Contamination and inadequate sanitation are common issues in water safety, and because of this, access to safe drinking water is vital to human health. Is the water you drink every day safe? How much water do you need to keep that body healthy?
The human body is composed of 50-75% of water, and it is much higher in kids, then, it is more important for them to drink water regularly. Do you think water plays a potential role in the development of your child’s IQ? Knowing the underlying factor of your kid’s cognitive level is crucial and plays an important part in IQ development.
Many parents have been dreaming of their children to top in school. It’s rewarding; it’s fulfilling, in other words, most especially moms. They even let their kids be involved in different activities, yearning to develop their holistic well-being. Others invest in nutritional enhancements to help improve their intelligence and mental coping.
The study: Lower IQ in Children Exposed to Fluoride, by Harvard researchers confirms that fluoride reduces children’s IQ, according to Dr. Joseph Mercola, a physician and an author who spearheaded the research.
Based on the meta-analysis study, the children who lived in areas with highly fluoridated water and used this as drinking water may have significantly lower IQ scores than those living in an area with low fluoridated water.
The study further concluded that an adverse effect of drinking water with high fluoride concentration and fluoride is a known cause of toxicity in the nervous system, which affects the learning and memory of children.
The researchers performed a statistical procedure in the study, combining data from multiple studies and conducting a systematic review to investigate the delayed neurobehavioral development and effects of increased fluoride exposure who lived in highly fluoridated water areas.
Know The Facts
The lead author, Howard Hu, the founding dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, found low scores on intelligence tests with a high level in fluoride exposure in utero in his study. Here are a few of the highlights of the study.
The new study says that increased levels of fluoride exposure during prenatal:
- Maybe linked in children with lower cognitive functions;
- The child is more sensitively susceptible to environmental toxicants during prenatal than once the child is born. It means to say that it is safer for a child to be exposed to fluoride during childhood than during prenatal;
- Base on the intelligence test results, the researchers found a drop in scores. However, they found that there is no significant influence in the brain development of the child exposure to fluoride in utero once a child was born, albeit there is a potential connection to child exposure to fluoride in utero;
- Measuring the chemical content of fluoride exposure in the urine of Mexican mothers and children reveals the fluoride exposure through used water to quantify the fluoride exposure by analyzing it in the environment and, in average, they found that mothers had 0.90 milligrams per liter of fluoride in their urine;
- In the study, the broad range of exposures reported for other general population samples of pregnant and non-pregnant adult women was associated with lower scores on cognitive function tests in the offspring ages between 4-3, then 6–12 years old with higher prenatal fluoride exposure.
What Is Fluoride?
Fluoride combines unpurified byproducts of phosphate mining, namely sodium fluoride, hydrofluorosilicic acid, and sodium fluorosilicate. In the United States, thousands of tons of fluorosilicic acid are recovered from phosphoric acid plants and then used for water fluoridation. During this process, the fluoride ion is created.
Fluoride is proven to protect teeth from decay. When a person eats sugary food, the bacteria in the mouth produce acid. This acid eats away minerals from the tooth’s surface, making the tooth weaker and accumulating the chance of developing cavities.
Fluoride helps build and strengthen the tooth’s surface. It stops cavities from developing and can even restore the tooth’s surface by keeping the tooth solid. Water fluoridation stops tooth decay by providing frequent and consistent contact with low levels of fluoride.
Before, scientists investigated the relationship between tooth decay in children and the naturally occurring fluoride in drinking water. Then the study found that children who drank water with naturally high levels of fluoride had fewer tooth decay.
Many suffered from toothaches and painful extraction to the point of often losing permanent teeth, even molars. That is why water fluoridation has been an aid to this problem.
Fluorosis - The disease and how it affects people
Most common in drinking water is excess fluoride, which can cause fluorosis, which affects the teeth and bones. Fluorosis is described as a deficiency of minerals on tooth enamel caused by ingestion of excessive fluoride during enamel formation, and this is an extremely common disorder.
Low levels of fluoride consumption help to avoid dental caries. Therefore, the control of drinking-water quality is serious in preventing fluorosis, and this has to be taken with the utmost attention of parents.
Dental fluorosis may be a sign of wider systemic damage.
There are many suggestions as to the possible biochemical mechanisms underlying the development of dental fluorosis, and they are complicated.
It Is an Unapproved Drug
If everyone knew the dangers of fluoride and had a choice, most would likely choose fluoride-free drinking water. Unfortunately, you don't have that choice if you live in an area that adds fluoride to its public water supply.
It's important to remember that fluoride is, in fact, a drug since it's used to prevent tooth decay, and no other drug has ever been administered as a public health measure across the board without regard for sex, age, medical need, and other issues that might place you at increased risk for side effects.
Once you put fluoride in the water, there is no way to control who gets it and how much, and if you suffer the side effects, there's no alternative to it. Most don't even understand that their health problems might be connected to fluoride toxicity.
Fluoride in water is not even regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), even though it regulates fluoride in toothpaste and other oral care products, which must bear warning labels about the danger of ingesting those products. Fluoride is the only drug forced on the whole population with no control of dosing.
Interventions
Elimination of excessive fluoride from drinking water is difficult and costly. The ideal option is to find a supply of safe drinking water with safe fluoride levels. De-fluoridation may be the only solution where access to safe water is already limited.
Other methods include the use of contact precipitation, bone charcoal, use of activated alumina. Only water for drinking and cooking purposes should be treated since all methods produce mud with a very high concentration of fluoride that has to be disposed of, particularly in developing countries.
Many do not realize the proven health risks inherent in fluoridated water, but the information is growing. It was claimed that adding fluoride to water was a safe and effective way to improve people's dental health. Many bought into this hook, line, and sinker, despite all the evidence to the contrary over the decades.
There are scientific investigations that revealed fluoride is an endocrine-disrupting chemical and has connected it to thyroid disease's rising occurrence. Fluoride has been identified as a developmental neurotoxin that impacts short-term and working memory and contributes to rising rates of attention-deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD).
Most people get fluoride from public water. About 75% are exposed to fluoride through public water, the main route of exposure aside from toothpaste and mouth rinses. Water fluoridation is considered one of the ten greatest public health achievements of the past century. Since fluoride was introduced into community water over a long period, there has been a reduction in cavities in children and adults.
Fluoride is commonly added to drinking water to improve dental health, though several communities have rejected water fluoridation.
What the new study means for pregnant women in the United States is hanging. The researchers cautioned that this was just one study. They said it needs to be reproduced in other populations by other scientists for more conclusive results.
When fluoride is mixed in the water, it isn't easy to control each individual's dose because people drink different amounts of water. Being able to control the dose a patient receives is critical. Like manual laborers, athletes, people with diabetes, and people with kidney disease, some people drink more water than others largely.
Critiques of the New Study
However, a critic says that there is some evidence suggesting that we should take a closer look at fluoride’s effects on the brain, even at the reasonable exposures to which some Americans are exposed.
The study was from Mexico in selected areas with widespread fluorosis with very high fluoride concentrations in drinking water, so the results do not apply to areas where community water fluoridation is used.
However, the high occurrence of premature births and low birth weights for the children, for mothers with high urinary fluoride levels, suggests that problems of birth in areas of common fluorosis could provide a biological process to explain the IQ deficits rather than a direct chemical toxicity processes.
The power to conclude the results to how exposures may impact the general population is limited given the lack of data on fluoride during pregnancy. There are no reference values for urinary fluoride in pregnant women base on the study.
The deficiency of data on fluoride content in water given that fluoride content is not reported as part of the water quality monitoring programs in Mexico, also, lack of information on other environmental neurotoxicants such as arsenic.
People are not aware of the evidence suggesting the population is exposed to significant levels of neurotoxicants. Yet, people cannot rule out the potential for unrestrained confounding due to other factors, including diet, that may affect urinary fluoride secretion and that may be related to cognition.
Keep Your Drinking Water Safe and Clean
It is better to track how much water you drink in a day. Just make sure if you are not at home, you have to consider the safety and cleanliness of the water you will drink. You can get enough water each day by drinking water and consuming fluids like soup and drinks, along with lots of fruits and vegetables, which contain water.
At some point, people don’t think about the water they drink. Looking for a tap, fill a glass, and drink. Is the water you're drinking safe and clean? What if your tap water suddenly became contaminated? Here are quick tips for you.
Filtered tap water so you can drink it, cook with it, and you have it.
- Bring water in safe containers – Water On the go.
- Stay hydrated with safe water, especially while you’re pregnant.
- Use safe water for formulated milk for infants.
- Use a whole house water filter and - Breathe easy.
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