To the Editor:

I am an RN with a master’s of science in adult health & wellness and 2 years post grad work in functional medicine. Functional medicine looks for the root causes of client’s ill health symptoms and diagnostic labels.

Lifestyle education, around the root causes of their ill health and how to change/remove these factors from their lifestyle, supports the client’s work to heal their own health.

I see private clients to support their return to health. A significant percentage of my clients have autoimmune and/or thyroid – glandular issues. Education around removing toxins from their lifestyle is important in their self-healing process.

I teach them to remove fluoride, chlorine, and bromides to enhance their glandular systems functioning. These substances are all halogens on the periodic table of chemical elements. Our body cells have iodine receptor sites that uptake iodine into the cells for metabolic purposes.

Fluoride is chemically quite similar to iodine – they are both halogens in the period table of elements – fluoride can wreak havoc on the thyroid both through direct competition (with iodine) for uptake into thyroid hormone and also by calcifying thyroid tissue itself.

We are still early in the clinical exploration period of the long-term effects of fluoride on health. Given early evidence and because exposure is unavoidable in so many products and community settings, my recommendation to my clients is to avoid fluoride wherever possible. I educate clients to filter village/municipal water to avoid drinking, cooking with, and bathing in chlorine and fluoride and to do their best to avoid it in public places (restaurants, etc.).

Another important ethical concern in this fluoride debate is medicating the public via the water supply and calling this preventative medicine. Diabetes and cardiovascular disease are huge health problems in our culture. How many people would be advocates of medicating the public, via the water supply, for prevention of diabetes and cardiovascular disease?

The decision to remove, or no longer continue, fluoridation of public water supplies is a critical ethical issue.

Further reading: http://media.khi.org/news/documents/2012/07/23/FJ2006_v39_n3_p163-172.pdf

Paula Youmell

Potsdam