Why you should not drink tap water, and I'm NOT talking about fluoride.
Even though I do include info on how fluoride is said to work to protect your teeth.
I don’t disagree with the idea that fluoride should not be in drinking water, but that’s not the point of my post. Per my old college chemistry textbook, fluoride helps prevent tooth decay via an ion exchange reaction in the mouth. The fluoride ion replaces a hydroxide ion in your tooth enamel, and that makes it more resistant to acids formed by tooth decay bacteria.
Whether you dispute that explanation, it does seem pretty obvious that there’s no need and in fact no benefit to ingesting the fluoride. Using fluoride toothpaste on a regular basis, coupled with thoroughly rinsing out your mouth and not swallowing any fluoride, should be plenty sufficient to allow this chemical reaction to occur in your tooth enamel, so I would agree with the idea of getting the fluoride out of drinking water.
But again, this is NOT a post about fluoride. What it is about is not a secret by any means, but it is one of those things that has gotten very little publicity at all compared to the serious health ramifications of the topic. Excuse me if you’ve been reading the stack for a while and are used to all the content being free, but the rest of this post requires a paid subscription.
