A CFS friend had a dental cleaning two weeks ago — she knows that she reacts to fluoride (it appears to trigger coagulation in her) so the fluoride treatment was skipped but it appears that there was fluoride in what was used for cleaning her teeth.  She has been out-of-it for 2 weeks now, sleeping excessively.  A quick check of PubMed revealed that there was some new material so a summary would be a good to share.

PubMed Literature

• “a number of countries including Sweden, The Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland stopped fluoridating their water supplies due to concerns about safety and effectiveness [8, 9]. Currently, only about 5% of the world’s population—350 million people—(including 200 million Americans) consume artificially fluoridated water globally. Only eight countries—Malaysia, Australia, USA, New Zealand, Singapore, and Ireland, more than 50% of the water supply artificially fluoridate. Over the past two decades many communities in Canada, the USA, Australia, and New Zealand have stopped fluoridating their water supplies and in Israel the Minister for Health announced in April 2013 the end of mandatory water fluoridation” [2014]
  • “The only demonstrated positive impact of fluoride on human health is its contribution to prevention of dental caries (infection of teeth enamel). “
  • “While early studies of water fluoridation suggested substantial benefits in terms of reduced levels of dental caries, these results have always been contested. “
  • ” No fluoride deficiency disease has ever been documented for humans.”
  • “In the USA, a study in Iowa found that 90% of 3-month-olds consumed over their recommended upper limits”
  • “This review identified a number of potential and established adverse effects including cognitive impairment, hypothyroidism, dental and skeletal fluorosis, enzyme and electrolyte derangement, and cancer [49].’
  • ” found strong indications that fluoride may adversely affect cognitive development in children [50]….approximately equivalent to seven IQ points  “
  • ” 47% of children living in a New Delhi neighbourhood with average water fluoride level of 4.37 ppm have evidence of clinical hypothyroidism attributable to fluoride. “
  • “Iodine-deficient children ingesting fluoridated water have been found to demonstrate intellectual deficits even at water fluoride levels of 0.9 ppm [54].”
  • “Fluoride is a known enzyme disruptor… There are 66 enzymes which are affected by fluoride ingestion, including P450 oxidases, “
  • “fluoride can interact with a wide range of enzyme-mediated cellular processes and genes modulated by fluoride including those related to the stress response, metabolic enzymes, the cell cycle, cell-cell communications, and signal transduction [66].”
• Fluoride: a risk factor for inflammatory bowel disease? [2016]
• “One of the major effects of fluoride on oral bacteria is a reduction in acid tolerance, and presumably also in cariogenicity….Even the fluoride-resistant enzyme of isolated membranes of Lactobacillus casei ATCC 4646 could be rendered fluoride-sensitive through addition of Al³⁺. ” [1990]
• “Spore suspensions of Bacillus megaterium…. was significantly inhibited by sodium fluoride.” [1954]
• “It was found that, compared with those in the control group, the counts of Lactobacillus spp. and Bifidobacterium spp. were markedly decreased (P < 0.01 or P < 0.05), whereas the counts of Escherichia coli and Enterococcus spp. were significantly increased (P < 0.01 or P < 0.05) in the high fluorine groups II and III. ” [2016]
• “fluoride-associated changes in oral community composition resulted in depletion of gene families involved in central carbon metabolism and energy harvest (2-oxoglutarate ferredoxin oxidoreductase, succinate dehydrogenase, and the glyoxylate cycle).”[2017]
  • “This suggests that fluoride treatment does not have a large effect on the global structure of the oral or gut microbiota in mice. However, it remained possible that fluoride treatment could selectively alter the abundance of individual microbial taxa and functions in these environments.”
  • “Curiously, unclassified species of Bacteroidales and Burkholderia were significantly depleted only in the low-fluoride group compared to the control group, possibly due to more extreme depletion of other taxa in the high-fluoride group. A similar mechanism would explain the expansion of another obligate anaerobe (an unclassified Ruminobacter species) in the high-fluoride group relative to the control group”

Coagulation Dimension

Above we see that some bacteria families are altered by fluoride. How do bacteria and coagulation tie together?

• Non-canonical proteolytic activation of human prothrombin by subtilisin from  Bacillus subtilis  may shift the procoagulant-anticoagulant equilibrium toward thrombosis [2017].
  • Increase of bacillus subtilis (available as a probiotic) may cause blood thickening

Bottom Line

Consumption of water enriched by fluoride may significantly contribute to existing health issues. If you live in the US, tap water may be a risk — but worst, bottle water produced from a municipal source (which may be fluoridated) is not require to disclose this — they are only require to disclose if they add fluoride as part of their processing.

Water may be spring sourced, go through municipal processing with the addition of fluoride and then bottled. No label is required.

What are safe bottled waters — simple, those originating in countries where fluoride is banned. Our family preference is Gerolsteiner – available at Trader Joe. Not only is the source Germany, it is in glass and not plastic.