Sawbones Classics: Fluoride

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Sawbones, Meritor of Miss Guy and Medicine.

I'm your co-host, Justin McElroy, and I'm Sidney McElroy.

And it's just kind of a I have to do that for superstition, but this is not the actual episode yet.

No, you will, will you do it again?

Will they hear that again?

I don't know.

Who knows?

What are we doing?

Well, Justin, there was been a lot of news lately about health and health and human services and the secretary thereof.

Yeah, and one of the things that was making headlines is fluoride.

We know RFK Jr.

is not a big fan of putting fluoride in public drinking water.

He has a lot of concerns that it's a neurotoxin.

And shall I just preface with many of these concerns have been found to not be based in any sort of evidence as long as fluoride is kept to appropriate levels, meeting EPA standards in our drinking water.

However, he has recently said publicly that he is going to direct the CDC to stop recommending it.

That's not the same as banning it, but he is going to direct them to stop recommending it.

And he could work with the EPA to change the levels that are allowed in drinking water to,

in effect, ban it.

Yeah.

If that makes sense.

Already one state, Utah, has banned fluoride in public drinking water and

RFK Jr.

has applauded that and feels like they have set the precedent that should be followed by the rest of the nation.

So I feel like it's an important time to remind everybody how great fluoride is.

Fluoridating our water is one of the greatest public health achievements of the century.

And also share with you, once again, our most controversial episode of Sawbones ever.

Yes,

this is the episode that has generated more

emails than any other episode we've ever done.

And so we've taken a lot of time to think about those emails.

We've read all of them.

And Cindy, did you want to update anything that people are going to hear in the episode?

nope fluoride in public drinking water is a good idea and uh we should continue to do it and um there's a whole you can listen to the whole episode because it's still the same there's no new science on this there it is

all right we'll see we'll see you next week sawbones is a show about medical history And nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion.

It's for fun.

Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil?

We think you've earned it.

Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth.

You're worth it.

All right.

Tomorrow is about to books.

One, two, one, two, three, four.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Sawbones, American Turf Miss Guided Medicine.

I'm your co-host, Justin Tyler McElroy.

And I'm Sidney Smurl McElroy.

That's some thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's some cold stuff, Columbus.

Dag,

you know why?

I was wearing my official badge and you were

official staff badge.

I wanted to make sure that people knew I

wanted to

just wandering around back there eating peanut butter and drinking beer with no reason.

Yeah, I'm hearing a lot of people just saying random things, and

I completely agree with all of you.

I love Kosai.

It's a magical wonderland that I got to go to very rarely when I was a child in Huntington, West Virginia.

They would take us here to Columbus to see Kosai and it was beautiful and amazing and I love Kosai.

We're here and I feel like we have to go to Kosai tomorrow because

I mean we're here.

They would bring us to Kosai and they would say, children, this building is where the first Wendy's was.

Can you even imagine?

Click, click, click.

That's where it was right there.

Now,

here's a unicycle that you ride on a wire.

Amazing.

So we love Columbus.

We come to Columbus a lot to go to Kosai.

And also growing up in Huntington for like concerts and stuff.

Like this was the cool place where cool stuff was happening was Columbus

but coast Columbus is so much more than Kosai which so many people forget from Huntington

did you know for example that Columbus was the destination of the very first ever cargo flight

it's true

it's true They were transporting silk.

If you're saying you knew that, you're lying.

Yeah, you know.

No, I think they probably knew.

They're transporting silk, which like if you imagine planes back then, that makes a lot of sense.

Like, hey, I want to do the first cargo flight.

What do you want to bring?

Something light.

Planes are bad.

Don't none of us trust them.

Silk?

Perfect.

What other facts do you know about Columbus?

Columbus is the home of

America's first water filtration system.

Columbus.

That's important.

Yeah.

Clean water.

Clean water is so cool.

Yeah.

No bacteria, no parasites.

That's great.

Yeah.

Do you like clean water?

Yeah, I do, actually.

I never really thought about it, Squid, but you're right.

I do like water clean.

You know what doesn't clean water, but it's also something we add to water that makes water better.

So

well,

yes.

Oh, wait.

No, I know this.

I don't know what I'm talking about.

I know this, crystal light.

Or Propel.

Is Propel the thing now?

You might know it by the name H2Flow.

Right.

Fluoride.

Fluoride.

That's right.

Fluoride is something else we had to water.

Do you like that segue?

Fluoride is something else we had to water that's really important.

There we go.

What's fluoride?

Here's what I know about fluoride.

Okay.

I used to put,

did you all do this?

Have the foam thing that they would put the goop in at the dentist and you would bite it for like 20 minutes?

I'm so relieved to hear that you all did that too.

Because

if not, like, I need to talk to my dentist emergently.

We need, there needs to be a cold case investigation reopened

to Dr.

Judith Woodruff and her practice of just like pumping juicy foam into kids' mouths.

But who did who did the school-based fluoride programs where you had to like to get the, they would bring like the tray of like, here are your shots of fluoride, children, and you would like do your little shot and swish it around.

And I always felt like this is a great, this is a special day.

This sucks, but it's a special day because it's different, I guess.

I don't know.

Yeah.

You never

fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral.

It's in rocks, but it can get into air and soil and water, which is why it's important.

And the reason we talk about it is that when

you have acid from bacteria, so you got sugar in your mouth because you eat it.

We all eat sugar, right?

We're all eating sugar.

Even if you don't know you're eating sugar, you're eating

sugar.

There's sugars.

Sugars everywhere.

You're eating sugars, even in your beans.

Only on saturday.

Even in your beans, there are sugar.

There's some bean sugar, I'll admit,

but it's very slow.

It's a slow carp.

So bacteria eat the sugar, and we get acids in our mouth, and those acids eat away at the enamel on our teeth.

And fluoride helps to build that back up.

So that's where fluoride comes into play in dental health.

Now, we didn't know that for a really long time.

How long?

Until the early 1900s, which is like really recent for our especially for our podcast.

We're usually talking about like ancient Greeks and Romans, and right now we're talking about early 1900s is when we figured this out.

But the first time we connected fluoride to teeth was actually in a really unhealthy way.

The first connection between fluoride and teeth was a very bad one.

Go on.

So

it's 1901.

It's not.

No.

Well.

Nice try.

Try to gaslight me.

Drink some more.

It's 1901.

And a dental student named Frederick McKay

has, he's finished dental school and he's decided he's going to head west, young man.

He's going to go out there and seek his fortune and his future in dentistry.

And he's going to Colorado Springs to start his first dental practice.

And he gets there and he thinks, I made a great choice because everybody here seems to have brown teeth.

And that seems like a great place to start a dental practice.

Yeah, for sure.

Because there are a lot of jacked up grills in Colorado Springs at this point in history.

I mean, lots of brown teeth, Brown teeth.

Okay.

Okay.

You got that?

Yeah, brown teeth.

I'm with you.

Yeah, so they, so many people have brown stains on their teeth so much that some people look like their entire teeth were coated in chocolate, as he writes.

Especially kids, especially the children in the town of Colorado Springs in 1901 look like their teeth are coated in chocolate 24-7 all the time.

So if you're a dentist, you're like, jackpot,

I picked the right place.

Maybe, except like, I wouldn't say your values necessarily align with this populace.

Like,

the first guy that gets his teeth cleaned in the town where everyone's touch are green, everybody's teeth are brown, is like,

wow, you really ruined it for a bit, I guess, Todd.

I guess we all got to get our teeth cleaned now.

Thanks, Todd.

Real cool, man.

Thanks.

But here's the thing.

He started seeing these people.

And it didn't just come off with a brush.

And he started reading in his dental books.

Now, I have none of these and I don't know anything about teeth.

There's my, I read about this, but I'm a doctor.

We don't know about teeth.

I've said this before on the podcast, but it's the God's honest truth.

In medical school, I feel like it's a monopoly that dentists have where they're like, don't teach doctors about teeth.

We don't want them messing in teeth.

That's our area.

Don't.

So, I mean, he had dental books.

I don't.

He read them.

I haven't.

He still didn't find anything about brown teeth.

So he still didn't know why, even though I scrub and scrub and scrub and brush and brush and brush, all of these people in Colorado Springs have brown teeth.

So he still couldn't figure it out.

Even some of the local livestock, like cows and sheeps and horses, had brown teeth.

They called it copper teeth in the livestock.

It had nothing to do with copper.

I don't know why old-timey people name things old-timey things.

But there you go.

It had nothing to do with copper, but even some of the livestock had brown teeth.

And if you ask the locals, like, hey,

you, why do you think everybody has brown teeth?

They would say things like, well, magic.

It's 1901.

Probably like as somebody

ran over somebody everybody thought was a witch with their carrot or something.

No, they would say things like some of the common thoughts were, you know, it's the water.

There's a lot of calcium in it.

We eat a lot of pork out here.

It's probably the milk because it's kind of low quality,

et cetera, et cetera.

That's it.

And nobody had any good idea about it.

And there had been reports other places at this point in history.

So there were places in like Durango, Mexico, where people were getting brown teeth and they said, well, it's probably something in the water.

In Naples, Italy, so that far away, the locals said, well, we have brown teeth, but it's probably just all the volcanic ash and dust they probably make it look good too it's irritating you know they do you know they do you know they do so continental it looks so cool with their brown teeth and and they're like it's just volcanic they got the little scooter like they can sell those scooters like i think it like they can make a vespa look cool like i think they can sell brown teeth And we're like, what's wrong with your teeth?

And they're like, stupid America.

Americans.

Nothing is wrong with them.

That's a French guy, by the way.

There's no way for me to do Italian.

It's not going to sound like Mario.

Whenever you go into your stupid American accent, it's a French one.

So that's okay.

Still with America.

So he read these reports and he thought, Dr.

McKay, and he thought, well, none of this really makes any sense.

It still doesn't explain why all my patients have brown teeth.

So he decided this was a whole new clinical entity that had never been discovered before.

And he named it, of course, the very clever Colorado Brownstein.

Hey, everybody, my name is Colorado Brownstein, and we're going to play some saxophone music for you tonight.

Everybody get real comfortable.

Here's my first song,

Colorado Colorado Brownstein.

I'm going to lay it down real for you, real smooth.

Here we go.

The other name that he tried for it later was Rocky Mountain Mottled Teeth, but it never caught on the way that Colorado Brownstein

persisted,

as you can imagine.

And he tried to get national attention for this, but everybody was like, listen, if there was a

disease of, like, if everybody's teeth were turning brown, we'd know about it all over the U.S.

So this is this is not something that's real.

It's like in a few people.

And so he said, well, you know what?

I'm going to do a study with local dentists to try to prove that this is a problem around here.

So he started this kind of just like survey with local dentists.

Like, what is the scope of this illness?

And at the end of it, he found that 90%

of the kids born in Colorado Springs had brown teeth.

Okay.

Like, that's a lot of kids

with brown teeth.

And so he published these results.

Like, listen, maybe not all the adults have brown teeth, but we've been studying.

And now all these kids who are born in Colorado Springs are growing up.

They get rid of their baby teeth.

They grow their permanent teeth and they're brown.

And it's 90% of them.

And what's going on?

And he used this statistic to lure a luminary of the dentistry world to Colorado Springs.

Of course, you know, I'm talking about Green Vardaman Black, GV Black.

Obviously,

everybody's heard.

Sorry, one more time.

Of GV Black.

What's the name?

Green Vartaman Black.

Okay, that's good.

That is his

series of unfortunate events books, right?

He was,

you're not a dentist.

If you were.

Guilty.

If you were, you would know this name because he is just, he is a giant in the dentistry world.

He invented one of the first drills.

I mean, he was, he was really one of the fathers of modern dentistry.

This guy devoted his entire life and career to dentistry.

So to, for Dr.

McKay to get Dr.

Black, Dr.

G.V.

Black,

to come out to Colorado Springs and look at these kids with brown teeth was a huge deal.

Trust me.

I'm going to take your word for it.

Trust me.

I'm not a dentist, but I know that this was a big deal because he was a big deal dentist and researcher.

So he comes out and initially, like he had invited him before.

This wasn't the first invitation, but he was like, I'm not coming to Colorado Springs.

I'm kind of a big deal.

I don't know if you've heard of me.

I'm GV Black.

Someday Sidney's going to say I'm a big deal.

And Justin's going to be like, whatever, but it's true.

But finally, he came out because he was like, 90% of kids have brown teeth.

Well, okay, I could do something with this.

so he came out and they started studying the problem together and they had a lot of trouble trying to figure out why I mean they they figured that that this was a problem a lot of people in Colorado Springs have brown teeth mostly children and they had zero clue as to why and they studied that until black's death in 1915 which didn't give them an answer, but they did come up with a couple really important observations during this time period.

So number one, the first was that it mainly seemed to happen to young children, people who were born there who had not yet developed their permanent teeth.

So, if you were, if you moved to the area, you were much less likely to develop it.

But if you grew up in Colorado Springs, it seemed to be something so inborn or something like that, something with your developmental process.

The second thing they noticed is that whatever made these teeth brown

also seemed to make them resistant to decay

okay so they looked bad like armor right

so they looked bad but they were actually great

they were actually super healthy teeth and they kept noticing that like these kids would have teeth that were really jacked up but then they would they would you know examine them and go well you got no cavities amazing so whatever is making their teeth so brown seems to be making them healthier it's quite a deal with the devil though if you think about it like no no cavities, but

there's this one thing.

It looks like you just willy wonka it out all over your teeth.

Yeah, Augustus gloop teeth.

It's called the Augustus gloop disorder.

All over your teeth all the time.

So McKay had some theories as to what could be causing it, but nothing concrete.

In 1923, there was a case in Oakley, Idaho that really helped him break through.

So the town contacted him because they knew the studies he had already done in Colorado Springs.

And they said, listen, we have kids that have started developing these same brown stains that the kids in Colorado Springs had, and we don't know why.

And so he went there to Oakley, Idaho, and he started studying.

You know, he was like, oh, you mean Colorado brown stain?

I'm actually not going to say that out loud, but yes, but I'm not going to just say it once.

I'm actually not going to say it.

So he went to Idaho and he studied the kids and he couldn't find anything.

But then they said, you know, when this all started is when we built a new communal water pipe.

We, we, you know, we needed clean water into the community.

And so we built this big pipe system from one of the local hot springs.

And it pumped water into the community.

And ever since we did that, the kids born into the community have developed these stains.

And he said, well, listen, I tested your water with the means he had at hand.

He couldn't find anything wrong with the water, but he went, you know what?

You should probably stop using this water.

I don't know what it is, but this is the source.

And they said, okay, fine.

So they stopped using this pipe.

They went back to old methods of water.

Over time,

no more kids are born with Colorado Brown stain.

So this is the first clue where

whatever the problem is, it's in the water.

So now we know this.

He had suspected it, but now he knows for sure it's in the water.

And at the same time, as you see with like these kinds of research studies, like this research is being done in the US, everybody's really excited about it, everybody's really interested.

And at the same time, you could echo like studies are being done in the UK, studies are being done in Italy that kind of show the same results.

Like there's something in the water, we don't know what it is.

And we finally figured it out when it happened again in a place called Bauxite, Arkansas.

It's a whole lot of names.

Bauxite.

Bauxite.

Bauxite, Arkansas is a town that was essentially owned by the aluminum company of Arkansas.

Oh my God, I thought you were going to say Illuminati.

I was so excited.

Dang it.

No, I'm sorry.

I was had one second.

I was like, oh, is she going to,

are we going to go, oh.

Aluminum, fine.

Not that exciting.

And there's one person who's in the Illuminati in the crowd tonight who's about to be like, that's my boys.

I'm on you, by the way.

I saw you with a fist raise.

I got your number.

The Illuminati do play a role in this story, but not yet.

Are you kidding me?

Go faster.

These people got to get home and I got to hear about the Illuminati.

The medicines, the medicines that escalate my cows for the mouth.

Oh, these shorts, you've noticed them.

Yeah, these are sort of a transitional short.

They go from the warmer months to the more formal short-wearing months of August and September.

When you need a classier short, where did I get them?

Yeah, thank you.

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You know, we've been doing My Brother, My Brother, me for 15 years, and

maybe you stopped listening for a while, maybe you never listened, and you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years, I know where this has ended up.

But no, no, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined!

No, no, no, it's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Lum.

I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

So Bauxide, Arkansas, it's this tiny little town.

It's mainly owned by this aluminum company.

That's where they produce and whatever process aluminum in their giant factories.

And they had recently been under a lot of scrutiny for suspected problems in the water and the soil.

from aluminum.

There have been a lot of questions in the media recently from what does having this giant aluminum factory do to the health of the townsfolk.

So now in this same town where we have all these concerns about aluminum, all of a sudden we have these brown stains on kids' teeth.

So as you can imagine, there was a lot of attention, a lot of doctors and public health service officers and media attention focused on this town.

Is it the aluminum?

That was the big question.

So, first of all, Dr.

McKay shows up, a public health service officer named Grover Kempf go and they investigate.

They analyze the water, and using their tools, they again can't find a source.

But they're not using

the best ways of analyzing water at the time.

They're looking for very obvious bacterial infections or

toxins, but they don't have all the ways that we do now of analyzing water.

Well, guess who does?

The Aluminum Company of America.

They have these resources.

Sam,

you got me again!

I thought for sure that time.

No, not the Illuminati.

You know who does have water testing that would put all that to shame.

So they do this.

They do this purely to cover their butts.

They say, I don't know what's going on, but I sure hope it's not aluminum.

We got to test this water and figure out if it's our fault so that we can do some damage control and they start testing the water and what they find with their more sophisticated equipment is that the water in bauxite has incredibly high levels of fluoride mm-hmm there he is not aluminum only took us 25 minutes we got that culprit

At the time, they thought, well, this doesn't make any sense.

Fluoride means nothing.

This can't have anything to do with it.

So they get new samples, they reanalyze it.

And again, these are chemists.

Yes, they work for the aluminum company, but they're chemists.

They're scientists.

You know, I'm a scientist.

Like, we're nerdy.

We just want to know the truth.

We just want to figure it out.

And like, they're like, well, this is fascinating.

Fluoride in the water.

What could this mean?

And so they do it again, and they're like, more fluoride.

This is fascinating.

And so.

You can't see this if you're listening to this podcast later, but Sydney is...

hilariously tweaking her glasses because she says this is adorable but this is what scientists do when they're excited they're straighten their glasses.

So they find all this fluoride, and the chief chemist at the Aluminum Company of America writes a letter to Dr.

McKay and says, Listen, I don't know what this means.

I don't know why it would have any effect, but here's the deal: you're worried about these brown teeth.

We analyze the water.

This is what we found.

And if you want to get water samples from the other communities that have brown teeth, we will analyze it in our lab and look for the same thing we found here.

And he says, yes, I want to do that.

They send samples from Colorado Springs, they send samples from Oakley, Idaho.

There are other communities where I've had this brown teeth.

They send all these samples to the lab and they find high levels of fluoride.

So there you go.

Fluoride is named as the cause of all these brown teeth.

Now, this could be the end of the story because he's raising some obvious questions for me, but go on.

So, and this leads, this takes us all the way to 1930.

We're in 1930 now, and the National Institute of Health has gotten wind of all these results, and they're fascinated by this.

They go, oh my gosh, well, fluoride and water can do these things to tooth enamel, cause modeled tooth enamel that can absorb brown stains more easily.

And this is very interesting.

But you know what?

Also, was really interesting is that

it also seemed like all these people with the brown teeth didn't get tooth decay at the rate of all of our other citizens?

It was a huge problem at the time, people with tooth decay.

Everybody's teeth were rotting out of their heads.

And so they said, you know what, this is really interesting because I don't know, this fluoride in the water, while it turned their teeth brown, they also seemed to be really healthy brown teeth.

So let's start doing some studies to see how much fluoride in water will turn your teeth brown.

So the National Institute of Health did a lot of studies and they found that at one part per million, your teeth are good.

They're not going to turn brown for the most part.

Over that, you might get brown teeth.

Under that, you're going to be safe.

So then they start saying, you know what?

So if we know that we can put up to one part per million fluoride in water and your teeth won't turn brown for the most part,

what will it do positively for teeth?

So Dr.

H.

Trendley Dean, who was working at the National Institute of Health, said, you know what, let's start studying what this might do for tooth decay.

So he started putting all these different amounts of fluoride in water to see, like, could this maybe

positively impact tooth decay?

And this wasn't like a brand new idea.

Like, since the 1800s, there had been theories that, like, fluoride pills have something to do with bones.

We don't know what teeth are, but they seem like bones.

Maybe, maybe that might help them in some way.

So, you know, maybe if we put fluoride in water, this might help people's teeth.

So they did a hard sell in a lot of different communities, and they finally got the community of Grand Rapids, Michigan to agree to be guinea pigs and put fluoride in their water for the first time in 1945.

So that was the first time that fluoride was added to the water of an entire city.

1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

God, if that had been Columbus, that would have been a great payoff.

Dang.

Okay, well, go on.

No, sorry.

I know it was Michigan, too.

Congrats, Kern Rapids.

You did it.

I know.

I'm really sorry about that.

Everybody here hates Michigan.

I know.

I told you that.

I know.

You seem to forget I was reminding you.

Okay.

They were guinea pigs, though.

Ah, ha ha ha.

Take that, Michigan.

It could have gone horribly wrong.

But it didn't.

Over 50.

But it could have.

You guys are laughing at that, you sicken me.

It's just football, guys.

Calm down, okay?

Yikes.

We're talking about human life in the balance.

It's really disturbing.

Go on.

I mean, human teeth.

Well, human teeth, but it could have killed them.

Maybe.

You didn't know.

I mean, they look around a bunch of people with baked bean teeth and they're like, well, I don't know.

Put some

dirt on it, fluoride.

I don't know.

Guessing.

So, over 15 years, they studied the population of Grand Rapids, and they found that the 30,000 school children that they followed had a rate of tooth decay 60%

less than the previous generation.

This is still at the one part per million.

One part per million of fluoride.

This is a huge drop.

So, 60% drop in the rate of tooth decay.

And this is meaningful.

I mean, I know, like, it sucks to have cavities.

It sucks to lose teeth, but it also sucks to have cavities that you can't have the tooth pulled because you can't afford to have the tooth pulled or that get infected and you get horrible infections from these dental infections.

So there are more serious consequences to,

you know, bad teeth.

So it's not so big a deal as like, well, whatever, like we improve kids' smiles.

Like, that's great, whatever.

So everybody in Michigan smiling.

No, I mean, like, this was a huge deal in terms of preventive health.

Like we did this one thing and now we have a 60% decrease in dental decay.

And so the result of that is every community in America went wild.

And now we have

bananas for this good stuff.

Well everybody wanted good teeth.

Everybody wanted their teeth to stop falling out.

So now 200 million Americans have fluoride in their drinking water.

You probably have fluoride in your all.

Why is it not all?

Shouldn't everybody have that?

It just seems to be adopted community by community.

Okay.

Yeah.

But no, but you've got it, though, right?

We're cool.

Yeah, we got it.

You guys got it.

Most

major cities have it.

I always ask the question when I'm seeing patients, like, do you have city water or well water?

Because city water generally has fluoride.

Well water doesn't always, but you can add it to well water.

I mean, like, you can, you can have people come out and add it.

But 13 million school kids still have school-based programs where you get the fluoride rinses, which I still remember from school, like the fun day where it was like something new, but it's fluoride.

This sucks.

Why is this a thing?

And in addition,

the big shift other than water in these school programs is that like toothpaste.

right like fluorides and toothpaste yeah so that was the biggest deal is that we said you know what if fluoride's so great why don't we put it in the thing that we put directly on our teeth?

Let's rub it on our teeth.

Yeah, for sure.

That seems like it would make sense.

There are other countries who have opted to add it to other things.

Like, for instance, there are some countries where they're like, most of our water is used for like washing stuff and toilets.

And so we don't want to put it in the water because that seems like a waste.

So they add it to the salt.

So you can get fluoridated salt.

in some countries.

That's really effective when they add it to all salt.

When they just add it to some, it's not as effective.

And you can also find places where it's added to milk.

It's advised by the World Health Organization.

Water first, salt second, if you can't add it to water.

And it costs you, on average, to add fluoride to your water about a dollar per year.

In some communities, it's a little more, in some, it's a little less.

But on average, it costs us all about a dollar a year.

to decrease the rate of dental decay by about 60%.

Good job, science.

Those are pretty good.

Thank you.

That's a pretty good.

And the end of this story is everybody thought it was great forever.

And they thought, this is awesome.

And we love our teeth.

And it's very cheap.

Science is great.

Hooray for us.

No.

Let's all ride off into the sunset and enjoy our great teeth.

It would be great if that were the end of the story because it was considered one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century, adding fluoride to water.

And if that were the end of it, that would be great.

But the truth is, there's huge controversy.

And if any of you have scanned the internet about fluoride, you already know this.

Fluoride is

named as one of the great big conspiracy theories probably of our time.

Now, in some places, they haven't added fluoride to their water, not because of these

conspiracy theorists, but because they love freedom.

No, because

they've already added it to toothpaste or salt or whatever, and their rate of decay is so low that now that they're considering it, they just don't decide it.

So, there are some major developed nations that haven't added fluoride to their water because they've already kind of stemmed this problem.

So, they don't really need it

at this point in time.

There are places who have voted, like, we don't want to add fluoride to our water because we're independent thinkers.

And we love when our teeth rot out of our head, and we'll go to our dentists and whatever.

We're independent thinkers that hate hard candy.

And then, the bigger thing is that there's a safety fear.

There are a lot of people who say, well, what is all this fluoride doing to us?

Well, there have been exhaustive studies by the NIH and by the CDC

and the FDA to try to figure out, is there any negative impact on putting fluoride in our water?

And over and over again, they say,

no.

No.

There is fluorosis, which is the condition we talked about at the beginning of the show, which is when your teeth turn brown.

This is from excess excess fluoride in your water.

Now, at one part per million, there is a very small fraction of the population that could get some very mild degree of fluorosis.

It is a cosmetic problem solely.

It doesn't cause pain.

It doesn't cause decay.

It doesn't cause any problems with your functioning of your teeth.

They still chew on pizza rolls just fine.

So it doesn't do anything other than they can get some streaks on them.

And even that is incredibly rare.

For most of us, fluoride in our water protects us from dental decay, period.

Now, that hasn't stopped people from accusing fluoride in our water of all kinds of crazy things.

If you go on the internet, you will find that fluoride is the cause of cancer.

bone disease, Alzheimer's, kidney disease, effects on enzymes, metabolism, thyroid issues, early puberty, increased allergies, hypersensitivity, fertility issues, genetic disorders, neuro disorders, Down syndrome, lead poisoning, coronary artery disease, AIDS, arthritis, ADHD, SIDS, IBS, emphysema, fatigue, flatulence,

and

wait for it, tooth decay.

None of these things have ever been found to be true.

In fact, you can find the American Dental Association has a 71-page document, PDF file on the internet.

You can, the internet, you can download for free to read how they refute every single one of of these claims one by one with evidence, with studies, with research to tell you why, no, I'm sorry,

fluoride is not the reason you're farting so much.

It's hard for me to pick, but I think my favorite is lead poisoning.

Like, absolutely not, for sure.

Like, by definition, not that.

In addition,

people have said that this is

fine.

This is me fluorite.

This is my friend I this is my friend lead.

He's with me.

Come on in lead.

It's fine.

Let as much of him in as he wants.

It's fine.

You don't need to process him, kidney.

Liver?

Liver.

Right, liver?

What?

What processes?

Toxins?

Both.

What's up, Slim Good Body?

I guess I know all the parts in the body now.

Student has become the master.

Also, blood

is in there for sure.

In addition, you will find whole books written about how fluoride is either a Nazi plot to take over the U.S.

or a communist plot to take over the U.S.

or maybe a New World Order plot or perhaps an Illuminati plot.

There they are.

Based on the idea that fluoride in our water makes us, quote, stupid and docile, and that fluoridation causes slight damage to specific parts of the brain, making it more difficult for the person affected to defend his freedom and causing the individual to become more docile towards authority.

There are books written on this.

I know that's, I mean, I know

something's going on, right?

Like, I know it's probably, probably not fluoride.

Something's going on, though.

It might be fluoride.

Something.

I think they've got a point about something's going on for sure.

It just may not be fluoride, is what I'm saying.

Maybe.

Listen, I'm not saying everything's okay in the US right now.

That's not what I'm saying.

What's going on for sure?

It may be fluoride.

I don't remember before fluoride, but I've met a lot of people since fluoride.

I'm not saying everything's okay.

I'm just saying.

Our teeth are dope, though, for sure.

That you cannot take away.

Yeah, exactly.

Our teeth are fresh.

Whatever is going on in the United States right now, it ain't fluoride, okay?

Yeah.

That's not the problem.

It's keeping your teeth from decay.

It's probably not turning them brown for the most part.

There are a few people who are going to get fluorosis, and I'm sorry in advance, but your teeth are going to be so healthy.

Yeah, they're super hard, like steel.

Brown.

And with teeth, brown is the new white.

It's okay.

So

it's totally cool.

So,

and it's all thanks to Columbus, if you think about it.

Because the first,

think about it.

Nobody even thought of filtering water before you guys.

That's amazing.

Definitely not Michigan.

Before we leave, I want to say a huge thank you to William and everybody from the Columbus Podcast Festival for getting us out here.

Thank you, guys.

I want to thank Dave Thomas for opening the first Wendy's.

I want to thank

Columbus

for having us in the city,

for having us.

You told me that in 2013 they were named the most intelligent city.

Yeah, did y'all know that?

OH, right?

There it is.

You guys know that.

This is my intelligent, intelligent people.

You're like, what?

I've been drinking a lot.

That sounds great.

Yeah, for sure.

You know how to spell Ohio.

Do not even trip.

Oh, I know.

Oh, what's he said?

What's that Chubby guy saying?

OH?

I know that.

That's a little intoxicating.

Anyway.

No, you can't do it.

Only I can.

Stay in your lane.

You leave here all the time.

I want to thank the taxpayers for the use of their song Medicines as the intro and outro of our program.

And thank you to the Maximum Fund Network for having us as part of their family.

They have a lot of great other podcasts like Just John Hodgeman, My Brother, My Brother Me, The Adventure Zone, and many others.

So, and thank you to Stillbuffering Court Appointed for doing such great shows.

And folks, that's going to do it for us.

My name is Justin Tyler McElroy.

Stop.

You don't know.

It will really mess me up for the entire week.

I'll be impossible to live with.

I'm Sidney Smurl McElroy.

Whatever.

Whatever.

And it's always, don't drill a hole in your head.

I quit.

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