With Few Dentists and Fluoride Under Siege, Rural America Risks New Surge of Tooth Decay.

- Their toothless kids don't deserve this.
  
  Unfortunately, those toothless kids, did. They will vote just like their ignorant parents.
- May you have the teeth you voted for.
- obvious that voting Democrat would have yielded same results except it would have been Harris being butt buddies with the rest of the Republicans at the whim of the oligarchs that really run this country
  election meddling done by both parties through the lowering of the education standards in the country, keeping everyone poor because of low minimum wage laws, making sure everyone is kept sick from lack of proper healthcare, etcetera ensures the country kept where it is at now by ensuring citizens never make it to their full potential and are always voting poorly thus rigging the board so the oligarchs always win
  by design and voting will not change it
  
  obvious that voting Democrat would have yielded same results
  For real dude? She would be taking flouride out of the water? Jesus Christ I can't with some people on this site.

- I think I know this guy

To all Dentists and doctors and others:
EUROPE IS OPEN FOR YOU!
- I wish it was that simple my friend. I’m a medical doctor but unfortunately English is the only language in fluent in. Although many Europeans speak English, and I’m willing to learn other languages, realistically there is no way I will ever be proficient enough to practice medicine in a second language. So my options are pretty limited in where I could go and how many jobs there really are available to me.
  
  It is easy. The EU has the EU-BLUE CARD for specialists like medical specialists
  And it doesnt hurt learning a language ^^
  
  This might come as a shock to you, but English actually originates from Europe.
  
  Ireland and the UK are solid options though.
  Also, it's most definitely not impossible to practice medicine in a language you're not a native speaker of. For example, Syrians make up more than 1% of all doctors in Germany, the vast majority of which arrived in 2015-2016.
- Most of Europe does not have fluoridated water.
  
  Ah yes Europe and Britain known for good teeth
- Most of Europe does not put fluor in the drinking water though.
  
  most of europe also has way better food than the US though

I grew up in a rural area where most of us had well water. Our school would however have a program where the kids would get fluoride treatments. It basically was just a mouthwash.
- This is so much more effective, less wasteful, and safer than putting it in tap water that every person will be forced to drink liters of every day.
  It's so obvious and the people pushing for fluoridated water seem so stupid to me because they have literally nothing to support their argument except the status quo. It's one of the worst examples of hivemind I've ever seen.
  
  no, well, it is known and quite well medically understood that a higher fluorine intake will indeed make the teeth harder, as fluorine becomes a mineral in the teeth. there's no or extremely little doubt about that.
  however, what one could argue is that it's not entirely clear whether fluoride could cause unwanted side-effects; or whether adding it to all the water is really necessary (or wasteful).
- Imagine actually going to the store to buy tooth care products and actually using them. HOW FUCKING HORRIBLE.
  No instead we need to poison water with fluoride instead.
  
  [citation needed]
  
  Fluoride occurs naturally in many plants and if you drink tea you are drinking a similar amount of fluoride to what they add to water. It won't do as much for your teeth if it's sweet tea, and some other aspects of tea can stain teeth. But humans have been drinking fluoride in beverages for thousands of years, it's not some new poision we invented and started adding to the water without being sure it was safe.
  
  So tooth care products must be "poisoned" also then

I’m sure some of you have concerns, but there is help. No need to worry; smile with confidence using dentures that stay in place using polygrip. Act now and use this code for a discount..
- Or just brush your teeth. It’s not hard.
  
  I brushed them but I still got cavities and one tooth moved up into my jaw requiring surgery to remove.
  But perhaps I should have just brushed harder...

Making America grate again.
Because it’s too difficult to chew otherwise.

Back to 1900. People will be getting dentures at 40. Without teeth you can't eat or talk properly, your jaw starts to degenerate. There may be a connection between severe tooth decay and heart disease as mouth bacteria enter the blood stream.
- There may be a connection between severe tooth decay and heart disease as mouth bacteria enter the blood stream.
  I'm pretty sure that's a well established connection. Wash your teeth kids, your heart will love it.
- Also potential connection between tooth decay and Alzheimer's

But the man in the telly box dun told me it was gunna make my kids dumb....

There's a Sonicare toothbrush for $20, combine it with off brand head replacements. And a waterpik is good for gums.
I know it's not an anti-consumer PSA, but if you need tools to take care of yourself, best to know about them.
- I think there’s a distinction between using a product to benefit your health directly and consumerism. This isn’t something most people could make on their own adequately and isn’t too expensive compared to not brushing.
  I’d also highly advise to use a fluoridated toothpaste and mouth rinse. I typically rinse my mouth after lunch if I don’t brush to remove any food or smell. I had bad teeth as a kid (genetics) and fluoride has literally saved my adult teeth. That and constant vigilance. lol
  
  Related to that, it boggles the mind that Americans need a PRESCRIPTION for 2.1% i can just go buy that off the shelf up here.

The Americantoothless nightmare is here.

The good ol' bottle of everclear and a tang.

Imagine toothpaste with fluoride that's hard to avoid buying if you buy toothpaste in the store ever. Are people not getting toothpaste anymore?
In the developed world, US is an outlier. Also:
Recent studies suggest that water fluoridation, particularly in industrialized countries, may be unnecessary because topical fluorides (such as in toothpaste) are widely used and cavity rates have become low.[3] For this reason, some scientists consider fluoridation to be unethical due to the lack of informed consent.[12]
Maybe fluoridated toothpaste is enough?
- The data says it's not enough. That's the point. We're talking about averages here, and children who have no choice, right?
  
  The data
  I see the article link some observational cohort studies, which rank somewhere in the middle of the hierarchy of evidence. Are there any systematic reviews?
  As mentioned before, water fluoridation is uncommon in other developed countries. Shouldn't there be tooth decay problems there, too?
  A public health policy should meet the highest standards of evidence such as a systematic review.
  Systematic review does show toothpaste fluoridated at sufficient concentrations suffices when administered. Are people not brushing teeth enough, and wouldn't that be a bigger issue for tooth decay? Is the fluoride in their toothpaste too low?
  A systematic review could reconcile the tooth decay observed in those cohort studies with that of the rest of the developed world lacking fluoridated water (whether they need it there or why they don't). That would support a public policy.

I read we are making tooth decay a thing and thought of this song Root of all evil by phycostick BTW the song is nsfw

- Since you seem so concerned about this, how did you come to the conclusion that fluoride treatments are "poisoning" people?
  You sound like Alex Jones, and if you're a reasonable person that should give you real pause about the shit you're saying.
  
  https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/completed/fluoride
  The NTP monograph concluded, with moderate confidence, that higher levels of fluoride exposure, such as drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter, are associated with lower IQ in children. The NTP review was designed to evaluate total fluoride exposure from all sources and was not designed to evaluate the health effects of fluoridated drinking water alone. It is important to note that there were insufficient data to determine if the low fluoride level of 0.7 mg/L currently recommended for U.S. community water supplies has a negative effect on children’s IQ.
  Merely twice the recommended fluoridation level in the US was found definitively to lower IQ in children. That's far too close and the benefits are not there. Most countries DO NOT fluoridate their water. The US is one of a few developed countries that do. Those countries that don't have seen similar reductions in tooth decay as the US as dental hygiene has become more culturally and publicly supported. I don't know if you're paying attention to the news but there is a fuck ton of evidence that something is deeply wrong with the American populace.
- Because a lot of those people are children.
  Fluoridating water is cheap. If someone is uneducated enough to not know or care about how their dental health affects their overall health, and the same for their child, it matters significantly less because they get a baseline level of care from the public water system. It means they use less medicare/medicaid funds in the years and decades to follow.
  The single study cited in a lot of anti-fluoride laws/debates is talking about possible single digit IQ differences from possible overdoses on the scale of countries. That's smaller than the effect of the same person taking the same test on different days. It's a textbook example of finding noise in the data, pointing to it, and saying this proves exactly what I want it to. And it's being used to remove one of the best documented, lowest cost, most effective large scale public health measures of the 20th century. Because it will not impact people with parents who can afford dental care and/or have the education to value it.
  
  One key issue is to provide flouride to pregnant mothers, so the babies can actually start building up the "proto-teeth" in their gums properly.
- the reason why they have fluorine in the drinking water in the US (but not in europe) is because people in the US consume drastically more sugar, so their teeth need extra protection.