3 Little-Known Facts About Fluoride
Posted on: 2 November 2016
Fluoride is an incredibly helpful substance when it comes to dental health. Yet, to the chagrin of many dentists, fluoride is subject to large amounts of misinformation. If you are interested in the role fluoride plays for your teeth, and would like to get your facts straight, read on. This article will present three frequently overlooked truths about dental fluoride.
Fluoride is a naturally occurring substance.
Many people labor under the delusion that fluoride is an artificially derived chemical and nothing more. Unfortunately, this mistaken belief tends to make people more wary of the positive role that fluoride has to play. The truth is that fluoride is a substance that can be found naturally occurring all across the world in water, rocks, and soil. For the most part, these levels are quite low--between 0.01 and 0.3 mg/liter. Yet areas with high volcanic or geothermal activity, the fluoride level may be much higher.
Fluoride can remineralize decayed teeth.
As most everybody is aware, fluoride acts to protect your teeth against unwanted decay. Yet the fact is that fluoride actually goes much farther than this. In addition to its defensive benefits, it is also capable of reversing decay. It does this by remineralizing the enamel on the surface of those teeth. This process of remineralization restores hardness to the tooth and allows it to better protect against disease and infection.
As a result, fluoride is able to offer the additional benefits:
- lowering the likelihood of cavities
- reducing the need for such corrective measures as root canals and fillings
- fewer toothaches and less sensitivity
The most incredible thing is that it doesn't take much fluoride to achieve these results. Simply the presence of fluoride in drinking water can reduce the instances of decay by as much as 40%.
Fluoride is only poisonous at incredibly high doses.
It's easy to become stuck on the fact that fluoride is a poisonous substance. While this is true, this is only true when fluoride is ingested in greatly elevated levels. The amount of fluoride in toothpaste, or a municipal water supply, is well below the threshold of safety.
It is good to realize that this threshold is no arbitrary thing. Rather this has been carefully determined by the federal government, after analyzing the results of years and years of testing. The maximum allowable amount of fluoride is now fixed at 4.0 mg per liter. Anything below that level poses no risk whatsoever to the human body.
Talk to your dentist for more information.
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