Replies

1. 
   4Lorn1 | Feb 15, 2006 02:08am | #1

   Neither the fluoride nor the equipment needed to control the dose added to the water are cheap. They also need regular maintenance and calibration.

   IMHO you might be better off simply having the children brush regularly with any of the many OTC fluoride fortified toothpastes.

   If additional fluoride seems desirable there are OTC fluoride treatments, brush on pastes or rinses, that are said to be effective. Also check with your dentist. They can prescribe a stronger version of these pastes or rinses if it seems necessary. These could be used on a regular schedule. Perhaps a couple of times a week. Your dentist will be able to provide guidance.

   Some care is called for. Normal doses of floride have a long record of relative safety but excessively large concentrations have some detrimental effects. Of course if you plug "floride" into a Google search you can access all sorts of paranoid and conspiracy theory centered on adding floride to water.

   A long standing thread for paranoia. In the classic movie "Doctor Stranglove" the protagonist was driven my his belief that adding floride was a communist plot and a threat to our "PBF", Precious Bodily Fluids. So he launched a nuclear bomber strike against Russia. Great movie worthy of the rental price.

   Lots of heat but little light coming from a lot of sources on the internet.

1. 
   junkhound | Feb 15, 2006 02:43am | #4

   Mama fed the kids flouride added to vitamins when kids as we were on a well, lots simpler than adding a fluoridation system.  Think one of them has one cavity and the other none. Lost count of how may I have due to no flouride when a kid (plus bad habits? )

1. 
   mbdyer | Feb 16, 2006 01:19am | #5

   Thanx to all for the input! I will dodge the expense and PIA of another system and check with the dentist about drops or vitamin additives! Sometimes the simplest answer is the best. Spent half of my childhood on a farm with well water and my brothers and I had a good run of cavities. When we moved to a residential neirborhood on muni water, our cavities dropped dramatically with the same good brushing habits. Thanx again all.

2. 
   HandySteve | Feb 15, 2006 02:13am | #2

   contact your local university... or dentist.. you can have your water tested as to the content of floride.   Then the results are used by your dentist to provide floride drops or vitamin like pills for the kids.

   Thats what i did.   4 out of 5 dentist recommend

    

3. 
   Scott | Feb 15, 2006 02:42am | #3

   As mentioned, we do the flouride drop thing with our kids. Two drops in a teaspoon and down the hatch.

    

   Scott.

   Always remember those first immortal words that Adam said to Eve, “You’d better stand back, I don’t know how big this thing’s going to get.”

4. 
   DanH | Feb 16, 2006 02:05am | #6

   What the others said. I don't know about now, but 40 years ago the fluoride system was about ten times more complicated and more dangerous than the chlorination system on a public water system. There are other more suitable ways to assure that your family gets sufficient fluoride.

   (Besides which, fluoridation is a Communist plot!)

   If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people

   happy?

5. 
   fingers | Feb 16, 2006 02:12am | #7

   I agree with the other posters.  Easiest thing to do is take the floride in liquid or tablet form.  FWIW the best effect one gets from floride in the water or in vitamins with floride is the systemic effect as the enamel is forming. 

   That is, the enamel matrix incorporates floride into the crystal structure which makes it harder hence more decay resistant.  Now the bad news.  Depending on the age of your kids,  Most of their permanent teeth may have already formed so they won't get the benefit from systemic floride.  On average, the crowns of the teeth are formed about three years before they erupt. 

    So for instance, their twelve year molar crowns are already formed and mineralized at age nine so any systemic benefit after that age will only affect the crowns of the developing wisdom teeth (which they most likely won't have room for at age eighteen thus need to be extracted).

   Now the topical effect of floride treatments and toothpaste, rinses,etc. can and does have a hardening effect on the surface of the enamel so it still is useful although not as profound as the systemic route.

   Finally, anyone prescribing floride drops or vitamins with floride for people with a well should see the results of the water analysis first.  Some parts of the country have naturally occurring floride in the water and if kids take extra floride it may be too much and lead to florosis of the developing teeth.

    

1. 
   mbdyer | Feb 16, 2006 03:18am | #8

   The boy is 12 and the girl is four. He has grown up on muni water but for the past two years so I feel he is in good shape so long as he keeps up on himself. It's the daughter I am most concerned with. Her maternal side all have "weak teeth". She already has had cavities despite our best efforts. I will consult with her dentist but it seems evident to me she would benefit from proper flouride dosage while her adult teeth are yet forming. Once of prevention and all that.

1. 
   johnnysawzall | Feb 16, 2006 04:44am | #9

   My three girls,while still young, all take floride tablets. They all take different tablets that are prescribed for their age. (different doses)

6. 
   si | Feb 16, 2006 05:00am | #10

   We just get floridated culligan water delivered and use it as the kids drinking water.  Works for us.    (meaning works for my wife.)

7. 
   Jer | Feb 16, 2006 05:27am | #11

   All I can think about with this thread is  Sterling Hayden in 'Dr Strangelove'  talking about the flourdation of our water and about how, starting in 1946 "..they started draining our precious bodily fluids..."

8. 
   HeavyDuty | Feb 16, 2006 06:08am | #12

   Everybody here has been giving you valuable advice, here is from the point of view of a dentist.

   Get your well water tested and see how much fluoride is in your drinking water. You'll be surprised that it can vary a lot from region to region and sometimes the fluoride level may be higher than optimal. The optimal level used to be 1 ppm but for the past few years new research has shown that may be a little less is better. I would aim for 0.6-0.8 ppm. For that you'll have to get a prescription from your dentist to adjust the fluoride intake.

   Again, new research has shown that may be systemic fluoride is not as important as topical fluoride which is best delivered via dentifrice.

   If you worry about cavities on the little ones, bear in mind fluoride can only do so much. More important considerations are oral hygiene and diet.

   That means you have to help them brush at least once a day and let them brush at least once more by themselves. Something I cannot stress enough is flossing their teeth at least once a day preferably before bedtime and for the young ones it is the parent's job. If you are not sure how to do the above ask you dentist or hygienist.

   For diet, if they are munching on sugar-containing snack throughout the day, there is no amount of fluoride, brushing or flossing that can prevent cavities from forming. Again, you can get all the diet information from you dental professionals.

   
   

   ---

   Edited 2/15/2006 10:11 pm ET by TomC

9. 
   IdahoDon | Feb 16, 2006 07:05am | #13

   While working in Alaska I had an opportunity to see the effects of flouride on a village of roughly 300 people.  The dentist for the area actually flys in with a dental hygenist and has most of their equipment broken down into a series of heavy duty boxes.  Very cool.

   Anyway, it seems that a guy in some other village was killed by a malfunctioning flouride injector in the community's water supply.  The excessive flouride caused the poor fellow diarea, so he drank more water to lessen the dehydration, and his health kept spiraling down until it killed him.

   The malfunctioning system was apparently what they refer to as a single stage, with no backup to prevent a stuck injector from flooding the system with flouride.  The newer systems use a two stage injector and apparently it's much safer.

   The village we were visiting, and some others, had removed flouride injectors from their water supplies thinking that even the two-stage versions are just too risky.

   Anyway, to make a long story short, visiting with the dentist was quite interesting.  He said within months after the flouride injector was removed cavities trippled. 

   Good brushing,

   Don

   :-)

10. 
    LUCASG | Feb 16, 2006 06:40pm | #14

    The best advice for adding flouride to well water from my point of view is - not to.  I am assuming that other than your flouride concern, the water is perfectly potable?  Why change it in any way?

    If one was to research studies on flouride treatment published by anyone other than those with financial interest in it, one would find that......

    1 - Flouride does hold some merit, but the only positive effects regarding cavity prevention is with topical application (you know the foamy mouthguard-like thingys filled with paste at the dentist office), not ingestion. 

    2 - There are different types of flouride ions.  The flouride added to water supplies is not the one used in topical application studies.  The flouride added most commonly to water is loosely a run-off material from fertilizer production (Yummy!).

    3 - The flouride added to water is not unlike mercury in that the human body has no natural way of discharging it.  It simply builds and builds and builds in the skeletal system (bones).  Some studies have actually linked flouride build-up in the body to osteoporosis (pre-mature brittling and loss of density in bones).

    4 - There are roughly only a half-dozen countries in the world still adding flouride to their water supply (most having banned it altogether!).

    5 - The best cavity prevention is habitual hygiene and a healthy diet that significantly limits or eliminates sweet and acidic snacks and foods.  There are isolated rainforest tribes documented with perfect teeth having never encountered flouride (or a dentist for that matter).

    These are not the most widely published studies ($), but if conflicting studies exist, one has to consider the risk-return factor. 

     

    "All truth goes through three stages...

    First, it is ridiculed.

    Then, it is violently opposed.

    Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."

    - Schopenhauer

1. 
   Agatized | Feb 18, 2006 09:10am | #15

   From what I've read, excess flouride replaces calcium in the bones.  This causes the bones to be brittle.  There are EPA standards for what is too much flouride in water.  In our area, water from very deep wells (>1200 ft) has flouride exceeding the limits.