No credible scientific evidence exists that ingesting fluoride is beneficial.
Whenever you point this out, people respond with studies that focused on topical application. This topic is weird. Otherwise intelligent people shut down and begin quoting movies from the 1960’s, and are somehow incapable of distinguishing between a topical mouthwash and oral consumption.
Might as well drink sunscreen and talk about the reduction in lip skin cancer.
We've been putting fluoride in water for a long time, and there are multiple studies that have looking in to it, I don't know why you think there aren't?
I guess it's arguable whether better dental health, plus cancer, could be considered a benefit. Would heavily depend on the rates of cancer or other harms vs. the rates of improved dental health. Certainly without thinking too deeply about it, childhood cavities would seem vastly preferable to nearly any sort of cancer unless the risk is minuscule.
Assuming you are not being disingenuous: there is a trade off with a lot of uncertainty - other things are also implicated in stomach cancer, and at the same time untreated dental disease causes other health problems too.
But I prefer to rely on brushing my own teeth and avoiding certain foods to maintain my own health, rather than have a medication added to my water supply because the guy next door does not take care of his health.
There are studies for children, but from what I’ve seen there’s no advantage for adults/permanent teeth. I don’t really think it’s worth potential harm for baby teeth.
It's harder to do studies that seperate out adults who didn't have fluoridated water as children, but for example from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23456704/ "In this nationally representative sample of Australian adults, caries-preventive effects of water fluoridation were at least as great in adults born before widespread implementation of fluoridation as after widespread implementation of fluoridation."
So if you didn't have fluoridated water as a kid, having it as an adult still provides a benefit. This particular study doesn't say anything about having it as a kid and then stopping, but again, it's hard to find significant populations that have experienced that.
>No credible scientific evidence exists that ingesting fluoride is beneficial.
???
>Regular toothbrushing with fluoride toothpaste is the principal non‐professional intervention to prevent caries, but the caries‐preventive effect varies according to different concentrations of fluoride in toothpaste, with higher concentrations associated with increased caries control.
Caveat that I have no issue whatsoever with fluoride.
The parent poster said "ingestion" of fluoride, but brushing is strictly not ingestion but rather topical application - you are directed to spit it back out. I'm curious if there were studies that covered drinking it.
The amount is calibrated for the small part that you ingest despite spittingit out. Kids toothpaste have much less because most of the paste is assumed to be ingested.
Putting fluoride in water to topically apply it to teeth (and get a higher risk of brain damage and stomach cancer among other things due to completely unnecessary ingestion).
The study you linked is indeed like proving that drinking sunscreen is great at preventing lip cancer. Or better yet: maybe we can start putting sunscreen in drinking water to prevent lip cancer?
Whenever you point this out, people respond with studies that focused on topical application. This topic is weird. Otherwise intelligent people shut down and begin quoting movies from the 1960’s, and are somehow incapable of distinguishing between a topical mouthwash and oral consumption.
Might as well drink sunscreen and talk about the reduction in lip skin cancer.