it rather interferes with the way our teeth have evolved, and enamel was probably quite a good way of protecting our teeth before we started eating loads of sugary food and drinking highly acidic drinks.

Interesting that this BBC article (which I would expect to be fairly well researched and quite trustworthy) only says that it's 'probably' a good idea to use fluoride toothpaste
212.58.240.36/1/hi/health/medical_notes/3776459.stm

I also found this page which looks interesting but I haven't had a chance to check out how reliable the sources are
www.slweb.org/bibliography.html

sorry for not formatting the links properly but I now have a wriggly boy on my lap and I really should put him back to bed.

but i hope that gives you more to chew on

This report correlates tooth decay in children with social deprivation and water fluoridation. It does seem to demonstrate that in general, in areas of social deprivation where the water does contain fluoride the rate of tooth decay in under-5s is lower than in similar areas where it isn't. (It is from the British Fluoridation Society though so has to be viewed with detachment!)

There are some freakish anomalies - eg 100% of Gateshead's water is fluoridated but it's still up there with the high decay. (The summary suggests that without fluoridation the rate would be far worse.)

The bottom 14, with no fluoride but varying levels of deprivation, are all in the NW of England (except Dewsbury and that's close) but the next one up is Bloomsbury????

Obviously there's a lot more behind the figures than just fluoride and social deprivation, but the idea that children's teeth could be somewhat protected from the damage caused by poor diet and dental hygiene by adding fluoride to water was a good one at the time. Not so sure now!