Dhru Purohit Show - Fluoride: The Shocking Toxin Lurking In Your Water Causing Brain Decline with Dr. Mark Burhenne

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Birch Living, Bioptimizers, and AquaTru. Fluoride has long been controversial, particularly among traditional dentists, while functional dentists have discouraged its use for many years. The debate has intensified with a recent ruling by a Federal Court in California. Today’s guest joins us to break down the science, the controversy, and the verdict's impact on both dental and neurological health. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dr. Mark Burhenne for a deep dive into fluoride and the potential dangers of excessive fluoride exposure. Dr. Burhenne discusses how the decision to use fluoride was made, the shaky science behind its continued use, and the arguments from critics and proponents. Additionally, he explains how fluoride can be effective, the importance of recognizing cumulative exposure, and alternative products to protect dental health.  In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Burhenne dive into:  Why should we care about the potential dangers of fluoride in our drinking water? (00:35) The argument for fluoride and the trade-offs critics are willing to risk (02:20) The implications of the Federal Court ruling (11:34) The cumulative harm caused by fluoride (13:54) What does fluoride do to the developing brain? (17:14) Tribalism and conspiracy theories surrounding fluoride (22:50) The shaky science behind fluoride (26:40) Alternatives to fluoride (41:54) Recap on how to minimize total fluoride exposure (51:13) What parents should be doing (58:36) Final thoughts (01:02:33) Also mentioned in this episode: Ask the Dentist website FYGG  For more on Mark, follow him on Instagram, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, YouTube, or his website. This episode is brought to you by Birch Living, Bioptimizers and AquaTru.  To get 20% off your Birch Living mattress plus two free eco-rest pillows, head over to birchliving.com/dhru today. Upgrade your digestion with enzymes! Go to bioptimizers.com/dhru now and enter promo code DHRU10 to get 10% off any order and free gifts for a limited time. AquaTru is a countertop reverse osmosis purifier with a four-stage filtration system that removes 15x more contaminants than the bestselling water filters out there. Go to dhrupurohit.com/filter/ and get $100 off when you try AquaTru for yourself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Mark Brehanna, today we're diving into a super controversial topic that's having a pretty seismic shift in our public health policy. And that topic and that breaking news pretty recent is that a federal court threw down the gauntlet challenging the safety of fluoride in our drinking water and ordering the EPA to revisit its standards when it comes to fluoride. So I want to start off with something really simple, but actually very important. which is why should our audience care about the potential dangers and the concern of having fluoride in our drinking water? Thank goodness it's become a little bit less controversial because the federal court has ruled on this against the EPA. The reason we should all be very happy is, A, nothing has changed on this topic for 75 years.

We were including the profession. You know, we were stuck. We thought this was a great thing, public health success. And now we realize based on the last 10, 15 years of research that this was harming the brains of our children, even fetuses. What if something was added to the air that you breathe? And you had no choice. And you really would have to go through a lot to filter that out. You'd have to be indoors and filter for that.

It's the same thing. Something that has been in our water that is causing us great harm to our future generations of children, lowering IQ, affecting the thyroid, lowering our bone density, affecting our bone density. and many other things that are just coming to light, that has now been mandated to be removed from our water. And again, America is the most fluoridated water supply nation or entity in the world. And I think this is good news. This is one less thing we have to worry about. You know, before we get into this case and all the ins and outs, which nobody knows about this better than you do, I want to talk about something pretty nuts that was highlighted in this case.

there were actually advocates of fluoride who were talking about the importance of fluoride for protecting children's teeth. We're going to talk about that in a second. But they were saying that even if fluoride is dangerous to the IQs of young children in particular, it's worth the tradeoff because it's protecting their teeth. Can you talk about how nuts this is? Who said that? And what the are they talking about? That was a quote from someone who represents or a member of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentists. I mean, that's a pretty important organization. This is a professional organization that is in charge of determining how do we treat our children for decay and the number one disease in the world. And how do we prevent that? How do we actually go in there and repair that?

And obviously they think that teeth are more important than brains. Teeth are certainly a lot simpler to fix, a lot cheaper. The impact is not as great as brain health and a lower IQ in future generations of Americans, of people on this planet. So it is nuts. That's how nuts this discussion has become. There's a study in the lawsuit. It's a Spanish study that stated that an IQ increase of 15 points could be had.

by ingesting fluoride. I mean, there's so much junk science and emotionalism and politics in this decision. And that's why this is a great decision, this verdict, after 75 years of all that we have a tipping point. We have a decision in a federal court and the judge has ordered the EPA to clean up their act, to start regulating this and to start looking into it. And we can talk about what's probably coming. But this is now the first time that I think they'll be some change coming, even though the ADA and this association that you're referring to are digging in their heels still, because teeth are important, more important than brains. You know, you've been on this podcast before, you've been talking about how this case, which is a group of citizen

activist individuals that are also activists on behalf of the public, they sued the EPA to basically say, are you actually looking at the latest data across the board when it comes to recommending fluoride in drinking waters. And by the way, as you've mentioned many times before, the U.S. is vastly in its own world in terms of how much fluoride and how many municipalities use fluoride. A lot of the rest of the world, especially in Europe, it's not the standard to always add fluoride to the drinking water. So these advocates were saying, especially based on some emerging research in particular about young kids and how fluoride impact. their IQ to say, can the EPA really stand behind this? After many years of this battling,

battling, battling back and forth, finally got to a federal judge who's in your neck of the woods, actually, who looked at all of that and said, the EPA has to go back and review this because I don't think that the science is settled on fluoride being good. In fact, there might be a lot of things showing that there's enough concern to say we don't know. And do we really want to running an experiment on hundreds of millions of people with potential major downstream consequences. Is that a good summary? What else do you want to add to that? That's a great summary. Again, it's a lesser of two evils. That was my argument back when I was 20 years old. And then later when I had my first child when I was 26, I didn't have all the data, but it just didn't make sense to me.

So I was filtering water for our three daughters from day one. But now it's still a lesser of two evils argument. And the judge was very clear based on seven years of testimony. That's how long this case took in the federal courts. And he basically said that there is an unreasonable risk to children's neurological health. And there's a moderate to high reason to believe that. You just said it yourself. Are we willing to ignore that data, a lot like the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, and focus on teeth and in hopes that fluoride actually helps prevent decay, which is debatable. by ingesting fluoride. That's a that's a debatable concept. There's very little data on that. There are a lot of communities that have the same rate of decay that the fluoridated communities have. And if you look at

Europe, they have about the same rate of decay that we do. It's, it's our diet. That's really the root cause. So, but fluoride is, I mean, the profession has been behind it. They've been pushing it for so long, and we really do think it's important. But again, as you said, it's more important to take that chance in hopes that it does work and ignore all the growing evidence that even the government looked at, NTP report, and took most of the studies, approved of most of the studies that support that. So again, we're making a choice here between the development of a child, which has huge implications in terms of their personal lives and business and happiness, productivity, all of that, and maybe a few less cavities on teeth, if that can be proven.

It's a crazy argument, Drew. The argument is upside down. You know, it's so upside down. But I want to take a moment here for our audience who obviously they care about this topic. You know, a lot of my audience filters their water, hopefully using a good quality reverse osmosis filter. You know, you can always add minerals back in, trace minerals, other things like that. And, you know, they're aware of the idea that our water is not just not super healthy. And the agencies that are out there, they're doing the best they know how.

but there's major gaps in knowledge, and there's all sorts of industry corruption. It's not just fluoride. It's PFAs in the water. It's all sorts of forever chemicals, et cetera. But zooming out from fluoride for a second, give us the bigger picture, zoom out, help our audience zoom out.

When you and I were chatting a little bit before the podcast, we often referred to this ruling as kind of a crack in the dam. What kind of implications does this ruling have, potentially on other areas when it comes to environmental toxins in our air and our water and potentially even in our food. It's a tipping point in many ways, not just for fluoride. This is the first time that citizens were able to sue the EPA, a government agency. And this is based on a Nixon-era legislation called, they call it Tosca. It's the Toxic Substance Control Act. And it was initiated in 1976, and I think it's been modified since. Two important things there. It may

mandates that the EPA look at all new substances and chemicals that corporations and even government agencies that are using and maybe they're leaking out into the environment or maybe it's being put into your pan or food. It's debatable whether that really had any effect. But on the second part of that Tosca Act is it allows citizens to sue the Environmental Protection Agency, which is what happened. This is the first example of that. And it was successful. That's what's amazing. So what's or what will happen is that I think more, there will be more lawsuits. The lawsuits I've heard of some already that are coming and in place. So maybe we could sue a corporation for introducing microplastics into our food

that pretty much everyone has microplastics in our bodies. Drew, do you remember that additive in California that they added to gas? It was after lead was removed, which was a good thing. And then they added something was PFTE or something. It's probably not correct. And it ended up, they found it in Lake Tahoe and all of the our lakes and rivers, and they said it would take 50, 60 years to get rid of, even though they took it out of the gas. That's, we need a watchdog. We need, and we need accountability. And if we,

if we don't get that from our government, we need lawyers to help citizens sue the government and corporations to stop this from happening. We have to have some resource on improving and preventing our environment from getting worse. Let's go back to the topic of kids, there brains and neurological development. One of the things that came up in this case that the judge referenced was the idea that this is about fluoride in our drinking water, but it's also so much more than that, that human beings, especially mothers and their young kids, are not just getting exposure from water, but they're also getting total exposure. A lot of baby foods are made with water that's not filtered and is fluoridated. It could be in drinks that the mom is drinking that is being passed down

to baby in utero or a breastfeeding child. And so it's this idea of total and cumulative harm that we're being exposed to. Can you chat about that for a second? That was really the crux of the latter part of the case, actually for the last session, which was about two weeks long. It was a discussion of what is the actual dose. It didn't, it took many, many years for both sides to agree, the EPA and the plaintiff to agree that fluoride is toxic and it does cause changes to the brain, inflammation, it does cause damage to the mitochondria in the brain and it does have an effect on IQ. But then the discussion was at what dose. It's always about the dose when it comes to a toxin, right? And our bodies are pretty good at dealing with smaller doses if we're healthy and if our immune system is active and functional.

That's where it got complicated. There's just not fluoride in the water, although there's a great amount of fluoride in the water, And Drew, I don't know if you remember, but the fluoride content in water was reduced to half, I think around the year 2000, 2001. So it's already been halved. There was already too much fluor in the water because it was actually damaging teeth and causing more cavities, modeling of the teeth, white brown spots, teeth flaking away with decay underneath it. And that's with teeth that were just erupting.

So this has been going on for quite a while. They halved it. And even now with the given verdict, given that some moms, and again, they measure fluoride in the mom's urine as an indicator or as a proxy for how much fluoride is getting to the child, to the fetus, and they were as high as three grams per of milligram per liter, where in the water it's 0.7. So you can drink tea, you can drink beverages. your child could have been born and they're drinking bottled water or baby formula, which has very high levels of fluoride in it, not to mention industrial oils and all that. But is that side? Because it's added.

It's part of the manufacturing process and they're using their local water supply and they're not filtering for it. And in some cases, it's concentrated. That was the discussion. And the EPA kept pushing back saying, well, the allowable dose is 1.5. and it's 0.7 in the water. And Judge Chen finally said that there's no excuse here. The comfortable levels or the unreasonable risk to children's health takes precedence here.

And there are examples where just drinking the fluoridated water is bad enough. I mean, that's all we need to understand is that we're making the safe decision here. Do we have all the data? We have a lot of data. And do we need more data? Absolutely. I predict that things are going to get worse from here. We're going to find more problems with lower levels of fluoride or with the given amount of fluoride.

So remember, when you're just drinking fluoridated water, that's probably not your only source and your doses are much higher. So again, and again, at Asadena's, we always recommend that moms stay away from fluoridated beverages and that they filter their water to protect their babies, their fetuses. What does fluoride do to the developing brain? So if you're the ADA, nothing. It's all fine. There's an acceptable dose. ADA is the American Dental Association. Yeah.

And granted, there are some scientists out there that have answered the question in a similar way. But there is confounding amount of evidence that is that supports the idea. And there are about 10 or 12 mechanisms that I have been able to find over the years. I've spoken to Dr. Perelmutter about this. who've interviewed brew. Essentially, it's a toxin to the brain and it causes inflammation of the brain. And one mechanism is that it actually makes your mitochondria in the brain smaller. It stunts the growth of mitochondria in the brain.

And as you know, the mitochondria or the powerhouse of any tissue or organ in the body. So that should be enough to scare people. It's not just a chemical that causes harm in the sense that it's a toxin. It actually is affecting how the brain grows and makes connections. And the more connections the brain makes as it grows, the better. And that is how it impacts IQ. The exact mechanism between IQ and what I just talked about, mitochondria, brain inflammation is unknown. You mentioned it earlier, but there was actually some evidence that was being used.

One study that was trying to show that actually fluoride was good for the IQ. of young boys, I believe, and that it would increase their IQ by 15 points. Talk about why that was a controversial study and what ultimately ended up having happening with that study when it came to this case. That's an interesting study. I mean, it's funny and it's amusing, but I think it illustrates a point. It was a Spanish study. In fact, it delayed the case because the judge had heard about it. The EPA had mentioned to the judge, oh, by the way, there's another study, and it's very promising for, you know, fluoride in the water. That's all they said. And so it delayed the case when he saw it and when the plaintiff saw it, I mean, I think everyone kind of chuckled a little bit. It was a very

poorly done study. The author retracted the study. Obviously, we would have noticed this across the board in other fluoridated areas. So, but it was, it was reviewed by the judge, kind of in his chambers. It wasn't reviewed, you know, in the courts. He did look at it. And of course, it was thrown out. So that is quite amusing. But that tells you the other aspect of that, what's really amusing about that is that it tells you how desperate the EPA was. Why would the EPA, who has a lot of great scientists that got tripped up, I have to give Michael Conn, the attorney, a lot of credit. He did trip up a lot of these PhDs that work for the EPA. I mean, they're not that dumb. And nuts. I mean, they're PhDs. Why would they look at that study and consider it? It helped ruin their

case. It's ridiculous. And I think a lot of people who are listening today are asking the same thing. Why would they? And sometimes it's easy to default to the fact of, well, do they want us sick? Do they want us controllable? Do they want us dumb? Do they want us like robots that are out there? So are they pumping this stuff into the system? Or is it a little bit more nuanced, which is that sometimes, when people have been told by everybody that they're the smartest person in the room and they have to be the defenders of the legacy, they take sides almost in a way of tribalism. You have to defend something without bringing fresh eyes to it because the science is settled. Because, hey, the people who are working here before me, who are also smart, who then hired me,

they knew that fluoride was good. They can't possibly be wrong. So I'm going to defend it without bringing a set of fresh eyes. What's your take on this? How much of this is conspiracy? How much this is innate tribalism? Well, I think tribalism is a good description of what's happening. We could easily go down the path of conspiracy stories and controversies.

I try and stay away from that. because I think it detunes or takes away from the argument because the other side will think, okay, that guy's nuts and then vice versa. So I try and stay away from that. There are a few. I'll mention them that the fertilizer phosphate industry is behind this because they produce a lot of fluoride inadvertently in making their products, which is a billion dollar industry, one of the largest in the world. They were allowing this to come out of their smoke stacks until they were told to filter it, the filters catch it, and when they found out that they could sell it to a municipal water supply, including transportation to the water supply, and get paid for that, instead of

having to put it into the dump. And, you know, when you dump a toxin, you kind of own that material in case the dump is moved or if it starts leaking. So Alcoa was involved in this. you know, the profession. I mean, there was a communist plot conspiracy back in the 50s. It actually made a very famous movie was mentioned. I mean, it's part of mainstream media. It was a black and white film with Peter Sellers. It's the stuff of legends and conspiracy legends.

It's one of the big ones. And again, just follow the science. Just follow the science. And remember, fluoride was put in the water based on association. It was one town in Colorado. It was a tiny little town. It had high ambient levels of fluoride in it. And the dentist noticed that his kids had lots of white and brown spots,

which means they had fluoride incorporated in their teeth. It's called modeling or fluorosis. But they had a lower rate of decay than the people down in the valley, down in Denver. And then from there, it got into our water in around the 50s. And then that was it. There was no scientific data. or basis for putting it in there. And remember, I don't know if you remember this,

but I think Benadryl and Sudafed were pulled off the market. These are over-the-counter decongestants. This was last year or the year before. And those were invented in the 20s or 30s. And again, there was no data or studies that supported that. It's essentially a placebo effect. And CVS and a lot of these drugstores have pulled it from their shelves. That's what we need to do with fluoride.

There is no basis for it to be in the water. And that's why I'm so excited about this verdict that now we have a mandate, how that will happen, how that will go down, remains to be seen. American Dental Association is still digging their heels in. It's not over yet. But again, as you said, the analogy is perfect. There's a crack in the dam finally. And there's a lot of weight and a lot of water behind that dam.

And it's going to continue to crumble. You know, some people that are starting to pay attention to their health, they realize that their dental health is a huge part of their overall health. That includes the oral microbiome, which you've been a huge advocate of. And that also includes getting away from a lot of the toxic substances that are used in dental care, mercury amalgam fillings, and then even this topic of fluoride. And probably a good quarter of our audience out there today that's still listening is going to a dentist that they like, maybe that they've known since they were a kid who still tells them that anybody that tells you that fluoride doesn't work is nuts and is wearing a tinfoil hat.

And you and I have talked about this a bunch, but I feel like in the context of this breaking news, it's worth at least touching on. Why is the science so shaky around fluoride when it comes to preventing cavities, which is the whole reason, as you mentioned, that fluoride was introduced into drinking water in the first place? So the science is shaky when it comes to ingestion of fluoride. a very electronegative, very reactive compound. It's related to fluorine, which is on the chart of periodic elements. And it reacts with everything. And when it gets to a tooth, whether it's through saliva and direct contact to a tooth, or it is ingested, gets in, and again, this is what we're brainwashed with in dental school. It crosses the lining of the stomach. It gets into the bloodstream.

and if you're an infant and your teeth are growing, the enamel organ is producing these teeth, that gets into the bloodstream. And when the body is trying to calcify something, build a calcified product, a part of the body, like a bone or a tooth, it will pull calcium from the blood. But if fluoride is there,

again, because it's more attracted or more reactive, it grabs the fluoride in combination with the calcium and the tooth, and it creates a different compound. It's called fluoropatite, not hydroxyapitite. Hydroxy appetite is what our teeth are made up of naturally. If there was no fluoride in your system, those are the building blocks of teeth. And the theory was that fluoride is less likely to leach out of that equation, of that attraction between calcium and fluoride, and also it's more resistant to acids.

And some of that is true. But there are other things that we've now discovered that when that fluorapotite is more brittle, it's wavier, it's grayer looking. It's not as bright and white looking. But it is more resistant to junk food, to processed foods. And so speaking of conspiracies, I mean, the agro kind of fertilizer complex, these are big corporations, they are one and the same. It's kind of like Coca-Cola saying it's not about the calories.

All calories are the same. So go ahead and have your Coke and if it replaces another caloric healthier food, it doesn't matter. You can always burn it off. And they actually give you a measurement of how many miles you have to walk to burn off a Coke, right? And that's the kind of the crutch in this equation where they're telling you it's okay. And in this case, it's okay because you've got fluoride backing you up. And you can brush and floss. And the truth of the matter is, and as Dennis were guilty of this, we always,

shame you into thinking or telling you or thinking that you got that cavity, not because of what you ate and when you ate it and how you ate it, it's because you didn't brush and floss and you're refusing that fluoride treatment or you don't live in a fluoridated water, municipal water supply and you're not ingesting that fluoride. And that is really kind of the wrong thing to say. I mean, it's like Coca-Cola paying for a grant with the American Academy of pediatric dentistry, I mean, that association of dentists, they're sleeping essentially with the root cause. Not sleeping with the devil.

They're sleeping with the root cause. And that is, it's fructose. This is the same in medicine. I mean, this is why we're experiencing just untold levels of chronic diseases. Dentistry has its fair share of that. In fact, one of them is the number one disease in the world. And that is decay. That is a metabolic disease.

Periodontal disease, again, a metabolic disease. again, a metabolic disease, and it's complicated by our environment and our diet. Big food doesn't want us to see that. The irony is that big food is supplying us with the fluoride, making us think, oh, everything's fine. It's unfortunate that we have made up stuff in some cases. Back to what your question was, how does fluoride actually work? Fluoride works very well topically, but it's very debatable that it works by ingesting. So fluoride does work in toothpaste.

But the good news is that we have other, you know, other products that can do the same. And there is some question, actually, it's not a question. There is some data that supports that fluoride is absorbed through the oral mucosa, just like the gut lining. Same thing. Same part of the anatomy. And that does get to the brain. So when your child goes to get that fluoride treatment, that's not 1.5 parts per million.

That's not even 0.7 parts per million. that is 24,000 parts per million. And that goes right to the brain within 10 minutes. So that fluoride treatment, I don't think is a good idea. We've recommended it for a long time. Don't do that. Get the cleaning done. See your dentist.

Even if your dentist recommends fluoride and they're a good dentist, keep seeing that dentist, it's fine. But turn down the fluoride. Yeah, that's great advice. When you look out there, I mean, there's no way to know this answer, but I'm just taking your personal opinion. You've been in the space. You've been following a lot of the literature.

you're one of the biggest websites, if not the biggest websites, askthedentist.com when it comes to dental questions, information that people are looking for. You have an incredible practitioner database to find a biological, functional dentist that's out there. I use it all the time. I send it to friends all the time. You can find it on your website. Again, askthedness.com. You know, there's an epidemic of chronic disease amongst children in the United States.

And every year there's some new stat coming out about how, children are sicker than ever. And it's multifaceted. As you mentioned, our diet is a huge, huge, huge part of it. Children are living more sedentary lifestyles. The inputs of games, social media, technology, et cetera, the lack of nature, these all play in. Where do you think of or how do you think of the impact of fluoride when you see these negative trends that are out there and so many kids with behavioral issues. We've had multitude of experts on the topic of autism talking about those rates increasing over the years and how much they've gone up and even doubled, I think, since the early 2000s in terms of the diagnosis rates that are out there. What's your hunch about

the role that fluoride has potentially played in this epidemic of chronic disease amongst children? It's a very interesting question, Drew, and I think about that a lot. I don't like to talk about it too much because we don't have a lot of science behind it. It makes my side of the argument seem a little bit too woo-woo sometimes. But having said that, and again, a lot of people say it's because we're better at diagnosing it or we're over-diagnosing it, but certainly fluoride has had more of an effect other than just IQ. It is, since it's been added, and since food has been modified and grains have been modified and food has been ultra-processed, a lot has happened. The question is, is how much has fluoride contributed to that. I think there is an element of truth to what you what you just

presented. And I think we're going to find this out soon eventually as the science gets better. But if we can just get rid of fluoride right now, it's an easy thing to do. We can't take out microplastics. That's going to be difficult. Our air is polluted. That's going to be very difficult to fix. This is an easy fix, Drew. We can just take it out of the water. So simple. Yeah. And it's not that you're saying that overnight everything's going to change, but this is going to be one input that's limited. And the first rule of thumb, you know, we've had on Dr. Ray Dorsey, who's a world's expert in Parkinson's disease. And he's talked about very common chemicals, many chemicals that have been used in dry cleaning. Tetrachlorahydrine, I believe,

is one of them. I may be pronouncing it incorrectly, chlorotethydrine, something like that. It's literally the chemical that they use to induce Parkinson's disease in laboratory mice. If you want to give a lab rat Parkinson's disease, you inject this chemical, and this is a top chemical in industrial solvents and especially dry cleaning. I believe it was recently banned in California and the EPA is looking at it on a federal basis and having a transition out period. But there's other chemicals that are just one or two compounds away from it that are also there. And anyways, the reason I was bringing it up is that Dr. Dorsey said, if I had a patient that was sick that was coming in and they were saying, look, Parkinson's is.

so complicated. What can I do? And does any of this stuff really matter? He says, before we get into other things that you can do, and there are things that you can do, maybe not to reverse Parkinson's disease, but maybe to at least improve the symptoms in the way that they show up, the first thing I'd always tell the patient is we need to turn off the spigot of toxic water. And if that's reducing your exposure to pesticides, and if that's reducing your exposure to dry cleaning and air pollution, three things that they've shown that have a direct link to the increase in Parkinson's disease, then let's start off there. It's not perfect, but at least it's something. So it's not that you're advocating that removing fluoride is going to immediately change everything, but it definitely is

something. And we should err on the side of caution when it comes to, especially protecting young children. I mean, anything that causes the brain to become inflamed and affects the development of it and affects IQ, which is actually the building of the brain, the development of the brain, you could argue, and I think I'm beginning to see this in studies, that there are connections to the behavior of the child, certainly, but also even Alzheimer's and MS and other neurological diseases, ALS, for example. Why not? I mean, we have to have an open mind, Drew. And again, this idea where let's not worry about it, fluoride is such a great thing, it's helping our teeth, it's not. And to add it universally,

to a water supply and to think blindly, illogically, without any scientific basis, to think that there's some benefit there and not think on the other end, but what are we really doing? What are the potential unreasonable, as Judge Chen says, the unreasonable kind of effects

on other parts of our body? And so we're really kind of out of control on so many things in how we think. And you know, you could say that all these toxins are making us think in a very illogical way. I mean, it's kind of reverse cyclical kind of thinking. We're not well. We're not thinking properly.

We're not as smart as we used to be, not as logical. You know, one of the things that I also want to highlight here that I appreciate that you did, but it also shows the challenge that a lot of practitioners and, you know, influencers and, you know, influencers in the traditional space go through. You know, whenever I would bring up topics of fluoride when I was first starting my journey into wellness, which was more than 20 plus years ago. I'd ask my dentist about it at the time. And this is before I was working with Dr. Roshian, who you know well, who's here in Los Angeles, who I love, and, you know, other great dentists that are out there that, you know, you've recommended

to me. Before I work with them, I would ask my childhood dentist that I grew up with in Delaware, and I'd say, you know, hey, some people have questions about fluoride. And like clockwork, I would hear some version of, oh, you know, the American Dental Association says it's safe. You know, these organizations, they do the research. They're the trusted ones. If it was that bad, you hear often people say, if it was that bad, the EPA would regulate it. If it was that bad, the Food and Drug Administration would regulate it. And hopefully the seven-year-long court case has shown people that it's messy as hibu.

And these agencies actually have no incentive to want to look into there. You have to typically be a foot soldier who's sort of blindly trusting the general and standing on the shoulders of people that were there before you, even if they were wrong. And it's not okay to bring up questions that are there. So the cool thing about following this over the years, since you've kind of put me on to this case, is that you realize that there's so many aspects of public health. public policy, there's no incentive for somebody to be like an Aaron Brockovich type character. Obviously, she was an outsider making change from, you know, making change because the inside

wasn't paying attention. But there's no incentive for somebody to be a whistleblower to check in on these things because you just get shut down at the most earliest levels. And hopefully that would make people more aware of the fact that, you know, there's all these polls that are out there that trust in the government is at, trust in institutions, trust in the government, trust in science is at an all-time low. I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing, right? It's a thing that's a direct reflection of the fact that we live in a messy world and people realize that just because these agencies say that something is true doesn't

automatically mean it's true. We need checks and balances. That would be like saying just because a politician said something is. is true that we should automatically believe them. It's not the case. You're absolutely right, Drew. I mean, even the World Health Organization has found no difference in tooth decay rates between countries that fluoridate their water and those that don't. But, you know, the WHO, they've said some other things that we don't agree with. The CDC has voiced their opinion. I mean, who do you trust is essentially, I think you have to have,

you have to go with your gut feeling. If it's something that is this polarized, And both sides, well, actually, in this case, it's one side, but I want to remain very neutral. When someone is so entrenched, and I'm talking about an organization, a group of people, especially a professional organization, when they're that entrenched and they just keep pushing back, almost to the point of violence, that's another story. You have to wonder, you know, what's going on here? Why aren't they thinking or wanting that information and trying to improve what they've been held to oath? And that is to do no harm, medicine specifically, but also dentistry, and to help their patients. And for 75 years to push back on this, it smelled rotten. It didn't have the right feel and look to it.

So I think the longer it went on, we understood that there was something rotten in Denmark. Is that the saying? So this is great news. This is great news. And it's something that we should all be very happy about. You know, one of the other reasons that I want to highlight and have some gratitude for you and the way that you've talked about the subject is that when I then started to question fluoride, I was sort of as I'm not a dentist, I'm not a researcher.

I really have no expertise in this space. I get to talk to people like yourself. But I was reading from a lot of people on social media. And, you know, there's a lot of sensationalism that's out there. and I would tell people that, you know, fluoride doesn't work. And one of the things that you've highlighted earlier is that actually fluoride does work. And any dentist that's used fluoride knows that it works. The question is always what's the trade-off and the neurological damages and the benefits?

I appreciate that you were the one that really sort of introduced that to me many, many years ago when we first connected. Because it's easy when you are against the man, quote unquote, it's easy to just write something off and say, ah, it's all b-h-oh. we're being fed this stuff and to chalk it up to some conspiracy. But you know, you really came in and said, you having your foot in both sides of the world practicing traditional dentistry and then switching and having this more holistic approach. He said, no, fluoride does work. It's just these consequences that are there. And then it's about finding better alternatives. And speaking of such, you know, there's great alternatives. You've been on the podcast before. You've started a company. I have no affiliation besides the fact that I use it and I love it. And it's another alternative

that's out there to fluoride and it's hydroxy appetite. And there are growing number of companies that are now talking about this, but you put your hat in the ring to basically create a toothpaste that is much better than the options that are out there. And that sort of recreates and has more of like a saliva-type feel to the body, which sounds bad, but is actually good. That's really what we want toothpaste to be. Do you want to mention that just quickly before we go into a few other topics?

Sure. I mean, so again, fluoride does work topically, as we discussed. It would be a pity to remove that from toothpaste and not have an alternative. The good news is that a nano form and a very specific nano form of hydroxyapatite, which has been considered and certified to be safe, and there's only one form, it's out of Europe. It actually, if you look at it underneath a microscope, actually a scanning electron microscope, which I have done, and we've tested a lot of different brands. and we've looked at the particle size of these very tiny small pieces of calcium phosphate and hydroxyl groups, basically water. It's a little sphere. If you look at the ones that are already in your teeth and the ones that you're adding in the right toothpaste, they're virtually identical in size, shape, charge, even where fluoride is really kind of a foreign body. It's, again, more electronegative. It has a higher charge. It's more reactive. And maybe, you know, we shouldn't be putting, combining fluoride with calcium because we want to be able

to pull that calcium out for a reason, especially in our bones. Fluoride is more resistant to being pulled out. Our bones are a reservoir for calcium. Calcium metabolism is second in importance to our glucose metabolism. And if we don't have the right amounts of calcium in our blood, we're dead in the water. Calcium is imperative for cellular processes. and transcriptions and all of that for life, as is magnesium and other minerals. So, but if you put fluoride into a bone and you can't, if the body via calcitonin and all

these hormones that are designed to pull calcium out of our bones and get it in the blood, if we're not getting it in our diet, I mean, that can't be good, right? I mean, let's not even worry about the teeth in that case. We wouldn't last very long. We can't survive without minerals. The teeth cannot survive without minerals, and you need to store those minerals in your saliva. And unfortunately, we were not doing well in the mineral department. We're devoid of minerals in our water and in our filtered water and in our soil.

So thank goodness we have that as an alternative. It's been in use for 50 years in Japan. The American market is just getting access to this wonderful ingredient. Again, it's biomimetic. It's natural. It's found in nature. That's the definition of biomimetic. It's found in your teeth.

You're just adding some to your teeth when the teeth needed. It's great. We'll link to the show notes, but the company's called fig, fygg.com. Feed your good guys, and people can check it out if they want to. You know, we talked about filtering your water because one of the rulings of this case is simply to have the EPA go back to the drawing board. So just so we're all clear, it's not that the EPA can't use floor. They have to go look back at the evidence.

And there's a lot of options that the EPA has. They could protest the ruling. They could appeal to a larger court. They could kind of fakely go back and review the body of work. Or they could do it justice and say, actually, there is something to review. And we should have a different approach here. But municipalities, minus one early municipality that you might want to mention, they all can still use fluoride in their water. What was the town actually?

you mentioned to me before we started recording that there was one town. Yorktown, Upper State, New York somewhere. They were in the process of deciding when the judgment came out, the verdict, they said, okay, that's it. We're done. We're not going to debate this anymore. So I think what you said, the latter option, the EPA hopefully will do their due diligence. It'll take time. Certainly, municipal water supplies can do whatever they want. And I'm hoping that this is enough of an influence where they will take it out of their water. Of course, they're going to get a lot of pushback from local dental associations. Every county has its own dental association. And the lobby is very, very strong. They're well funded. So it's going to be a battle. There will be

lawsuits. I think really in this case, you have to follow the money. And it'll get, when it gets, when it becomes costly enough, they will drop the pressure to fluoridate water supplies. I think we'll still see fluoride in toothpaste and other products. The problem is, is that a lot of these products have, you know, 25x, no, actually a thousand X of what the water was in terms of concentration. There are prescription strength toothpaste. At least it's a prescription. But dentists are applying that varnish to children, and they're not even asking the parents, although a lot of parents are going in now and saying, no fluoride treatment, unless you've got the hydroxyapatite version of that, fig also makes a varnish.

But, you know, parents are doing that, but they're used to being shamed by the dentist. Sometimes dentists fire their patients for denying that treatment to their child. So it's really, it's going to be complicated. Again, this is a tipping point. This was great for the movement against fluoride, getting fluoride over water. But I think we're still probably 20, 30 years away from one clean solution. And I hope that the EPA will take this well and just say, you know what? We're going to listen to what the people said, the courts,

and we're going to recommend some very strong regulations on how to prevent keeping the dose high. But likely it's going to be a reduction of the dose in the water so that the effective dose that we talked about earlier, that combined with T and formula and all these other external sources for fluoride, but how do you control that? And then if someone's just drinking the water for fluoride, it's at such a low level that there's just no point in putting it in there. So again, lots of confusion coming. Lots of confusion, but the reason that people tune in here is they want to hear

what's the precautionary approach that they can be taking to minimize the risk. And hopefully, especially as this podcast has evolved and my thinking is evolved, the thing that I always try to recommend to people is that remember that if your diet is good enough, meaning you're staying away from ultra-processed foods, getting enough protein, getting enough fiber, right? Moderating, you know, added sugar to having minimal amounts, right? We're not talking about fruit and things like that. Talking about added sugar from soft drinks, other things like that, you know, greatly

minimize or reduce those in your life. Then you have sleep because sleep is so restorative to the brain that's being damages by all these different things and toxins and stuff. We can't control it all. We're exposed to a lot. but sleep helps us recover. Then you're not living a sedentary lifestyle. Most people are getting less than 4,000 steps a day.

They're living a sedentary lifestyle. So if you get more than that, ideally 8 to 10,000 steps and that you have some resistance training or some sort of workout routine in your life so that you are active. And then you have some sense of community in your life and a sense of purpose. If you focus on those basics and you can sweat a little bit,

which is how we remove toxins. You don't like working out? Okay, get a sauna at least or go to your local gym and sweat some of these toxins out. You're doing better than 99% of people that are out there just by that. Now we have bonus section,

which is that if we're trying to minimize the toxins that are in our world, there's some easy ones that are there. So, Dr. B, take us through a recap of if we want to minimize our total fluoride exposure that's out there from the dentist to the water we drink to products we use, give us the action items that everybody here could follow at relatively low cost and maybe even in some cases,

no cost by switching to some alternatives. So clearly the first thing you want to do is really know what you're drinking. Check with your local municipal water supply. They have to let you know how much fluoride is added. Realize that sometimes they add too much, sometimes they add too little, And but that's, you're probably your biggest source for it. Easy to filter. You can buy a tabletop filter. Not all filters, a filter for fluoride. The one you recommend, I checked, the reverse osmosis one that you always recommend is a good filter.

I recommend a few in our store as well. But to keep it inexpensive and easy, there is a filter that I really like. It's clearly filtered. Again, it's on our store. Clearly filtered. It's made down by your way. They went out of their way to be aggressive on filtering. a lot of things, but they were very focused on fluoride. Fluoride has many effects. Fluoride is

antimicrobial. That's one thing they were bragging about in dental school. So can affect your oral microbiome. It can kill off the oral microbiome on the back of your tongue, which affects nitric oxide production. I mean, you know, you can be very, very healthy and get too much fluoride and have neurological issues. They say the brain is plastic, right, as an adult. I don't think you can, my take on this, is that you cannot undo the effects of a fluoride brain from conception to age 20. I don't think that can be undone. I don't want to be negative, but certainly you can try your best and get rid of other sources of chemicals.

But it's essentially the water. If you drink a lot of tea, be careful. I do drink a lot of green tea. I try and minimize that. I've asked the manufacturer of my favorite iced green teas, how much fluoride is in there. And just to clarify that, so everybody who's falling along, you're drinking a pre-made green tea. Yes. So they already have made it, meaning they've brewed it.

They have their own water. And a lot of times, places are not using filtered water. More and more brands are. There's a brand that I buy occasionally. I like to make tea at home. I have some green tea in this cup right here in a bag that's not bleached and isn't releasing microplastics. You know, again, brands are paying attention.

When you vote with your dollars, they start to listen. So the brand that you use that's already brewed, they're not using filtered water, right? So, okay, great. You're just making a trade off. But if that's your only fluoride exposure, no big deal. Obviously, now I'm working on brewing my own tea. I love peak tea. I don't have an affiliation with them.

They're not even in my store. But their pure green tea is excellent. And again, you're brewing that at home, as you said. So again, I filter my water at home. So that helps. Same thing with formula. Do not use fluoridated water with formulas. There's already fluoride in your formula.

This is the powdered formula, of course, that you're mixing. So be wary of that. If you're a mom in breastfeeding and you're drinking fluoridated water, that fluoride is getting to your child. So I think certain food, certain cookware has fluoride in it, especially as the cookware gets older. I think Yvonne Burkart talks about this. Fluoride's everywhere.

It's a problem. If you're drinking from well water, Have your well water checked very often. I actually practicing the Silicon Valley, a lot of people would come from Texas and Oklahoma in the deep south, and I could actually tell the levels of arsenic and fluoride in their water and that they were on well water. I would ask them, and they said, well, how did you know?

And I could tell by the color and the modeling and the prolessence of the teeth. And that's how the teeth formed. They formed with a lot of minerals in place that really shouldn't have been there. Too much fluoride will make your teeth brown, spotty and brown. That's the worst case scenario. A lighter lower level of fluorosis is white spots. I actually have a little fluorosis. I grew up in San Francisco, drank fluoridated water, and I actually have a slight level of

fluorosis. That makes me nervous. I mean, in terms of neurological diseases, as I get older, it really does. Maybe that's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about this whole thing. Fluoride is not a good thing to ingest, especially from day So before we move on, you talked about filtered water. Oh, clearly filtered. Sorry, they have a great tabletop filter. It's inexpensive. It works well and it filters out 99.9% of fluoride.

Easily done anywhere you go. I travel with it. Also bottled water. That's why I drink distilled water. And I, you know, unfortunately it's in a plastic bottle. But distilled water. Remember, bottled water is usually filtered water from a tap in wherever it's made. Like Desani is water from Atlanta.

and the question is, is how do they filter? And not all filtration does remove fluoride. So it is in your bottled water. Be careful. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of reasons in addition to fluoride, the microplastics, which everybody's paying attention to is a big reason to avoid bottled water. And, you know, these filters at home, I'm not familiar with the brand that you have. I've reversed osmosis.

We'll link to them both in the show notes. You know, you're talking about a couple hundred bucks and maybe like 50 to 100 bucks of install. You can probably install yourself if you're pretty handy. and you change the filter, you know, once to twice a year, and that's it, and you're done, right? So, question for you on the filtered water side, do you add back in any minerals? Do you use any kind of trace minerals or anything like that? And if you do, what's your cadence? Do you add it daily back to your water?

Right, I do. And we have these items in our store. There's trace minerals. I think that's the name of it. Yeah, the blue bottle. Yeah, exactly, blue bottle. I love that brand. You know, electrolytes are handy.

I'm not big on the high sodium ones. Also, a lot of these electrolytes are very low in pH because they add citric acid. I've measured some of them. I actually had a sponsor and I had to drop them because the pH of their, you know, once you added the powder to the water and I knew what the pH of my water was, of course, it dropped it down to 2.6. That's like you think that's the citric acid component. It's a citric acid, yeah.

So, I mean, be careful there because that's, that causes erosion of your teeth and loss of enamel, sensitive teeth. So, yeah, minerals back to your water. I distill my water. I drink distilled water. I know that's very controversial, but it's not controversial because I add back the minerals, but I want it to be as clean as possible. I think reverse osmosis is fine. If it's a good unit, well made, unfortunately reverse osmosis for me, I'm off the grid here. I've been wasting about one third of that water and a lot of energy to produce that water. So the tabletop filtration, which is entry level, that works very well. Plus, it's filtering. out 350 other contaminants like pesticides and other things, lead, arsenic, things that are in your

pipes. So this is a great investment. Filtering your water, which I've done probably from age 17 or 18, is one of the biggest health hacks you can do. And it's one of the simplest. Great. Let's go to what people, especially parents, should be doing or at least bringing up at the dentist. My advice to a couple that are thinking, of having a child is to make a list of all the sources of fluoride that both are consuming. It might as well be both parents. Again, we don't know all the science, but find out where you're getting fluoride and eliminate them during conception and obviously, you know, during gestation, and then also when your child

is young and their brain is developing. Find out what those sources are and make sure that you're not exposing yourself. to it, but certainly your children. So again, that's before conception. And some, some dentists will argue, some actually their PhD epidemiologists, they will recommend that many, many months before conception that you take that into consideration. So I think that's a good idea. Now, not everyone plans that well, but once you know you're pregnant, make sure you're filtering your water. That's the biggest thing you can do for the brain of your child. obviously you're getting that exposure from drinking water, which you want to minimize having a filter,

but a lot of people are still using Colgate and these other brands and high fluoride brands that are out there. So switching your toothpaste is like a no-brainer because if you care about fluoride in the tap water, you're going to be exposed to a lot more. And people always will say, well, you're not swallowing it, but the question is it crossing the membrane in the mouth? And a lot of people do swallow their toothpaste on a regular basis. I see it all the time. The other advice we give couples that are thinking of having a baby is to make sure that mom has very good paradonal health because that will affect the outcome.

Preterm births, low birth weights, if there's any gingivitis, even very mild levels of gum disease. So there's a lot your dentist, a lot of advice, your functional dentist, I guess in this case, can give you to help the health, you know, with the health of that child. certainly with fluoride. But here's an example. Here's an example. Mom's pregnant. She goes in for her regular dental cleaning. Maybe she gets a good report card. Everything's fine. And then the knee-jerk response is to maybe get a fluoride treatment because moms tend to get cavities during pregnancy or after pregnancy. That's another whole discussion. And so the dentist or the hygienist will recommend,

oh, let's do that fluoride varnish. That's going right to your, at a very high level, very high concentration, even though it's just one hit, that's going right to your kid's brain, your fetus. So I would, that's another source of fluoride that maybe people haven't thought of. So while you're getting your teeth cleaned, which is a good idea for many reasons, the ones I mentioned earlier were the health of the child, preterm and birth weights. Make sure you're not getting fluoride during those proactive, preventative dental treatments. that can set you behind as well, potentially. Mark, this has been fantastic.

And as always, you, your team, Catherine, your daughter that you work on these projects with that ask the dentist, you guys have been an incredible resource for people who care about this and have the luxury of paying attention to these things because the truth is the vast majority of people who are impacted about the overuse of fluoride in our municipalities and food systems are people who don't have. the luxury of listening to podcasts who don't have the luxury of reading about these things and are just trying to, you know, work a few jobs and make it through the day and battle inflation and all the standard stuff that people are trying to do on the lower end of the economic spectrum.

So it's important that if you have the resources like a lot of people do on this podcast, you pay attention and you spread the work. You know, if you have somebody in your life that you care about that you think would be open to this, send them this episode and send them Dr. B's website. and social media posts on this topic. It's been a great resource for anybody to be aware and to take a more precautionary approach to the toxins they have on their life.

I'm going to give the final word to you. Anything else that you want to leave our audience with on this topic of fluoride and protecting our brains, our teeth, and especially our children from this epidemic of chronic disease that's out there. I just wanted to thank you, Drew, for having an open mind. I mean, you have the opportunity to interview pretty much.

anyone you want. And I know when we first talked about it, that the whole fluoride thing was a little, you know, you weren't sure. And so thank you for allowing me now to talk about it twice on your podcast on fluoride. And I think it's a great service that you provide. Again, being open-minded is so, so, so important. Thanks, thanks for that. Also, wanted to thank the judge. He did an amazing job. I don't know how he was able to hang in there for seven years and understand all the science. And And I've heard that this is his last decision. I just want to say to him, I haven't had any contact with him, of course. But, you know, this is quite a legacy for your grandchildren, if you have them.

And then also Michael Connett, the attorney, again, I've never spoken to him. But seven years and his team of working on this case tirelessly. And, you know, there were times where it wasn't going well. So, you know, when you're suing the government and the EPA, it's not an easy thing. So, but again, Drew, thanks for letting me get the word out. I really appreciate that. Amazing. If you want to keep in touch with Mark, aka Dr. B, aka Ask the Dentist, you can go to Ask the Dentist.com. And the toothpaste that he mentioned earlier, we have the link in the show notes.

It's FYGG.com. You can find it in the show notes as well. Dr. B, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. Thanks, Drew. Hi, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend, share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter, and it's called Try This.

Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This, or just go to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-H-I-T-com and click on the tab. that says try this