Fluoride fraud

A dangerous chemical or a beneficial addition?

If exposed to a high dose of this substance, you can increase your risk of heart disease, depression and cancer. It can also cause acne, weight gain and accelerate cognitive decline, leading to dementia. It can even negatively impact your dental health if you take too much. Sounds like you probably shouldn’t be ingesting something that causes such adverse effects, right? Well before you start tweeting about the dangers of fluoride, we’re going to let you in on a little secret: the effects we described are a result of eating too much sugar. We're not trying to trick you – the point we’re trying to make is that almost anything is ‘bad’ if you take too much.

A topic of much debate

It can be difficult to sift through all the information and find out the truth. But in actual fact, all you need to know is that if it genuinely wasn’t safe, then it simply wouldn’t be so widely accessible and recommended by medical professionals. There are concerns that exposure to high doses can cause adverse effects, but this is true for many things we regularly eat and drink, such as sugar, caffeine and alcohol. The concerns about fluoride don’t have enough evidence to support them, but the benefits are vast and scientifically backed.

Fluoride has been shown to prevent cavities via a number of mechanisms

Firstly, it stops the enamel from demineralising in the presence of bacterial acids and is also said to inhibit these bacterial acids, thus protecting the enamel from two different angles. In the event of acid attack, it enhances remineralisation and the newly remineralised enamel is stronger and more resistant to subsequent attacks.

Here are the edel white fluoride-containing products