Abdominal pain, weakness and tiredness, nasty headaches, joint pains without any reason – is that you or a member of your family? Is there a simple cause and straight-forward solution, routinely overlooked by about ninety five per cent of doctors?
Water fluoridation is provided for the majority of citizens in just a small group of countries including USA, Australia and Ireland. It is allegedly for tooth decay control in children. Canada once had more than fifty percent of people using fluoridated water but is now down to about thirty five per cent, with numerous cities discontinuing.
The prevailing wisdom in government health agencies and dental associations is that fluoridated water cannot harm your health. But recent major studies, and clinical reports dating back 60 years, say otherwise.
In 2006 the US National Research Council published the report of its three year review of the toxicology of fluoride in drinking water. It looked at all levels of fluoride from much higher than used in fluoridation schemes through to lower levels. It found that there are clear risks to consumers, particular vulnerable subsets such as infants using tap water with fluoride, kidney patients and the very large numbers of people with thyroid disease or iodine deficiency. Many of the health risks detailed were long term damage from many years of fluoride accumulation, but this article examines another kind of vulnerable water consumer, those with allergy-like, rapid reactions to fluoride.
When fluoridation was first introduced in the USA through the 1940s and 50s, clinicians such as a President of the American Academy of Allergy Dr George Waldbott, wrote up series of case histories of patients suffering adverse reactions when their water became fluoridated. It was only proved to be fluoride causing the sickness when patients spent time in another city free from fluoride, and returned home getting sick each time. Clinical challenge tests were also performed in the surgery to confirm diagnosis.
Two decades later exactly the same kinds of symptoms were discovered in large numbers of sufferers in the Netherlands when a medical team conducted double blind trials on them in Amsterdam. Some doctors had patients living in the fluoridated and non-fluoridated suburbs and noticed the difference, leading to setting up the team to examine the fluoride illness scientifically. Fluoridation was abandoned, and in fact outlawed by the Parliament, following the results of the trial headed by Dr Hans Moolenburgh.
This subset of people develop nasty toxic symptoms within hours, or a day or two of starting to use fluoridated water. The symptoms come on like an allergy. These people are the two or three per cent with extra high sensitivity to fluoride’s toxic action.
The kind of illness they develop ranges through colicky stomach and intestinal pains, severe headaches, weakness and fatigue, skin rashes, mouth ulcers, worsening of allergic conditions including wheezy breathing, blurred vision, excessive thirst and joint pains. The common themes are (a) nearly all have fatigue that is not even relieved by sleep, and (b) symptoms come on quickly and can only be relieved by completely avoiding all sources of fluoride.
Fluoridation has become so widely accepted in the handful of countries that favour it that sufferers are simply hung out to dry, to take care of themselves. Some take years to discover the cause of their suffering. Strangely, medical associations and journals rarely discuss it anymore. Propaganda from health departments claims that fluoride allergy or toxicity does not exist. Sufferers find out by word of mouth from friends or family, or from one of the more environmentally aware doctors or naturopaths they might visit.
The only way to get well if you are suffering these fluoride symptoms is to either purchase very large quantities of bottled, fluoride-free water, or fit the kind of expensive filter that removes fluoride. Then you need to use the fluoride-free water for all of your drinking water, filling the kettle for hot drinks, and cooking water. Some of the most sensitive sufferers even need to use fluoride-free water for bathing, which becomes almost impossible to achieve in a fluoridated town.
The filters that can remove fluoride are reverse osmosis units, ion exchange resin type filters and distillation. All are expensive and have their drawbacks. None are suitable for whole-of-house filtration to purify bathing and showering water.
Finally, the sufferer who has identified fluoride as the culprit needs to avoid all bottled and canned products made in a fluoridated city as these products may be made with tap water. Only painful trial and error, usually lots of errors, leads to discovering the restricted regime that will enable you to recover your health. Those who achieve it are eternally grateful, and naturally rather unhappy about the political regime that continues putting the offending fluoride into their water, while keeping the public in the dark about the harm it is causing.
Good luck; it is well worth pursuing this investigation and solution if you are suffering these problems without yet discovering why you feel so rotten.