Water: Tim O’Shea
In This Article:
- Disease or dehydration?
- Tap water
Some years before he was cryogenically preserved, Walt Disney made an educational animated movie with Bell Science Labs called Hemo the Magnificent. It wasn’t shown at movie theaters; it appeared in schools. Hemo the Magnificent was the story of human blood, a science film for kids. It was definitely ahead of its time and today would probably be considered adult level, things being what they are, dumbing us down and all. At the beginning of the film the question is asked – What substance on earth does human blood most resemble? We are surprised at the answer: sea water.
And then the story is told about how all life evolved from the ocean, and then they show primitive life forms like one-celled creatures, up to the jellyfish, who have sort of a primitive in-and-out flushing as a precursor of a circulatory system, then gradually getting into more complex forms who began to have a primitive heart and some blood vessels. And all this evolves to the mammalian circulatory system. Aeons later, our blood is still over 90% water – though not salt water, of course. Even though it’s the other 10% that makes us human and has taken ages to evolve, we are still an H2O unit. I think it was Tom Robbins who said
“Humans were invented by water as a means of transporting itself from place to place” OK.
THE IMPORTANCE OF WATER!
Without food, most humans will die in a month, if they have water. Without water, 10 days is about it. Water makes up 75% of the body, 90% of the blood, and 85% of the brain. An odd little book was published in 1994 that made quite a stir: The Body’s Many Cries for Water, by an MD named Batmanghelidj. A claim is made by this doctor that the cause of most diseases is simply dehydration. Dr. B provides the reasoning as well as dozens of case studies to support the cure of a variety of illnesses by simply drinking between two and three liters of water per day.
Doubting such a theory because of its overwhelming simplicity, the reader is shown that physiologically, it makes perfect sense. As Dr B points out, dry mouth is a late sign of thirst. Saliva is produced even in chronic dehydration, because it is a digestive enzyme. Thirst, or the need for water on the cellular level is something entirely different. Chronic dehydration brings its own symptoms, which we have been conditioned to cover up, either with food or with drugs. Here are a few examples of dehydration signals:
SYMPTOM – USUAL REMEDY!
- peptic ulcer
- craving sweets
- antidepressant drugs
Dr B reports his successful treatment of 3000 peptic ulcer patients using water alone. Anecdotal? He explains how ulcer pain is really a thirst signal. It actually makes sense: if the intestine is too dehydrated to adequately refresh its mucus lining every time after the acidic products of digestion have passed by, the lining will become irritated and painful. The intestine is not protected from digestive acid like the stomach is. Antacids will only temporarily cover up the problem. Rehydrating the tract will enable to intestine to form adequate mucous lining, thus reducing acid irritation. (p31) Similarly with depression, allergies, asthma, arthritis, diabetes, and addiction to sweets, Dr. Batmanghelidj shows how balancing the extracellular fluids and lowering the concentration of the blood to a more normal dilution can bring consistent resolution to these and many other illnesses.
It’s almost too simple. But Dr. B takes the reader through the physiology of each illness. His premise is hard to deny. Obviously such an approach is not going to gain the favor of the drug cartels; here’s a guy telling people they don’t need heart medication and diuretics and insulin and Prozac and Viagra and pain drugs any more. All they really need is two liters of water per day. What if he’s right and people find out about it? The drug business is the foundation our $1.5 trillion medical budget. See the dangers? So of course the good doctor ran into some formidable stone walls when he tried to get attention and funding from the AMA and other mainstream institutions for researching his theories. He was politely ignored. But a lot of people are buying the book.
DIURETICS? TRY WATER!
Most people don’t seem to know the word diuretic; but they know what a blood thinner is. Batmanghelidj’s views on treating high blood pressure with diuretics can’t really be argued. He explains that the whole mainstream theory is based on a false premise: doctors say Oh, you have high blood pressure? Too much blood, too much fluid in the body. Take these drugs to make you get rid of water, thin out the blood a little. That’ll take the strain off your heart so it won’t have to work so hard. Amazingly most people believe this appalling distortion of physiological reality and take their pills like good little patients.
Then they have their heart attacks on schedule and go in for bypass, like good little lemmings, keeping heart disease as the #1 killer of Americans for the past three decades. Batmanghelidj points out the obvious: diuretics increase dehydration. They make you lose more water. But the original cause of the high blood pressure in the first place was loss of fluids. The less fluids, the more the blood vessels close up. Obviously the blood vessels can’t leave room for gas when blood volume is decreased. So the blood vessels naturally constrict, or close up, with less blood volume. The constriction is what causes high blood pressure – it’s harder to push water through a thin garden hose than a thick one. Also the less fluids, the more concentrated the blood becomes.
And this triggers the blood vessels to close down a little more, in order to prevent what? Water loss. By adding more water to the system, the heart won’t be so desperate to hang onto both sodium and water. Increased blood volume, and also making the blood more dilute, will relax the vessels and open them up wider. Such a simple method consistently lowers blood pressure, on a long-term basis. The amazing thing is not that this is so absurdly simple; it’s that the people we entrust our health to could possibly miss something as fundamental as hydration. What about the complicated stuff? Either Dr. Batmanghelidj is right or the HMO doctors selling Lopressor and Cardizem are right. Can’t be both.
EVEN GOOD CHOLESTEROL CAN BE BAD IF THE BODY’S DEHYDRATED!
We know that cholesterol has many important jobs. It is necessary for making hormones, insulation for nerves, and the membranes of all our cells. But in a condition of chronic dehydration, water is constantly being pulled out of our cells, for the body’s many operations. To protect the cells from losing too much water, cholesterol is poured between the cracks of the cells, as a sort of protective sealant between cell membranes. (Batmanghieldj, p 83) Many people who eat a lot of eggs can still have normal blood cholesterol, as long as they always have plenty of water. The body only feels the need to seal off the cell membranes with cholesterol if there’s a reason to conserve water. Thus high cholesterol. In the hydrated body, there’s no excess cholesterol production.
When we’re thirsty, we don’t drink water. We drink coffee and Coke and diet Dr. Pepper and ice tea and beer and milk and anything else we’ve been conditioned to buy. And we tell ourselves we don’t need to drink water because all these beverages have water in them. Right? Wrong. It’s a long story, but the punchline is this: all these drinks are actually diuretics – they make the cells and the body lose water. The sugar and caffeine in those drinks pull water out of the cells in order to maintain the delicate pH and electrolyte balance in the blood. Result: cell dehydration. Cell dehydration is the #1 cause of aging. Also a big contributor to degenerative diseases, like arthritis, hypertension, and diabetes. One way to tell if you’re dehydrated is to check the color of the urine. If it’s dark all the time, you’re probably dehydrated. It’s a good bet that one of the above drinks is your beverage of choice.
Only one solution:
TWO LITERS A DAY!
It’s no picnic. Unless you already have this custom, drinking two liters of water a day takes effort. That’s a least eight large glassesful. Every day. It takes planning and discipline. But it’s cheap and harmless, and if you have any health problem whatsoever, including premature crowsfeet, you owe it to yourself to give this self-evident shotgun approach a try. In the unlikely event that it “doesn’t work’ after two months, something else needs to be tweaked. Probably in the dairy or sugar category. But read some of the testimonials in Dr B’s book, and you’ll likely find people with much more serious problems than yours who totally recovered. Many were on multiple medications. I know – you’re thinking you’ll be spending your life in the bathroom if you drink 2 liters a day, right?
Funny thing is, the bladder is a muscular organ. Like any other muscle, it weakens with inactivity and strengthens with use. The more water you drink, the more the strength and capacity of the bladder will increase. So very soon you won’t have to make extra trips to the bathroom, even though you’ll be drinking more water. Think of all the people who dehydrate themselves just because they wish to avoid the bathroom. Where are our priorities? Where is our education? Water is cell life. Two liters is the intake necessary to maintain normal good health. If you want to get into anti-aging applications, intake goes up to THREE liters. Obviously this is something you’d have to work up to. But for maximum hydration of skin cells, three is the number.
THE pH OF BLOOD!
Everyone has a general idea of pH: acidic means stuff like vinegar, and Coke, battery acid, and citrus. Basic, or alkaline, means stuff like soap, and milk, and bran. Acid/base – that’s a scale we call pH. The scale goes from 1 to 14. It’s a log scale: that means that pH 6 is 10x more acid than pH 7. The lower the number, the more acid; the higher the number, the more basic: All living substances have a pH, and also an optimum range of pH. Any standard physiology text, like Guyton’s for example, will state that the range of blood pH is7.3 – 7.45 for human life. More acidic than 7.3, we die. More basic than 7.45, we die. Here’s an example to show how inventive the body is at protecting itself.
If you pour a glass of Coke into 10 gallons of water, the pH will drop from 7.8 to 4.6 immediately. (Whang, p 22) Now, we have way less than half that much blood: only 5 liters. So what prevents one glass of Coke from killing us by lowering our blood pH below the 7.3 limit? A little trick the body evolved over millions of years: buffering. Buffering is how the body changes the acidic foods we eat in order to keep the blood pH always about the same. Two main kinds of buffering, and you can look them up the next time you decide to get a medical degree. (Guyton, p 387)
For now, the point here is that this constant burden we place on the body to keep buffering all these Cokes, Johnnie Walker Black, burgers, tacos, and white sugar treats – uses up the body’s stores of minerals, enzymes, and vitamins. Actually, it wastes them, thereby making the person age faster. Those stores were supposed to be used for normal life functions, not for ridding the body of manmade indigestible chemicals mistakenly called food. Buffering also uses up free oxygen and breaks down cells and tissues by means of oxidation. And now we’re talking about free radicals again. And aging. When we drink water, we’re taking some of the stress off the body by helping to make the blood more basic (higher number).
The pH of tap water is about 8.4, and of bottled water about 7.8 or so. The more we can keep the blood closer to the higher number, the 7.45, the slower we age. Turns out there is a big difference between blood that is pH 7.3 and blood that is pH 7.45. The higher number blood has 64% more free oxygen than the lower number (Whang, p 21). That’s a lot. Over the years, such a difference in daily stress definitely adds up. Reducing the amount of buffering we require the body to do is another big reason for drinking a ton of water every day. OK, the importance of water is pretty obvious. The next question is – does it make any difference what kind of water we drink? Tap water, spring water, bottled water, filtered water, distilled water, mineral water, what?
City water, municipal water, tap water – no argument that one of the main reasons for the eradication of infectious diseases, as we saw in the Vaccinations chapter, was a controlled water supply. After all those centuries, it finally dawned on people that they wouldn’t die quite so fast if the water they drank could be uncontaminated with sewage. So in the 1800s, the hallmark of the civilized city, both in Europe and in America, was a municipal water supply and a sewage system. This one development was the single biggest health advancement in history. Then politics saw an angle. What if we could convince the people that industrial wastes needed to be added to the water in order to make it “safe”? To the tune of billions of dollars per year? The money would change hands between the local governments and the chemical industry, not to mention state and federal government who would need to pass laws to keep the show on the road.
HOW ABOUT CHLORINE?
Chloride as it exists in nature is an element, a raw mineral that is actually an essential mineral in human nutrition, as we saw in the Minerals chapter. We evolved from the salt water of the ocean, which has natural sodium chloride. Industrial chlorine, by contrast, is another thing altogether. Industrial chlorine is not a natural compound. It must be manufactured, by passing an electric current through regular salt (sodium chloride) The result is a toxic gas which can then be complexed to form many industrial products. Examples are medicines, plastics, solvents, sealants, bleach, computer chips, paints, and disinfectants. (Chlorophiles) From here on out, “chlorine’ means the industrial type. Chlorine gas was a weapon used in WWI.
This powerful neurotoxin is so poisonous that it was outlawed by international war codes. Chlorine gas cannot be screened out by our lungs – it goes in faster than oxygen, and is immediately absorbed into the bloodstream when it is inhaled. If the concentration is adequate, death is instantaneous. Europeans remember all this – that’s where WWI happened. Swimming pools in most of Europe are not chlorinated. When European athletes come to the U.S. to compete in swimming events, they have forfeited events rather than swim in a chlorinated pool. The problem is that chlorine gas is formed where chlorinated water comes in contact with air. That’s why your nose burns when your put your face close to the surface of a chlorinated pool. Same thing happens with tap water, although to a lesser degree.
WHY IS CHLORINE IN OUR WATER?
Chlorine has been used in the U.S. as a treatment for water purification for most of the past century. When added to our water supply, chlorine complexes with free contaminants like iron, manganese, and hydrogen sulfide. Any chlorine left over can kill most bacterials and microorganisms. Chlorine was definitely responsible for a radical drop in cases of typhoid early in the century. (Water Review) Same with cholera and amoebic dysentery. (Rathburn). Cryptosporidium and Giardia are two biologicals resistant to chlorine because they form protective cysts. But most other living microbes in the water supply are killed by adding chlorine. Now obviously we don’t want microbugs in our drinking water, so it seems chlorine has some benefit. The problem comes in with:
– the amounts of chlorine added
– carcinogenic chlorine by-products (organochlorines)
Chemicals are measured in water in units called PPM, or parts per million. The standard amount of chlorine sufficient to kill biologicals is 0.5 PPM, as agreed by most scientists. This is the recommended dose for municipal water supplies. The problem arises when scientists don’t have control of the input. Usually it’s the local water guy. And this guy is all over the place as far as consistent levels are concerned. Some cities have been found to have levels as high as 50 PPM. The second problem is by-products. Chlorine has an annoying habit of reacting with hydrocarbons (organic matter) to form little devils like trihalomethanes – THMs.
Definitely carcinogenic ( Simmon), THM levels have been set by the EPA as not to exceed 80 PPB. That’s billion, son. But that figure is really just a guess. Nobody really knows for sure how much THM is necessary to be taken in with daily tap water in order to eventually cause a single cell to mutate. All we know for sure is that some amount of THM can cause cancer. Predictably written at the moron level, 99% of websites about chlorine present it as a safe but necessary evil. They always say that it’s an economic necessity and that the risk of cancer is dwarfed by the importance of disinfecting the nation’s drinking water, etc. But other people aren’t so sure. When you search the word “organochlorines” a whole different angle emerges.
For the past century, industry has benefited from the weird reaction between chlorine and organic matter. So far about 11,000 different organochlorines have been created by the chemical industry. Some of them have great industrial value because they are so stable. They degrade very slowly. One obvious example is PVC pipe, which has revolutionized the plumbing industry in the past 15 years. Plastic pipes – easier to work with than soldering all that old copper stuff. PVC plastic is the single biggest application of industrial chlorine products, accounting for about 50% of the total. (How Chlorine Chemicals Are Made). Really stable.
But it is precisely the idea of stability that makes chlorine by-products so dangerous. Want to learn a new word? Here it is: bioaccumulative. When these plastics do degrade, the products of that breakdown last even longer – for decades. That means cumulative buildup in fatty tissues of living things that are exposed to the same water or air. In the cells, this can mean trouble:
- genetic mutation
- hormone disruption
- birth defects
- low sperm counts
- neurological damage
– Fackelman, p. 142
Bioaccumulativemeans that these chlorine by-products keep going through the food chain time after time. The individual living carrier species die, but the chemicals persist unchanged, decade after decade. The result is that the levels of PCBs and dioxins found in meat and fish can today be millions of times greater than the amounts found in nature. (Chlorine Crisis). Slow breakdown of PVC plumbing, year after year, is one big stand-alone reason why it’s bad to drink tap water, irrespective of the quality of the water itself. At least copper was an essential trace mineral nutrient for humans.
For extra fun, organochlorines mimic estrogen, and are therefore included in the xenoestrogens we saw in the HRT chapter (www.thedoctorwithin.com). Refer to it for a discussion of reproductive and hormonal chaos caused by chemical pollution. Bleaching paper is another big market for chlorine. America uses a lot of paper, most of it white. Chlorine is the most popular method of bleaching. Problem is, 300 different organochlorines are the result. Guess how much of them gets dumped into lakes, rivers, and oceans of the world each year. Go ahead, guess. 4 million tons!
(Pulp and Paper)
Not to mislead, you know those 300 organochlorines being released into the water? Those are only the ones we have identified! There are literally thousands of others whose actions are totally unknown to us. Once in the body, organochlorines are protectively encapsulated in fat cells – the site most conducive to long-term storage and accumulation.
Chlorine bound to carbon is really a good combination for killing pests. Consider the tons of chlordane, DDT, dioxin, and atrazine that have been produced over the past 50 years and dumped into our soil and water, both intentionally and accidentally. No doubt about it: the stuff kills bugs. Two Israeli researchers documented a 50% drop in breast cancer incidence after a ban on chlorine-based pesticides went into effect. (Richter) They traced it to feed for cows, which then was carried into the milk. The authors explained the dramatic effect in cancer incidence by the idea of an organochlorine as a complete carcinogen. That means a toxin that is capable of both initiating a tumor and accelerating an established tumor. That was in Israel. We never had such a ban.
Also pesticides, epoxy, neoprene, and many other plastics have a chlorine base. Same reason: slow breakdown. Turns out that only about 1% of the chlorine produced is used in drinking water treatment.(Chlorine Crisis) Remember the defoliant Agent Orange in Vietnam? Dioxin was the killer in Agent Orange. (What Is Dioxin?) Dioxin is a chlorine by-product that is so indestructible and pervasive that it is even found in the bodies of whales and polar bears at the North Pole. Always remember that “economic necessity’ often means a situation favorable to big money. With a production of some 40 million tons per year, since 1990 chlorine is big business. Players like Dow, Bayer, Olin, and Alezo may not be that concerned with the health effects resulting from mass chlorination. (Chlorine Crisis)
CHLORINE AND HEART DISEASE!
In 1990, a medical doctor named J.M. Price came out with a book called Cholesterol, Coronaries, and Chlorine. The book is hard to find today, but was promoted and disseminated by Greenpeace. This doctor paints a noteworthy picture of the physiology and the politics of chlorine. Heart disease has been the number one killer of Americans for decades, and it certainly doesn’t look like that’s gonna change any time soon. Many patients have had heart problems during a great portion of their lives, with medication and years of diminished physical capacity. But it seems that there are more culprits besides just a high fat diet.
Heart attacks kill hundreds of thousands per year. For about 40%, their very first symptom is death. Such a weakening of the heart didn’t happen overnight. It may have taken 20 years to evolve. As the arteries that feed the heart get clogged with cholesterol cement, the same thing is going on everywhere else in the body, including the brain. If a small blood vessel in the brain breaks because it is stuffed with deposits, the person suffers a stroke. Some are mild and hardly noticeable; others are instantly fatal. The point here is, heart attacks and strokes are two versions of the same thing: arterial cholesterol build-up. What’s that got to do with chlorine? Hang in there – it’s coming. A hundred years ago the term heart attack didn’t even exist.
The first clinical description of a heart attack was not made until 1912. (Joseph, p37) In the 1930s and 1940s, the incidence of heart disease increased dramatically, until by the 1980s, it was the #1 killer of Americans. Dr. Joseph makes the point that there is no evidence of atherosclerosis (clogged arteries) prior to the 20th century, even though many cultures favored high fat diets. Not until chlorination of municipal drinking water became common did heart disease begin to skyrocket. (p51). Actually there is a lag of 10-20 years for the progression of clogging arteries that coincides well enough with increasing chlorination across the U.S. during that same time period.
In both the Korean and the Vietnam Wars, many 20 year-olds undergoing surgery on the battlefields were found to have advanced atherosclerosis (cholesterol-clogged arteries) near the heart. (Joseph, p54) The cause was unmistakable: the drinking water we transshipped contained 10 times the amount of chlorine that is determined a safe level by the FDA. The reasoning behind it was characteristically military: our boys needed protection from all those foreign germs, Vern. They deserve 10x the protection. The mechanism for artery breakdown from chlorine is no theory. It has been very solidly established that chlorine nicks the inner lining in the arteries and thereby provides a place for excess cholesterol matrix to begin its process of stuccoing up the arteries.
Joseph ends up by positing that progressive clogging of the arteries cannot exist unless chlorine is consumed in some excess. He describes in detail his controlled experiment inducing atherosclerosis in birds, with the only variable being the presence of chlorinated drinking water – plain tap water. (p.65) The aortas of 95% of the chlorine group were all plaqued up with cholesterol in just a few weeks! The birds were withering and sickly. The popular press goes round and round about cholesterol. One week it’s high fat is not so bad, the next week eggs are definitely out, the next week butter’s in.. That technique is straight out of Edward L. Bernays. Why is everybody guessing about the #1 cause of death in the U.S.?
CHLORINE AND DIGESTION!
One thing’s for sure – chlorine kills bacteria. Only problem with that is the three pounds of friendly bacteria that are supposed to be populating our colon. Their job: the final stages of digestion, as well as vitamin synthesis. Chlorine is in the same category with antibiotics – knocks out all bacteria, the good and the bad. The same killing power that makes chlorine a good disinfectant for drinking water also makes it a harmful additive. We need our good bacteria, called probiotics. Many researchers refer to them as our Second Immune System. Although we can live without probiotics, the digestive system is forced to operate in a diminished fashion. Over time, our health suffers as a result of chlorine’s attack on probiotics.
Today about three-fourths of American cities chlorinate the drinking water. That’s big money. Very hard to rock that boat. Some cities, such as parts of Los Angeles, have found that ozone purification is cheaper and non-toxic. Other cities are experimenting with a combination of titanium cylinders and UV light. (Popular Science) But decades of payouts, and legislated chlorination – that’s an entrenched set-up. Greenpeace and the chlorine activists certainly are not widely read. Even the introductory information in this chapter is not commonly apprehended, though it can be discovered with a little research.
At least chlorine will evaporate from a glass of water if you let it sit for an hour or so. No such luck with fluoride. Even cooking, food processing, filtration, or digestion doesn’t remove fluoride. Goes right up the food chain. Accumulates in fat cells. Fluoride is added to the water supply of most American cities for the ostensible purpose of dental hygiene. The reader will be amazed to find out that such a thing is not only unlikely, but actually the reverse of the ongoing reality. The U.S. has been fluoridating drinking water for so many decades that we hardly think about it. Very few articles appear about fluoridation in newspapers and magazines any more. This is no accident. What would you do if you suddenly found out that fluoride was not safe at all, but was actually a carcinogenic industrial waste?
What would you think if you suddenly found out that fluoride doesn’t stop tooth decay at all, but actually causes teeth to rot and crumble, and by the same mechanism also causes osteoporosis? And after you found out all this, would it surprise you that all federal health agencies have known these facts for years, but have been controlled by the political interests of the nuclear arms, aluminum, and phosphate manufacturers to keep it a secret? Why would they do that? So that, in the total absence of scientific proofs, a toxic industrial waste could be passed off on the public as a nutrient with necessary health benefits, to the tune of $10 billion per year. Or more. Is a deception of this magnitude possible for the sophisticated, discerning American public? Perhaps Lance Ito could answer a question like that. Let’s start at the beginning.
WHAT IS FLUORIDE?
Fluorine is an element. It is a gas, never occurring naturally in its free state. In microscopic amounts complexed with other minerals, it is often listed as a trace mineral, a nutrient for human nutrition. Other sources disagree, holding that “no experimental work or clinical observations have proved that fluorine is in any manner essential for animals or man.” (Alesen, p.5)
This has nothing to do with fluoride or fluoridation. The fluoride added to drinking water is a compound of fluorine that is a chemical byproduct of aluminum, steel, cement, phosphate, and nuclear weapons manufacturing. Such fluoride is manmade. In this form, fluoride has no nutrient value whatsoever. It is one of the most caustic of industrial chemicals. Fluoride is the active toxin in rat poisons and cockroach powder. (Dustrude)
“Hydrofluoric acid is used to refine high octane gasoline, to make fluorocarbons and chlorofluorocarbons for freezers and air conditioners, and to manufacture computer screens, fluorescent light bulbs, semiconductors, plastics, herbicides, – and toothpaste. It also has the ability to burn flesh to the bone, destroy eyes, and sear lungs so that victims drown in their own body fluid.”
Once in the body, fluoride is a destroyer of human enzymes. It does this by changing their shapes. You’ll remember from the Enzymes chapter (w ww.thedoctorwithin.com) that in human biochemistry, thousands of enzymes are necessary for various essential cell reactions that take place every second we’re alive. (Howell) Without enzymes, we’d die instantaneously.
CUTS AWAY THE VELCRO STRIPS!
Enzymes trigger specific reactions in the body. One way they do this is by having the exact shape necessary, like a key in a lock. Fluoride changes the shape of the enzymes so that they no longer fit. Since enzymes are proteins, once they’ve been changed, they’re now foreign-looking. The body now treats them as invaders, even though they’re part of that body. This is known as an autoimmune situation – the body attacks itself. Another way to look at it: enzymes are long-chain proteins held in certain shapes. Hydrogen bonds are the velcro strips that hold the enzyme in a certain shape. Fluoride comes along and hydrolyzes the enzyme: cuts the velcro strips away. The shape collapses. No more enzyme; now just a foreign protein.
The most thorough explanation of the origin, action, diseases, and politics of fluoride was presented in a book called Fluoride the Aging Factor by the late John Yiamouyiannis PhD. This book is the result of 25 years of research and working behind the scenes of the fluoride phenomenon. Big money generally means big monkey business you may have noticed by now and fluoride is right up there. Dr. Yiamouyiannis was the science director of the National Health Federation. He then went on to head the Safe Water Foundation. Dr Y can tell you all about monkey business. No one can comment intelligently about fluoride in the U.S. without addressing with the issues raised in his pivotal book. It is simply a review of the literature on fluoride up to 1994. This chapter quotes freely from Dr Y’s book.
Dr. Y starts by citing hundreds of international studies of fluoridation that have been conducted all over the world since the 1930s. After awhile there seem to be just two types:
– the studies that were really looking to find out about fluoride
– the studies that were trying to cover up what had already been discovered
A few examples of the former:
- Taylor Study University of Austin: fluoride concentration of 1PPM (parts per million) increases tumor growth rate by 25%
- Fluoride is more poisonous than lead and just less poisonous than arsenic
– Clinical Toxicology of Commercial Products– 1984
- “A seven ounce tube of toothpaste theoretically at least contains enough fluoride to kill a small child.”
– Procter&Gamble quoted inFluoride the Aging Factor p14
- Fluoride supplements should not be given to children under three years old
– 1992 Canadian Dental Association Proposed Fluoride Guidelines Dr. Limeback
FLUORIDE AND AGING!
Austrian researchers proved in the 1970s that as little as 1 ppm fluoride concentration can disrupt DNA repair enzymes by 50%. When DNA can’t repair damaged cells we get old fast. (Klein) Fluoride prematurely ages the body mainly by distortion of enzyme shape. Again when enzymes get twisted out of shape they can’t do their jobs. This results in collagen breakdown eczema tissue damage skin wrinkling genetic damage and immune suppression. Practically any disease you can name may then be caused. (Yiamouyiannis Ch.3)
All systems of the body are dependent upon enzymes. When fluoride changes the enzymes this can damage:
- the immune system
- the digestive system
- the respiratory system
- blood circulation
- kidney function
- liver function
- brain function
- thyroid function
Things wear out too fast – the young body becomes old. The distorted enzymes are proteins but now they have become foreign protein which we know is the exact cause of autoimmune diseases such as lupus arthritis asthma and arteriosclerosis. Collagen is the body’s glue. That’s not just a metaphor; when collagen breaks down tissues simply lose their substance their framework. As we saw in the Collagen chapter this is exactly how we get an enlarged heart osteoporosis atrophy and drooping of muscles joint destruction kidney and liver disease falling organs and bad teeth. Fluoride dissolves the body’s glue simply by preventing new collagen from being formed. (Ishida)
Dr Y gives a masterful explanation of fluoride’s disruption of collagen. Not only is the collagen incorrectly formed it is wrongly mineralized. Some collagen like bones and teeth should be mineralized in order to give it hardness. Other collagen structures like ligaments tendons and and muscles should not be mineralized in order to keep them flexible and resilient. Fluoride confuses the two types. Fluoride mineralizes the tendons and muscles and ligaments making them crackly and painful and inflexible. At the same time fluoride interferes with mineralization of bones and teeth causing osteoporosis and mottling or dental fluorosis.
FLUORIDE RUINS TEETH!
Wait a second here! I thought that was the whole reason why we fluoridated water in the first place – to prevent cavities and build strong teeth right? Wrong again. And this is where politics and dog-wagging have eclipsed science. Dr Y gives an exhaustive review of the scientific literature of the past 40 years proving beyond a reasonable doubt that fluoride interferes with tooth formation causing permanent discoloration and actual crumbling. The reader is referred to Chapter 5 of Fluoride The Aging Factor. A few excerpts:
Tooth enamel is laid down by special cells called ameloblasts. Dutch researchers found that fluoride at as little as 1 PPM caused these ameloblasts to malfunction so that they laid down irregular chalky enamel. (Bronkers) The process whereby teeth are discolored and crumble from fluoridation is know as dental fluorosis. The U.S. Public Health service has known since the research of its own Dr. HT Dean in 1937 that as fluoride levels rose so did the percentage of children with dental fluorosis in a study of 15 major American cities. (Dean)
The same findings were evident in a University of Texas study comparing dental fluorosis in children who lived in fluoridated and unfluoridated areas of Texas. Dr. Segretto found a 35% higher incidence of fluorosis in children who drank water with fluorine concentration of 1-1.4 PPM compared with those whose water was in the .3 PPM range. This little study was written up in the Journal of the American Dental Association. (Segretto)
Yiamouyiannis goes on and on citing one peer-reviewed study after another all coming to the same inescapable conclusion: the more fluoride in the water the more tooth malformation and discoloration. It’s beyond controversy when you view these studies from all over the world – New Zealand India Denmark England Ireland Italy Illinois – same finding. Even with this consistent finding across the board the standard level of fluoridation recommended for dental health in the U.S. is 1 part per million. How is this possible? A major gain for antifluoridation happened in the past few years which most people haven’t even noticed. The FDA required all toothpaste manufacturers to print a warning on the label that if more than a pea-sized amount of toothpaste is swallowed the local Poison Control Center should be notified.
Check it out! Did we see that on CNN? The American Dental Association and other defenders of fluoride have testified and continue to insist that dental fluorosis is a “cosmetic condition” and is not a health issue! You hear it all the time from fluoridiots. Permanent malformation of the teeth is a little more serious than cosmetic – but even if it weren’t how can a additive whose only alleged purpose is to benefit teeth destroy teeth?? In their current website the ADA actually challenges this FDA warning on toothpaste labels saying that it is unnecessarily strict.
In the words of Canadian fluoridation expert leading consultant to the Canadian Dental Association Dr. Hardy Limeback a University of Toronto biochemist and dentist:
“Since when is a cosmetic problem not a problem when the patient must seek dental treatment to fix it?”
– Toronto Star 25 Apr. 99
Paul Connett PhD explains that spots on the teeth and dental fluorosis are just an indication of damage to other parts of the body:
“The teeth are windows to what’s happening in the bones.”
– Griffiths p 39
And that brings us to
FLUORIDE AND OSTEOPOROSIS!
Bone is collagen. We already saw how fluoride disrupts the formation of enzymes necessary for collagen production. So it’s no wonder then that the thin brittle bones characteristic of osteoporosis are the result of fluoridation. This is no false claim. Dr Y cites the 1990 study of 541 000 cases of osteoporosis that found a definite connection between hip fractures in women over 65 and fluoride levels. The study was written up in JAMA. (Jacobsen) Several other major studies are cited massive amounts of research again all reaching the same conclusion – the undeniable correlation of fluoridation with osteoporosis and hip fracture in the elderly.
Bone is living tissue. It is constantly being replaced with new cells and having old cells removed. Bone building is a finely balanced complicated process. Fluoride has been known to disrupt this process since the 1930s. Dr. Alesen who was the president of the California Medical Association clearly explains what fluoride does to bone formation. He cites dozens of international scientific studies proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that fluoride has caused thousands of cases of osteoporosis skeletal thinning fractures “rubber bones anemia and rickets. (Robotry and Water)
Fluoride also causes osteoporosis by creating a calcium deficiency situation. Fluoride precipitates calcium out of solution causing low blood calcium as well as the buildup of calcium stones and crystals in the joints and organs. (Waldbott) Dozens of other studies like the Riggs study in the 1990 New England Journal of Medicine showed that fluoride treatment of osteoporosis in the elderly actually increases skeletal fragility i.e. more fractures. (Riggs) It’s the same mechanism at work: incorrect mineralization as we saw above. Thin old bones lose calcium; young bones age too rapidly by over-mineralization. (Aksyuk)
Using fluoride as a treatment for diseases like osteoporosis has always been a particularly dumb idea because of side effects known beforehand:
- general arthritis
- stomach pain
- bone spurs
- bone inflammation
- kidney fibrosis
- dental fluorosis
Other mineral contaminants like lead and strontium-90 are damaging to human bone just by means of their occupying space where they don’t belong. They are inert. The difference with fluoride is that it is biochemically active. With all the diseases caused by fluoride the common thread is
“.. virtually all these ill effects can be traced to the effect of fluoride on enzymes or proteins as well as a possible direct effect on the DNA molecule itself.”
Fluoride the Aging Factor p57 99
Above we saw how fluoride changes the all-important shape of enzymes thereby rendering them not only useless but actually foreign antigens.
CANCER AND FLUORIDE!
By now we all know how cancer begins with one cell whose inner blueprint – its DNA – has been screwed with. Remember those velcro hydrogen bonds? Guess what other shape they hold together. The double helix – DNA. This turns out to be the exact mechanism of fluoride as a carcinogen. Austrian and Japanese researchers both found that a concentration of 1 PPM fluoride causes disruption of the body’s ability to repair its own DNA. Without this most basic cell function cancer is promoted and tumor growth is accelerated. (Klein) (Tsutsui)
That’s standard fluoride level in U.S. city water: one part per million. On p. 65 of his book Dr. Yiamouyiannis provides an amazing chart of some 19 major scientific studies conducted in universities all over the world together proving beyond a doubt that fluoride causes genetic damage. End of story. Except that on p 68 there is another list of world studies proving the same thing with plants and insects – genetic alteration from fluoride.
Chief chemist of the National Cancer Institute Dr. Dean Burk when confronted with mountains of data stated before Congress:
“In point of fact fluoride causes more human cancer death and causes it faster than any other chemical.”
– Congressional Record 21 July 1976
Can that be misconstrued?
Burk and Yiamouyiannis completed a monumental research project in 1977 in which they compared cancer death rates in 10 fluoridated and 10 non-fluoridated U.S. cities between 1940 and 1970. The results are on p75 of Fluoride the Aging Factor. The unmistakable fact is that the graph shows that for the first ten years (1940-1950) when none of the 20 cities fluoridated the average cancer deaths were virtually identical. But after 1950 there is a major increase in cancer deaths in every single one of the fluoridated cities while the nonfluoridated cities remain clustered together at a much lower level of death. [SCATTER CHART]
They actually put a number on it:
“…30 000 to 50 000 deaths each year from various causes may now be attributable to fluoridation. This total includes 10 000 to 20 000 deaths attributable to fluoride-induced cancer every year.”
– Yiamouyiannis. p 90
These findings were first confirmed then denied by the National Cancer Institute (what a surprise). Finally the research was upheld as valid in two separate state courts Pennsylvania and Illinois. Ask yourself why are findings of a scientific study being disputed in court? The usual pattern whenever valid research threatens big money. Another study by the New Jersey Health Dept. cited by Dr. Y found a 50% increase in bone cancer among young men in fluoridated areas. (Cohn)
Dr. William Hirzy an officer in the EPA explains:
“Fluoride is a broad-spectrum mutagen. It can cause genetic damage in both plant and animal cells.”
Once again this is just the tip of the iceberg. Hundreds of scientific studies conducted and reported in the most credible universities and agencies throughout the world for the past 25 years have found an unmistakable correlation between fluoridation and cancer deaths. Even the professional opinion makers can’t just make all this data vanish. All they can do is what they’re trained to do: change the subject. And keep repeating how safe and effective fluoride is.
BRAIN DAMAGE = LOW IQ
Penetrating observation. The earliest reference to brain disruption from fluoride exposure is found in a recently declassified secret Manhattan Project memo (1944):
“Clinical evidence suggests that C616 [uranium hydrofluoride] may have a rather marked central nervous system effect with mental confusion drowsiness and lassitude.”
– Ferry 29 Apr 44
Dozens of scientific studies from all over the world have come to the same conclusion. Just a few examples:
Popov L et al-“Nervous System Damage in Occupational Fluorosis” –Chemical Abstractsvol.14 7 Oct 74
Guan Z et al. “Influence of Chronic Fluorosis on Membrane Lipids in Rat Brain”
Neurotoxicology and Teratology vol. 20 no.5 pp.537
How can all these studies be dismissed and ignored? Many of them are from the most prestigious of scientific journals. And the message has been consistent for the past 40 years – fluoride is a poison. What kind of power can contradict such a cogent overwhelming body of work? Only one thing – very good -$$$$$$$$! Got it on your first guess!
SO THEN WHY ARE WE FLUORIDATING FOR THE LAST 60 YEARS?
Unrestricted research into almost any area involving health care is really a tiresome business – it’s the same boring story over and over: A Toxin in Search of A Market. First a chemical is created then an angle is figured out on how to mass market it. Then a disinformation program is put into place to create a permanent smokescreen for the actual scientific data. As we saw with ADD antibiotics the history of pharmaceuticals HRT heart drugs chlorination and now fluoridation – the pattern is consistent. With billions of dollars in play the chemical industry can afford to choreograph its two most willing marionettes: the media and the medical profession. I didn’t make this up; I wish it were otherwise.
It’s embarrassing to be a human when you find out what’s been going on. But we digress. Fluoridation. A certified poison by all the government agencies and scientific agencies cited above. Where does the money come in? Toxic disposal. The rise of the EPA since the 1970s. The increase in environmental consciousness as a political tool for creating the illusion of safety in recent decades. Here’s the short version: fluoride is a toxic byproduct in the manufacture of nuclear arms aluminum cement steel and phosphates. Millions of tons of this poison are produced every year. Imagine the cost of containing and disposing of those mountains of waste every year.
It’s in the billions. But what if lobbyists from these industries could present “scientific studies” paid for by the industries and provide for a continual stream of media presentations about the health benefits of fluoride and create unimaginably lucrative positions for “research” and “education” within the American Dental Association and the AMA and do all these things in a consistent and unending way year after year? What are the economic advantages of that? Simple: instead of paying money to dispose of toxic waste money could now be made by selling fluoride to the water companies of the nation. They’ll use the public water supply as a sewer for industrial wastes. And now with these new billions added instead of subtracted there’s plenty to go around for everyone involved. Out of the Red into the Black. Somewhere Machiavelli smiles.
Up until 1931 the American Dental Association and the US Public Health Service recognized that fluoride caused dental problems and that every effort should be made to remove such contamination from drinking water. (Fluoride the Aging Factor p 140) By 1980 the ADA’s tune had changed a little:
“.there is no evidence implicating naturally occurring fluorides as a health hazard even at eight parts per million.”
– ADA News 24 Mar 1980
Following this? In the face of all the decades of our best research this arrogant and groundless pronouncement by the profession to whom we have entrusted our teeth is saying that our water could have 8 times as much fluoride as it has now and still be perfectly safe! That is power Sonny Jim.
The Players: ALCOA Aluminum global producer of aluminum was founded by Andrew Mellon who was also appointed Secretary of Treasury since he seemed to know something about money. ALCOA funded a top research facility known as the Mellon Institute. In 1931 a Mellon Institute report by Gerald Cox suggested that 1 PPM fluoride added to drinking water would be good for the teeth. That was it. No studies no comparisons no data. All previous research studies had shown that fluoride was toxic.
Stay with me now. The US Public Health Service (USPHS) at that time was under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of Treasury – Andrew Mellon who also owned ALCOA. The USPHS sponsored some research put out by their own Dr. HT Dean manipulating data so that it “proved” that this same figure of 1 PPM resulted in reduction of tooth decay. So now there were two studies one by Cox and one by Dean both funded by agencies controlled by ALCOA both supporting this arbitrary figure of 1 PPM fluoride that should be added to the water to lower tooth decay.
Next problem: sell it to the American Medical Association and the American Dental Association. This took years. Even in 1943 an article in JAMA described fluoride as a poison which damaged enzyme systems even at a concentration of 1 PPM. The article showed concern about 25 000 tons of fluorine released into the atmosphere every year from the phosphate fertilizer industry. (JAMA Sept 18 1943).
The following year Journal of the American Dental Association ran another article warning that fluoridated water caused osteoporosis goiter and spinal disease. They stated that “the potentialities for harm far outweigh those for good.” (JADA 1 Oct 1944) So how did fluoridation get started then with all this information – thousands of negative scientific papers and only two favorable studies? ALCOA money that’s how. In 1944 ALCOA hired an attorney named Oscar Ewing at a salary of $750 000 per year. That same year Ewing was appointed to the Federal Security Administration. The USPHS was a division of the Federal Security Association. So now ALCOA’s boy was in a position to control the policies of the Public Health Service. Ewing chose his PR man for fluoridation: Edward Bernays the nephew of Sigmund Freud.
FREUD FRAUD AND FLUORIDE!
Edward L. Bernays described by the Washington Post as the “original spin doctor” was responsible for evolving the pro-fluoridation propaganda and disinformation machine. How anxious he was to put his uncle’s ideas and methods of persuasion into action. (Dr. Y p143)
“… those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… our minds are molded our tastes formed our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of.”
– Bernays (Propaganda)
Using classical Freudian principles Bernays maintained that a well-oiled propaganda machine could make the public believe practically anything even the exact opposite of what had been already proven by all existing scientific research. And this is exactly what Ewing needed in the case of fluoridation. With help from “experts” of the Manhattan Project like Harold Hodge New York State politicians quickly learned which side their bread was buttered on. In May of 1945 the city of Newburgh NY was the first to “try” fluoridation. The residents were supposed to be monitored by the state Health Department for ten years. That became the pattern – fluoride is the first drug in history to be tested on the general population with no previous research. (Griffiths) Except of course for vaccines. (The Sanctity of Human Blood)
One of the next cities to fall was Grand Rapids Michigan. In July 1945 in the face of persistent warnings from the AMA Grand Rapids succumbed to Bernays’ propaganda machine and began a ten year “test period” of fluoridation in which tooth decay rates would be monitored. No one asked the question why the testing was being done on humans in an entire city. The project was run by HT Dean using the statistics of Cox’s original 1931 paper that arbitrarily claimed that 1 PPM fluoride was a safe level to prevent tooth decay with no research to back it up. Dr. Dean almost single-handedly developed the hypothesis that fluoride could prevent cavities. He is “the father of fluoridation.” Dean did no research on his own and in later years twice admitted in court that Cox’s original statistics were incorrect! (Foulkes 1992)
But the entire system of fluoridation of US city water is based on the admittedly unscientific “findings” of Dean and Cox. Bernays’ propaganda machine now went into full swing – ads with smiling children with beautiful teeth flooded the country’s media. All anti-fluoride studies and articles were systematically suppressed because they weren’t sanctioned by the big lobbyists for the aluminum and fertilizer industries. Tons of new literature written not by doctors and scientists but by PR people and psychologists portrayed those opposing the sacred fluoridation as right-wing wackos. Just like in Orwell’s book 1984 they tried to re-write history to go back and change the findings of valid research not by doing new research but simply by new PR. (Miller)
“I sometimes wonder if the Aluminum Co. of America… might not have a deep interest in getting rid of its waste products from the manufacture of aluminum because these products contain a large amount of fluoride… it is interesting to note that Oscar Ewing who now heads up the FSA the parent organization of the US Public Health Service and the firm of attorneys he deals with.represents the Aluminum Co. of America.”
– Congressman A.L. Miller