it's shocking that it hasn't been mentioned (ok, except by me in another comment) but flouridating municipal water systems through/after the 1960's at least in the US had a huge impact on the number of cavities/caries among children. Yuge. There are suspicions that fouride isn't good for us, and I mean beyond our precious bodily essences too, but in terms of teeth, it's been miraculous.
I'm just mentioning it because people are talking about bacteria being "the deciding factor" to account for differences in outcomes, and there's a flouride elephant in that room.
The problem is that nobody keeps the toothpaste on their teeth after brushing, like they should. Putting it in drinking water is an unacceptable alternative given the potential risks.
Yeah there is a very straight forward to reap all the rewards with almost none of the risks… but the problem is nobody is disciplined enough to actually follow the correct procedure.
I mean - you know how there’s pills you only need to take once a week - but they come in sequential packs, to be opened daily? Resulting in one real pull and six placeholder placebos per week? Because it’s easier to get in the habit of taking a pill once daily, than it is to get in the habit of once weekly?
It’s stuff like that. Fluoride in water is a hack to get around humans’ naturally poor performance.
> I mean - you know how there’s pills you only need to take once a week - but they come in sequential packs, to be opened daily? Resulting in one real pull and six placeholder placebos per week?
I haven't seen any pills exactly like this, though I guess some may exist.
The most famous real world example is "the pill", contraceptive hormonal treatment which is usually prescribed as complete cycles with some "dummy" pills which roughly simulate a 28 day "typical" female ovulation cycle. That choice is somewhat arbitrary, some people do perfectly well just taking the "live" pills every day whereupon their body just suppresses ovulation and they don't experience periods. A sympathetic doctor may be able to prescribe this actual treatment (which avoids discarding the "dummy" pills in a pack) if it suits you, so you just get "live" pills to take daily, typically for a year or so at a time. On the other hand, at the far end of the spectrum my mother was unrecognisable, basically completely psychotic on the pill, whereas it turns out she's fine when pregnant (fortunately for me and my sister) or after solving the problem in a more drastic way†. The choice of 28 days is basically because they had to pick something as most people aren't in either of the prior categories, their bodies will tolerate hormonal intervention to a point, and 28 days felt sort of like the natural ovulation cycle.
[None of this is medical advice. Ask your doctor about what you should do, don't interpret something from some HN poster as advice for your own medical treatment]
† My mother had her uterus removed, so, no more pregnancies.
> There are suspicions that fouride isn't good for us, and I mean beyond our precious bodily essences too, but in terms of teeth, it's been miraculous.
Fluoride is weird. Everyone just assumes some is good so more must be better, and any research into dental fluorosis (over exposure) is shunned. I believe primarily because prior to dumping it into the water and every dental product imaginable fluoride was expensive to dispose of and we produce a ton of it as a byproduct of making fertilizer.
too much flouride is actually really bad for your teeth; brown spots/pits I think. It's why children's toothpaste has minimal flouride, because they swallow a lot of it.
White spots is mild fluorosis. The brown stuff comes in when you live next to a coal mine so your water is filled with fluoride (at concentrations way over what any reasonable water-fluoridizer wants to add) and other nasty stuff.
People talk about how the fluoride in tea can help prevent cavities, but on the darker side... just imagine having all your food come from that sort of fluoride-rich soil.
It always amazes me how awful and toxic the earth can be once you get below the surface that's been rinsed with rain, biological acids, and otherwise weathered and covered up with thoroughly processed particles for millions of years.
I was curious as to where the fluoride was coming from, and this report: https://sci-hub.ee/https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007... seems to indicate that the mines increase fluoride in grounderwater due to exposing carbonates which then can dissolve, kicking off a change in pH and various other reactions that release fluoride from the minerals it's otherwise locked in.
That we have not migrated to hydroxyapatite from fluoride is a mystery to me. It actually remineralizes the enamel rather than protecting it. It lacks the toxicity of fluoride as well. It’s more expensive, but I suspect that’s because it hasn’t scaled yet.
So does fluoride. (It replaces the hydroxyl group. Your saliva already contains calcium and phosphate.) Enamel remineralized with fluoride yields fluorapatite, which has a critical PH of 4.5 vs 5.5. of hydroxyapatite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorapatite
We had to buy special toothpaste with high amount of fluoride for our kid after a year of experimenting with non-fluoride toothpaste, and we had to pay for fixing caries in 6 teeth too (done under sedation). Hence I do NOT recommend leaving out the fluoride at least from the toothpaste
I'm just mentioning it because people are talking about bacteria being "the deciding factor" to account for differences in outcomes, and there's a flouride elephant in that room.