4) Sick vs. healthy populations--Probably this is the most important issue from a PRACTICAL viewpoint. It's my suspicion that a HEALTHY person, who chooses mostly the correct foods and lifestyles does not need the protection of fluoride. Nor does such a person need a toothbrush or floss or dental care (other than repair of trauma and maybe preventive exams). These sorts of healthy people, such as thee and me, comprise an insignificant percentage of the population. Our goal is to increase this percentage and thereby work ourselves out of our jobs. We're not succeeding at this quickly. Our entire health care system is designed to treat sick people and of the 5% of the health care budget allotted to "prevention" only about 1/2 of 1% is spent on "primary prevention".

Therefore, our "average" person, popularly equated with "normal" & "healthy", is sick. Ninety-five-plus percent of our population has dental disease. Curiously, about this same percentage eat the stuff that causes dental disease. I personally believe that the high percentage of folks who have diabetes, hypoglycemia, hemorrhoids, arteriosclerosis, and most of the popular degenerative diseases have them due to poor choices of lifestyle. HEALTHY folks don't need drugs. SICK folks who can't or won't eliminate the causes of their diseases can sometimes block or mask their symptoms to some extent, short term, with drugs.

The majority of the people we treat are the sick ones, obviously, 'tho by the preventive nature of our practice & our Tahoe location, we see a greater percentage of healthy folks (eventually, at least) than most practices. Whether fluoride ought to be classified as a nutrient or a drug (poison) is probably not important. We're using it as a drug to treat sick people. We also use it as a drug for presently healthy kids (if the parents agree with the idea) to prevent some of the usual destruction resulting from the poor choices they'll PROBABLY make as teenagers, or that their parents will PROBABLY make for them in childhood.

The reason I'm willing to prescribe this drug for even these healthy kids is that the benefits we've observed far outweigh the risks of known side effects.... that we haven't observed.

5) Literature--FLUORIDATIONIST literature usually tends to be scientifically based. This appeals to me due to my indoctrination in the scientific method in my rather narrow course of study since about high school graduation in '60.It also generally treats fluoride as a nutrient rather than as a drug. This does NOT appeal to me so much anymore. It also generally advocates forced fluoridation "for folks's own good." This doesn't appeal to me at all.

ANTI-FLUORIDATIONIST literature is usually highly unscientific and based on anecdotal evidence and out-of-context quotes from reputable sources, while claiming to be scientific. This approach seems rather dishonest to me and turns me off therefore. It also generally appeals more to emotion than to logic and, for scientific purposes at least, this is an extremely effective & unappealing tactic from my point of view. When emotion and logic disagree, emotion nearly always wins (anti-scientific method!). !'ve read lots of the anti-fluoridationist stuff in the last 25 years and we keep a copy of Truth Decay in the office for loan to anyone interested in reading about that side of the question. This literature never fails to live up to my expectations.

I've been searching for documentation to refute what I consider the fluoridationists' best argument: In communities where fluoride occurs naturally in the water supply (parts of AZ, TX, OK, etc.), teeth seem to be protected from smooth surface caries (cavities in non-pitted/grooved areas), yet those folks appear to be neither sterile, mentally deficient nor suffering from the other effects ascribed to fluoride poisoning. This observed result despite often high doses of F in the water, considerably higher than the recommended one ppm. The only argument I've heard is that if the F appears naturally in the water it's healthful and if humans add it it's harmful. OK, what's the difference? No one's even claiming that the naturally-occurring F is even "organic"; it's just as inorganic as the NaF out of a reagent bottle. (My present understanding is that an inorganic mineral can only become organic through the transformation by a PLANT, yes?)

Maybe it doesn't NEED to be organic, because for protection against cavities, the F is not really USED by the organism, it just passively takes the place of other minerals in the hydroxy-apatite crystalline lattice-work when the dental enamel forms and causes the resulting enamel to be more resistant to decomposition by the acids produced as waste-products of bacteria in dental plaque. Yes, I'm one of the very few dentists opposed to fluoridation of our water supplies, but I base my opposition on political rather than biological reasons.

Politics aside, what effects have you observed on teeth of those who've lived hygienically?

"Politics aside", what a beautiful thought; I long for that day!! First, diagnosing and planning treatment without examination is not often successful, and I don't do it. I have examined only two mouths owned by folks claiming a hygienic lifestyle: mine and that of a friend I last saw about ten years ago and who now lives on the coast of California (the west coast, as opposed to the EAST coast of California, Tahoe, where I live). Those mouths had two items in common: very healthy teeth and gingiva (gums) and heavily worn occlusal surfaces (the biting surfaces were worn down, probably from clenching and grinding the teeth, likely during sleep). I believe these two mouths were healthy before AND after their owners adopted a hygienic lifestyle. Conclusion: insufficient data. I really know NOTHING about the effects of Natural Hygiene on teeth from my own observation.

Should a raw foodist go to a dentist? How often? (Gisele G. Serra)

I dunno. Among normal people I'm an expert on dentistry & I sometimes feel like an expert on health, even with my limited knowledge and the remnants of all the years of stuff I "know" that ain't true. Among Natural Hygienists, I'm just an interested student. My OPINION is that NH-from-birth folks would only need care for trauma and the few "birth defects" they might have. Results of my own five-year experiment: When beginning the NH lifestyle with two short fasts and an all sweet-fruit diet 1/90, I examined my mouth thoroughly and made dental x-rays and slacked off on brushing/flossing 'cause I believed that a NH lifestyle would prevent dental diseases. After five years, 8/94, I re-examined and x-rayed my mouth again. I was appalled, surprised, disappointed. While my gums are as healthy, my previously healthy teeth have developed eight or so cavities, two rather large--the first such dental disease I'd experienced since Ô71! I'm now in the process of rebuilding my mouth and am back to flossing and dry-brushing DAILY as in pre-NH times. I THINK the damage was done during those fruit-only months in early '90. I suspect I did a LOT of damage to this body in that period and I'm beginning to suspect much of it was irreversible. Not happy experimental results. :-(

Except for a few artificial "domesticated" species (& a few that eat human refuse at dumps, etc.), all animals except humans manage to have healthy mouths without EVER visiting a dentist (and healthy bodies without visiting physicians, etc.). So I BELIEVE that a Natural Hygienist (one raised as NH from birth -- and preferably born from several generations of NH ancestors, like the families Dr. Bass described here in H&B in his "With Three Generations of Vegetarian Hygienists"--Vol. 2, No. 2) should have no use for dentists or physicians except for help in repairing trauma (a diet high in steering wheels, doorknobs or fists of carnivores is great for our business!).

I've searched ANHS, ADA, AGD literature and have asked every NH guru I've found, as well as all these M2M [ordering info at end of issue--ed] folks since '90 if there's ANY studies regarding the dental health of NH people. Perhaps NH folks never go to dentists so I don't get to see Ôem. HOWEVER, from reading and hearing of the dental problems of the M2M #15 contributors and from practicing at Lake Tahoe since Ô72 and watching LOTS of people make very positive changes in lifestyle (nearly everyone moving to Tahoe does so partly for health reasons!), I DO think that, like any other part of the body, if the dental apparatus (teeth, gums, supporting ligaments, alveolar bone) become too badly destroyed BEFORE the owner of the mouth adapts a NH lifestyle, that the body may not be able to control/heal/prevent dental disease (cavities and gum disease) and perhaps some/most NH people DO need dental "care" (removal of hard deposits by DENTAL hygienists, removal/repair of carious areas of teeth, replacement of lost teeth with implants, bridges or removable partial dentures, etc.). HOWEVER, again, this is ONLY my belief, it's just an OPINION. I DON'T KNOW.
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