Fluoride in toothpaste protects your teeth. It helps prevent cavities and it helps keep your teeth strong. It prevents tooth decay and ensures that the enamel is less quickly soluble. But is that really the case? And is fluoride really that healthy?
Fluoride makes the enamel harder
The main reason fluoride is added to toothpaste is that fluoride makes the enamel harder. This would make your teeth more resistant to cavities. But is this really the case? A study at Saarland University in Germany has shown that the fluorine compound on the enamel, by brushing with fluoridated toothpaste, was limited to a thickness of only 6 nanometers (one nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter).
Disadvantages fluoride
However, there are many disadvantages to fluoride. Officially, fluoride is known as a poison that is more toxic than lead and slightly less toxic than arsenic. Sodium fluoride is present in high concentrations in rat poison and insecticides, among others. Low concentrations in toothpaste do not immediately make you sick as an adult, but in the long term it does affect your health. For example, there are more than enough scientific studies that show that intake of fluoride can lead to structural damage to the bone, fatigue, fertility problems and that it has a harmful effect on the development of children’s brains. A link between fluoride and decreased IQ has even been demonstrated.
Lethale dose
Fluoride and other chemicals from toothpaste are absorbed through your cheek mucosa and thus end up in your body. Small children also swallow toothpaste. Swallowing a brush head full of toothpaste with fluoride is enough to cause acute poisoning in a two-year-old child. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, headache and diarrhea. A lethal dose is 5 mg fluoride per kilo body weight. This means that swallowing a tube of toothpaste for a 1-year-old child is already life-threatening. So if you still use toothpaste with fluoride, make sure you always store it out of the reach of children!
Healthy diet
Toothpaste with fluoride is presented as a magic pill against cavities. So you could eat whatever and whenever you want, as long as you brush your teeth properly. But caries are often a result of a wrong diet with too much sugar, refined white flour products, insufficient oral hygiene and too many eating moments in a day.
Natural toothpaste
After the foregoing, it is of course a no-brainer that it is better to opt for a toothpaste without fluoride. Preferably choose a natural toothpaste, made from plant extracts and natural minerals. The Elite Home toothpaste for adults is also without SLS and SLES. These chemical sulfates ensure that your toothpaste foams nicely, but also have a drying effect. The Elite Home’sorganic toothpaste contains only natural ingredients, such as aloe vera leaf juice and peppermint oil. Aloe vera has a natural antibacterial and soothing effect. It can have a calming effect on irritated gums and oral mucosa and help with canker sores.
For the little ones
For your children, it is even more important to choose a toothpaste without fluoride or other chemical ingredients. They often swallow the toothpaste and get larger quantities. The all-natural children’s toothpaste from The Elite Home contains aloe vera and oil from orange and mandarin peels. This natural children’s toothpastetastes good, is mild for the gums and suitable for the first teeth. The toothpaste is carefully formulated and helps effectively protect children’s teeth from plaque and caries. This organic children’s toothpaste is also free of SLS and SLES. Therefore, the toothpaste foams less, but it gets its cleaning power 100% from natural ingredients. The soothing properties of aloe vera make the children’s toothpaste very suitable for brushing the first teeth and the associated sensitive gums.
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