I'll just point out that the edentulous rate in Belgium is higher than in the United States by a pretty significant amount.I will keep repeating this. Down here in Belgium, they do not add fluoride to the water. Our teeth are fine. No the water is not naturally high in fluoride. We have dental care that is payed back by government. No it does not mean we have dozens of cavities that need to be filled. We just brush our teeth two times a day with tooth paste with plenty of fluoride. What does make a difference in my own experience? Less soda.
This usually fills my message box with tons of replies. Of course I may be missing something. Some people did argue well that some nuance was missing. They are right. A lot of others just had trouble seeing beyond black and white. To those people, do not respond immediately. Wait a day.
Here goes nothing.
I had to look it up:I'll just point out that the edentulous rate in Belgium is higher than in the United States by a pretty significant amount.
What do you mean would? They are following him off a cliff. And a whole lot of non-Trumpers are doing sweet f-all about it....Trumpers would follow Trump off a cliff, ...
That's still not wrong.I never would have expected Dr. Strangelove to age so poorly. When it was written, ranting about water fluoridation was suitable for indicating complete madness in a fictional character.
50? Aren't you an optimistAmericans want an empire, but we only accept paying for the violent bits. In 50 years we'll be absolutely indistinguishable from Russia, and the national narrative will be "see what China has done to us."
Yes this was a real thing and it continued until the mid 20th century. I grew up just south of the border and in NE England it was still a common thing, at least in mining communities, up until the 1960s even for middle class children to get a complete set of dentures for their 21st birthday. In fairness I should mention that that area was so backward/conservative that even by the late 1960s some kindergarten teachers would regard left handedness as an impediment to be "educated" out of usually by requiring the relevant child to use only their right hand for crayons, pencils & pensEver heard of the Scottish wedding gift ?
Back in the 18th and 19th century a well regarded gift for well off or upper class newlyweds was a set of dentures.
As you were going to lose them anyway what would be better than a new set of teeth to start you new life together
This of course first required all your remaining teeth to be pulled.
Its now commonly referred to as ‘the Scottish wedding gift’ because the practice apparently continued in certain communities in Scotland until mid 20th century
… but primarily only for the bride, (stop it!) as a kind of reverse dowery
I had not heard this, but I checked and was shocked at the difference. Roughly 20% of the US elderly population is edentulous, while the rate in Belgium is over 40%, more than double.I'll just point out that the edentulous rate in Belgium is higher than in the United States by a pretty significant amount.
Everyone who's anyone knows flouride in the body interferes with the production of natural essence.I never would have expected Dr. Strangelove to age so poorly. When it was written, ranting about water fluoridation was suitable for indicating complete madness in a fictional character.
It's much worse for the elderly population, with rates in Belgium being more than double those in the US.I had to look it up:
- Belgium (for age 20+): 14.4%
- USA (for age 20+): 10.2%
1. https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/defa...alth/oral-health-bel-2022-country-profile.pdf
2. https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/defa...alth/oral-health-usa-2022-country-profile.pdf
The preferred metric is, I believe, a positive correlation between fluoridation and adherence to communism.How did they manage to keep this a secret?
Didn't the general population notice an immediate change in [insert whatever metric the anti fluoride tribe are trumpeting today]?
Trying to conjur a good food analogy...Imagine being a "both parties are bad" person in 2026. JFC.
Apparently in Alabama they get their science from Dr Strangelove as god intended.
And again, the rate of edentulism in German seniors is around 25%, compared with ~20% among US seniors.German here. We also do not add fluoride to our water and Germany’s water purity law is one of the strictest I know. Most tooth pastes available here have fluoride in them, but I’m also using fluoride-less ones for quite some time now. With age 50 in sight I have not had a single tooth go bad. So imho this is a non-issue.
What’s worse to me: Every time I visit a country that puts chlorine in the water I can hardly drink that. It’s like drinking swimming pool water. The UK and France come to mind here.
My late Mom was a dentist. She started practicing at around the time Dr. Strangelove was released, in which film a fluoride conspiracist is portrayed as a bug-eyed lunatic. And theatre audiences laughed. Because it was ridiculous. This shit was thoroughly evaluated as paranoid nonsense over SIXTY YEARS AGO. What is even happening?
While the entire state of Alabama voted for Trump, the City of Birmingham voted overwhelmingly for his opponent each time he has appeared on a ballotthese people voted for dumpy even when their water was fluoride free, which means fluoride can't be the reason that they are stupid.
Didn’t know that. I just had the feeling that people were concerned about fluoride-less water and wanted to share that this is normal in other parts of the world. Reading some of the comments it seemed that tooth decay was the worry of no longer having fluoride in the water.And again, the rate of edentulism in German seniors is around 25%, compared with ~20% among US seniors.
Purity of water is unrelated to tooth decay. Not sure why you bothered to latch onto that.
Science? In a red state? Not a chance. Assuming the data even exists, if it disagrees with what those in power "know" to be right, they'll just order it destroyed. Or make up their own and use that instead.Isn’t this a perfect opportunity to study the science further? You have an entire community of people that were essentially given placebo (thinking their water is fluoridated, but wasn’t). So these people would not have made any change to their brushing or fluoridation habits.
Now, what health impacts can be measured now after 2 years, versus in earlier years?
So what?I grew up on well water, didn't really use "city water" daily until I was in my 20's. I'm almost 60 now and my teeth are in fine shape.
In completely unrelated news, the Guitar Center in Birmingham, Alabama reported record-breaking sales of Gibson and PRS instruments since August 2023Dental health in locations that do fluoridate their water versus those that don't are pretty stark. I'm sure it's a boon for business for dentists in the latter.
Feel free to collect it, but there's already a huge amount of data on this from the early 20th century - when it was noted that areas with naturally fluoridated water had lower rates of dental caries - through multiple large-scale studies done on public water supplies, starting with Grand Rapids, Michigan where dental caries fell by 70% within 10 years of the introduction of fluoridation, a result duplicated many, many times over the years. What more "data" do you need?The fact they did this without telling anyone is atrocious. But the data should be stark to show the effects as no-one would have changed their behavior as they didn't know.
Where's the data?
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said "Idumbest fucking country. next we'll be adding lead back to the gasoline cas it makes people feel warm and fuzzy
Water is called the universal solvent for a reason. Your well water likely had plenty of fluoride and other things dissolved in it that it picked up as it seeped through the aquifer.I grew up on well water, didn't really use "city water" daily until I was in my 20's. I'm almost 60 now and my teeth are in fine shape.