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There are no ******** benefits from using fluoride. All the claims dentists make about fluoride helping teeth are complete BULLSHIT PROPAGANDA. I feel so strongly about this because I am a VICTIM of a government fluoride program. When I was in grade 2-3 my whole school (I lived in a small native village) was given pink fluoride tablets by the government, and we were instructed to eat 1 or was it 2? a day. My mother thought she was doing the right thing following orders and made sure that I had mine every single day. This all occurred around the time my two front teeth were growing in. The result of these fluoride tablets was severe dental fluorosis. Not the white kind, but dark yellow stains on my two front teeth (Not just the surface but all the way through to the back side). By grade 4 the bullying and teasing was so extreme (even by grown adults, telling me to brush my teeth, because they looked dirty) that I begged my parents to spend money on getting my teeth "fixed". Well, the dentist's idea of "fixing" was to grind down my front teeth and apply a sort of acrylic paint over them, to make them look more white. But even THAT did not improve the look of them as much as I was expecting (you can see the edge of the paint and tooth, and the paint isn't very white). And the paint is now chipping and I have no dental insurance and would really like to get it fixed. This has been a life long struggle for me, all because of fluoride, and the big corporations lying about how good it is for your teeth. Fluoride and anyone who endorses it can go to ******** hell.

As long as Mercola keeps writing articles like these, I don't think I'll ever see it your way lol...

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/05/11/toxic-fluoride-contaminates-iceland-volcanic-ash-and-is-killing-animals.aspx

Amalgam is dangerous and evil as a teeth filler. It contains mercury, mercury is definitely evil. That's why dentists now rarely use amalgams (only on those with tight budget, here in my country).

You guys, seriously, do you read anything but "truther" websites? Being open minded means looking at both sides of the debate and weighing the evidence (or lack thereof).

There are other factors at work in skeletal fluorosis than fluoride in the drinking water. Fluoridated drinking water mimics a beneficial natural phenomenon that was discovered in the 1930s. Please read the links I posted.

Also, mercury is bad for you, but do you guys even know what a mercury amalgam is? The mercury is bound to the other metals in the amalgam. Mercury has this nifty property of being able to bond with just about every other metal, including gold. It's mixed with silver and a few others in order to form dental amalgam for filling teeth. Once again, there's no scientific evidence to suggest that silver amalgam is dangerous. People that have them are exposed to a negligible amount of mercury due to mercury vapor released from the fillings. Specific values on this and how they compare to "safe" levels are in the article below. The only agreed risk is to those people that are allergic to metals.

As an example, I have around thirteen, give or take, amalgam fillings and I've had them since childhood. They are cheap and obviously very durable. I don't have MS or any other chronic disease that could not have a hereditary component. I think that mercury is reason to have concern, because like fluoride, it can cause problems in high dosages. The thing is that all of the fearmongering around fluoride, amalgam, and most likely several other subjects that I've done less research on, revolves around the tactics described in the Quackwatch article I linked to. As I've previously said, everything has risks, but if it didn't have a benefit then it wouldn't be used. If you want to go through the very expensive process of having all of your amalgam replaced with expensive ceramic or other materials then no one is stopping you. Also, don't forget about the recent concern about plastics and Bisphenol A, which are used in composite resins. I, however, will replace them when they fall out and live my life not worrying about the negligible amount of mercury. There are probably worse things in my environment to be concerned about. Hell, most of the world's fish are contaminated with some mercury now. You don't get dementia from eating fish now and then. Rather than bore you guys with this (I've studied mercury quite a bit, from several angles), I'll just give you this fairly unbiased article to review for yourselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_amalgam_controversy

The bottom line is that the jury is still out on a lot of the claims about amalgam, but there is a whole lot of evidence that supports the safety and efficacy of fluoridated drinking water.

lolwut?

What do you suggest, that we use inferior cleaning techniques (thereby contaminating our drinking water with pestilence) or using a more expensive cleaning technique (thereby making clean water even more unaffordable to even more poor people)?

Probably should apologize for replying at all wink

Its' specifically sodium fluoride too.

I'll have my boyfriend come on and let you guys know when I die from fluoride use. I currently have a bottle of it for use after brushing my teeth because I have an insane cavity and I can't afford to get it filled. It lessens the pain and can help rebuild the tooth. If I have to die to get some relief from the pain, so be it. So far, it's working. Yesterday on a scale of 1-10, the pain was a 20 (can't focus on anything else, random pangs bad enough to send me to my knees, couldn't even eat a yogurt). Today it's been at most a 4, usually more of a 1-2. That's a huge difference.