"Hard" bones - blessing or disease?
The main argument of fluoridationists is that fluoride will make your bones "hard".
Unfortunately, many people swallow this propaganda line without giving it much thought.
Is there anything wrong with our bones the way they are?
Did you ever have a feeling that your bones are not "hard enough"?
It is true that the most visible characteristic of bones is "hardness".
Bones provide a hard framework that supports and anchors all soft organs of the body.
The bones of the skull provide a safe enclosure for the brain.
The vertebrae surround the spinal cord and the rib cage protects the vital organs of the thorax.
Bones are crucial for movement, skeletal muscles attached to the bones by tendons and use the bones as levers to move the body and its parts.
But there is much more to bones than this!
Bones serve as storage for fat. It is stored in their internal cavities.
Bones also store minerals, they are body's most important depot for calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, magnesium, copper and other minerals.
The average adult contains 1000 to 1200 g of calcium, 99 percent of it resides in the skeleton.
30 percent of body sodium and 50 percent of magnesium are stored in bone.
The stored minerals can be mobilized and released into the bloodstream in ionic form for distribution to all parts of the body.
As a matter of fact, deposit into and removal of minerals from the bone goes on continuously.
The bulk of blood cell formation takes place within the marrow cavities of certain bones.
It is a very complex physiology and, obviously, our bones can only perform these functions because of their composition.
If we look into anatomy textbook, we would see that bones are very complex organs with a wide range of physiological functions.
Long bones consist of a shaft (diaphysis) which is constructed of a relatively thick collar of compact bone that surrounds a space in the middle (medullary cavity), which contains fat (yellow marrow).
The ends of long bones are called heads or epiphyses .
They are more expanded than the diaphysis.
The exterior of epiphysis consists of a layer of compact bone, the interior contains spongy bone.
In young people, who are still growing, the area where epiphysis and diaphysis meet is called epiphyseal plate, it is a growth area.
When a person reaches a certain age, the epiphyseal plate disappears; the shaft and the head become then united.
As one can imagine, bone growth involves a very complex physiology.
In the most simplified form it looks like this:
Our organism produces two antagonistic hormones that regulate bone mineralization and the level of calcium in blood.
One of them is calcitonin, it is produced by the thyroid and it stimulates bone mineralization, in other words, it deposits calcium from blood into the bone structure.
(Obviously there must be a sufficient intake of dietary calcium for this process to take place).
Another hormone works to "wash out" calcium from bones.
It is called parathyroid hormone.
Calcium is extremely important for everyday biochemistry of our organism!
It influences blood coagulation, neuromuscular excitability, transmission of nerve impulses, maintenance and function of cellular membranes, activation of enzymes, hormone secretions.
If there is insufficient dietary intake of calcium, organism has no choice but to supply its needs from storage.
Calcium is then washed out from bones and delivered into blood, from where it is taken by various organs.
Bone growth involves a very fine interaction of these two hormones.
Calcium is washed out from some parts of the bone and is deposited in other parts, thus preserving the relative size of various parts of the bone .
Response of our bones to hormonal stimulation is of crucial importance to life.
Obviously, only a healthy bone can properly respond, a bone that has its mineral composition and its microscopic structure intact.
Bone is made of both organic and inorganic components. The organic components include various cells, which are called osteoblasts, osteocytes, osteoclasts.
The bone matrix has an organic part, which is called osteoid and which makes up about a third of the matrix.
It includes proteoglycans, glycoproteins and collagen fibers.
These organic substances contribute to bone's structure and are secreted by osteoblasts.
Organic components of the bone contribute to its flexibility, ability to resist impact, stretch, twisting, bending.
The inorganic components of the bone matrix consist of mineral salts, most of which are in the form of calcium phosphate, which is in the form of tiny crystals deposited along the collagen fibers.
They give the bone its most visible characteristic - hardness.
Because the bones are hard, they are able to resist compression.
A healthy bone is amazingly strong! It can resist compression of 1760 kg/sq.cm or 25,000 lb/sq.in and tension of 1056 kg/sq.cm or 15,000 lb/sq.in.
However, the bones have to be durable and strong without being brittle.
This is achieved by a proper combination of organic and inorganic matrix elements.
In view of this, claims that we have to ingest a certain chemical to make our bones "hard" are strange, to say the least.
Healthy bone is hard the way it is.
Trying to make it harder with fluoride would change its chemical composition, which would make it unable to respond to hormonal stimulation
On top of that it would make the bone brittle.
Stone is very hard, but it is also brittle.
Imagine our bones resemble stone in its physical properties!
Each of us would then be immobilized a few month each year due to fractures!
A famous physicist from Russia (his ethnicity was Jewish) Leon (Lev) David Landau, a recipient of a Nobel Prize in Physics for 1962, had died after a very minor road accident, during which he received multiple bone fractures.
And yet the impact was aparently so minor that many eggs, which were carried in that car did not even break!
It should also be added here that there were no egg containers in Russia, where each egg sits in its own "socket". People normally carried them in a bag, which is rolled like a cone from a newspaper.
And yet that man had many bones broken and he later died of complications, which he developed due to immobility on a hospital bed!
I do not know what was the medical condition, which made his bones so brittle, maybe it did not even have anything to do with prolonged ingestion of fluorides.
But the fact is that fragile bones are prone to fractures.
And yet according to fluoridationists, "hard" bones is something very desirable! And that we should consume fluorides in order to make them hard.
They, of course, only speak about teeth, conveniently "forgetting" to mention that teeth are an integral part of a skeleton.
Whatever affects teeth, just as much affects other bones!
When teeth become "harder", so does the rest of our skeleton!
They also forget to mention that with this "hardness" comes a breakdown of physiological function of the bone.
And that means disease!
You may want to open anatomy textbook and see for yourself how complex our bones are.
Bones are organs with as much physiological, biochemical vitality as any other - skin, liver, kidneys, pancreas, spleen.
There is a great number of pathological conditions that affect bones, cancer is among them.
And a bone cancer is just as deadly, as the other kinds of it!
Here is a short list of some bone diseases, you would find several variations of some of them in medical books:
osteomalacia, rickets, renal osteodystrophy, Paget's disease (osteitis deformans), osteonecrosis, osteomyelitis, fibrous dysplasia, hypertrophic osteoarthropathy, osteopetrosis, melorheostosis, osteopoikilosis, hyperphosphatasia, Ellis-van Creveld syndrome, achondroplasia, Ollier's dyschondroplasia.
There is also a bone disease which is called fluorosis, which is the result of long-term ingestion of fluoride compounds.
Its main pathological manifestation is a replacement of the natural bone mineral hydroxiapatite by fluoroapatite.
Fluorides are some of the most toxic substances in existence!
Here is a quote from the Cecil Textbook of Medicine, 15th Ed. (1979), p.2262.
"In high concentrations fluoride acts as a general protoplasmic poison, resulting in death.
[...] Chronic intake produces changes confined largely to the skeleton.
Intoxication occurs because of accidental ingestion of fluoride-containing insecticides, chronic inhalation of industrial dusts (particularly in the aluminum mining and phosphate fertilizer industries), or prolonged drinking of certain fresh waters containing large amounts of fluorides.
The skeletal lesions in man vary with the intake but consist of a combination of osteosclerosis and osteomalacia.
The malacic lesions are more prominent at higher intake levels and represent interference with matrix maturation or crystal nucleation.
Sclerosis consists of coarsening of trabeculae, periosteal new bone deposition, osteophyte formation and ossification of tendons and ligaments.
Severely fluorotic bone is chalky white in appearance and exhibits a crumbly consistency, cutting easily with a knife.
Early there are no specific complaints. As the skeletal disease advances, there may be vague pains in the small joints of hands and feet.
As osteophyte formation and periosteal bone growth progress, kyphosis (increased convexity of spine), restriction of spine motion, genu valgum flexion contractures of hips and knees, and ultimately nerve root and spinal cord compression develop.
The neurologic involvement produces paresthesias, weakness, and ultimately paralysis.
Early neurologic involvement may simulate peripheral neuropathy, spinal cord tumor, or syringomyelia (cavity within the spinal cord).
Affected children may develop genu valgum and secondary hyperparathyroidism.
Although serum calcium is normal in patients with skeletal fluorosis, parathyroid gland hyperactivity and increased circulating parathyroid hormone become manifest because of the decreased solubility of the bone fluoroapatite and the compensatory need to maintain normal extracellular ionized calcium equilibrium.
In certain regions of India and Arabia, water-related fluoride intake reaches sufficient levels to produce fluoride intoxication.
In Punjab, for example, osteofluorosis with genu valgum is the most common form of bone disease.
There is no effective treatment for the advanced syndrome except for orthopedic and supportive measures.
Effort should be directed at prevention, particularly in the context of industrial exposure.
Excess body burdens of fluoride are retained for years after exposure has terminated.
Fluoride trapped in bone crystals is released only when bone resorption occurs, and some of the liberated ions are redeposited at sites of new bone formation.
Genu valgum is a bone deformity in which legs are curved inward, also called "knock-knee".
Paresthesia means any subjective sensation - numbness, tingling, "pins and needles", abnormal spasms of the facial muscle, hyperactive reflexes, convulsions.
It is specifically mentioned in that book that "fluoride deficiency syndrome is not recognized", which, of course, means that the claims to the effect that fluoride is an important trace element are without foundation!
The book also mentions medical treatment to reduce skeletal demineralization diseases by deliberately inducing osteofluorosis.
This means that changing the chemical composition of the bone would make it insoluble to the parathyroid hormone, which washes out calcium from the bones to supply body's needs in times of dietary calcium deficiency.
Obviously, such a drastic measure can only be used in extreme cases.
This arrests the progress of skeletal demineralization disease, but brings about a host of other diseases, in particular hormonal disorders, as the bone with a changed chemical composition would no longer react to calcitonin and parathyroid hormone.
But, in view of the grave implications of skeletal demineralization diseases, this is probably considered as an acceptable trade-off.
As we can see, fluoride is very toxic. And yet the fluoridation lobby continues to advocate fluoridation of drinking water against all scientific evidence!
Here is an excerpt from a 3-page flyer "The Drinking Water Treatment Process", published by the Toronto City Council. (this particular copy was printed in the late 90s)
It lists five items related to water treatment:
- Coagulation, flocculation and sedimentation
- Filtration
- Disinfection
- Fluoridation
Drinking water with the mineral fluoride present in low concentrations will strengthen the outer layer of teeth (enamel), making them more resistant to tooth decay.
It has been determined that concentrations of approximately 1.2 mg of fluoride per litre of water provide the maximum benefit in our climate.
In 1963, Toronto Council decided to add fluoride to our treated water supply.
Lake Ontario water, like many natural sources, already has some fluoride present in low concentration, so our water treatment plants add additional fluoride after the filtration stage to raise the level to 1.2 mg/l.
If you know the real information about fluoridation, you know what these claims are worth!
One must be an ignoramus to continue to believe this against the weight of scientific evidence about dangers of fluorides!
Soon after fluoridation was initiated in Toronto, it was challenged in court, but was defeated on a technicality.
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