Thursday, December 22, 2005

Alternative for Toothpaste

I've been fretting about fluoride lately. We do what we can to take it out of our drinking water (yecch!) but I've still been using toothpaste with fluoride (Crest, Aquafresh, etc.).

Fluoride is a toxin, and my opinion is that it does not help tooth health, in fact, it may cause some damage to teeth.

Finally, I think I have an answer. A friend of mine sells this stuff called "Miracle 2." It is a bunch of products (yes, multi-level marketing) that are meant for cleaning your house and also to replace some bathroom products.

For toothpaste, you mix a couple of the things together and you get a nice toothpaste. I haven't done the exact math, but I think it's cheaper than toothpaste.

The nice thing is Miracle 2 is completely free of fluoride or other toxins. It's called a "neutralizer." It's meant to neutralize your system, to bring the pH level to normal if it's too acidic (most of us) or too akaline (rare).

So far, the taste is fine and it foams up very nicely. And it helps my breath. It is not minty or flavored with anything, but my teeth feel very clean afterward.

Here is my friend Steve's Website. Click on Products and then your country and then "New Customer. You won't have to enter any personal information to see the product list, it's just weird how the product list comes up.

You can buy the stuff online or just e-mail Steve.

NOTE: I do not make any money from you purchasing Miracle 2 products. I am not in the network for Miracle 2, and will benefit in no way from your transactions.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

You are incorrect. Fluoride has a tremendous effect in preventing dental decay. If you don't have a decay problem you can avoid fluoride, but many people are not so lucky. High doses of anything can cause problems (St. John's Wort can cause serious medical emergencies if overdosed). The health benefits of fluoride are proven, the ill effects are not.

Unknown said...

I would "lol" except that the level of deception associated with fluoridation is nothing less than criminal. The idea of using fluoride to help your teeth started after nearly a century of research which showed fluorides to not only be deadly toxic substances, but also that it disrupted normal bone development (including teeth). The first person that suggested fluoride could be helpful for teeth LITERALLY made the whole thing up. Who was this guy and why was he promoting fluoride? Trendley Dean, who was was hired by ALCOA, (at the time) the world's largest producer of aluminum, and the world's largest producer of fluoride (a waste byproduct of making aluminum). His job was to study how much fluoride children's teeth could handle before disintegrating. Somehow he turned the data around and proclaimed that fluoride was good for teeth, even though later he was forced to admit that the data gave zero evidence for such a conclusion (under oath on a witness stand).

Probably the most quoted statistic for evidence that fluoride is good for your teeth came from Newburgh, New York. It was the first city to fluoridate their municipal water. The first couple of years showed a nearly 100% prevention of cavities, but soon that number plummeted to almost zero protective effect. Realizing the data was no longer looking so favorable for fluoridation, they published their "results" nearly a decade early (the study was supposed to last 15 years, they published after 5). The result was a proclamatoin that fluoridation reduced cavities by 70%. Seem fishy? It gets worse. Though the "results" were published early, the study actually continued and eventually showed that fluoridation *increased* the number of cavities. It also doubled the rate of bone deformities in boys and dramatically increased the rate of heart disease in adults, boosting the poor city to one of the highest rates of heart disease in the country.

You may wonder then, why did fluoride help for the first couple of years? It didn't. It only appeared to b/c of the way the numbers were counted. As I've said, fluoride disrupts normal bone function. Among other things, it delays the emergence of adult teeth. The study was looking at young children starting at the age when adult teeth normal start coming in. The fluoride delayed the growth of adult teeth by a couple of years. So for the first couple of years, researchers didn't find any cavities in adult teeth because the kids didn't have any adult teeth yet. Once their adult teeth grew in, they got cavities more quickly than the control group (from a neighboring unfluoridated town).

Now you brought up a good point that too much of anything can cause health problems. But how much fluoride is too much? The amount most commonly maintained in city water in the US is 1ppm (which purely by coincidence I'm sure just happens to be the exact amount that Trendley Dean suggested, without any evidence, would be a healthy amount for teeth). You should be interested to know, that there have been many studies done recently (in the US and all around the globe) which show that as little as 1ppm of fluoride significantly increases the rate of (nearly) all cancers by directly causing mutations in DNA, and increases tumor growth rate by 25-50%.

To give you some more to consider on this topic, read this quote which I took directly of the ADA's website from their "Fluoridation Facts" publication:

"Question 6.
Is there a difference in the effectiveness between naturally occurring fluoridated water (at optimal fluoride levels) and water that has fluoride added to reach the optimal level?

Answer.
No. The dental benefits of optimally fluoridated water occur regardless of the fluoride's source."

They go on to explain that fluoride is present in water as ions and that these ions are identical and that regardless of the source will provide the same health benefit. They are literally suggesting that hydrofluoric acid would have the same effect on your teeth as calcium fluoride (nearly the only form of fluoride found naturally on this planet). Do you know what happens when a person comes in contact with hydrofluoric acid? It is readily absorbed through the skin, quickly entering the blood stream. Then it dissolves all your bones. Although you'd probably be dead before it finished since it also reacts with blood calcium causing cardiac arrest.

Now I'm sure you're thinking, well of course a strong acid is going to be dangerous to people, but that has nothing to do with fluoridating water. Do you know what chemical is most commonly used to fluoridate city water in America? Hexafluorosilicic acid. I could go on and on, but I hope this is enough that you'll rethink your assertions about the safety and effectiveness of fluoridating water.