Is fluoride bad for you? - The Next #58

(Yes. The answer is yes).

Hi there, and welcome to The Next - my take on health, wellness, and company building.

In the last few years I’ve founded 3 health brands (Kettle & Fire, Perfect Keto, Surely non-alc wine). I’m now working on Truemed, which allows health and wellness brands to accept HSA/FSA funds. Previously, I worked in tech and had no experience in CPG, DTC, or any other 3-letter industries.

If you missed past episodes, I recommend checking out The Great American Poisoning, my manifesto on what’s going on with our chronic disease crisis. Otherwise, let’s dive in! 

🆕 What’s new

A few weeks ago, I went to DC as part of our work at End Chronic Disease. We went to talk about chronic illness and to share our perspective that it’s literally impossible for healthcare costs to go down while Americans continue to get sick. 

In conversations with Senators and Congressmen, I was shocked by one fact: each of them told us that our message was not one they’d heard before. 

The healthcare conversation they are used to having is one-dimensional. Let’s move this pile of funds here, let’s cover this medication, let’s make sure disadvantaged kids can get cheaper ADHD meds. No one - literally no one - is talking about the fundamental thing: that we have to make Americans healthy again. 

Dr. Marty Makary’s testimony encapsulates this idea perfectly (give it a read/watch if you haven’t yet):

https://x.com/newstart_2024/status/1838665564648280274 

Today, the average American is sick. And once sick, the $4.3T healthcare industry spins up to manage - not cure - the chronic conditions driving 90% of healthcare spending. We cannot, will not, fix the chronic disease crisis with this approach. 

Institutions of trust are rigged against the average American, and the country won't get better until they are reformed or replaced. When 47% of the FDA’s budget comes from pharma, and 95% of the panel in charge of creating the USDA’s guidelines have conflicts with big food or pharma companies, something has gone seriously wrong. 

The natural outcome of this is a distrust of institutions. Corruption - at the FDA, the NIH, the CDC, the EPA, the USDA - is the root cause of our health crisis. Only with corruption is tomato a fruit, lucky charms healthier than beef, and Ozempic the answer to our childhood obesity crisis. 

💪 Health stuff

Speaking of low trust in institutions… let’s chat about one of the most insane cost-benefit public health interventions of the last 100 years: the decision to add fluoride to most public drinking water. 

You may have seen, but recently the NIH - after an 8 year study - declared that fluoride “reduces the IQ of children” and is hazardous to human health. Not cool guys! 

https://x.com/calleymeans/status/1843469227115892949

Water fluoridation started in 1945, with the explicit goal to fight cavities and tooth decay. Adding fluoride to toothpaste and everyone’s drinking water should be an effective way to lower cavities. Who could argue with that? 

It should come as no surprise that fluoride was not, in fact, safe and effective. In fact, this is among the craziest cost-benefit public health interventions ever run. And not only because fluoride may present a number of health risks (like messing with the endocrine system, impaired brain function, causing ADHD or underactive thyroid). 

As bad as the many studies are that point towards toxicity and negative impact on IQ, what’s worse is… it doesn’t even prevent cavities! 

A meta-analysis by the well-respected Cochrane group found that there was no statistically significant relationship between fluoridation and cavity reduction. Further, some of the most pro-fluoride studies (like this) found an 18% decline in cavities relative to the non-fluoridated groups. And as you can see below, tooth decay across the developed world has fallen for decades, fluoride or not. 

Source

Despite the risk of thyroid dysfunction, IQ damage, ADHD and endocrine harm, most counties in the US went forward with a fluoridation program. Today, 67% of Americans have fluoride added to their tap water to combat cavities. 

This risk tradeoff is insane. We can have a global pandemic and not hear our public health authorities say a single word about the relationships between dying of COVID and metabolic fitness. We can have the APA recommend Ozempic for 12 year olds. Yet when it comes to infinitesimally lowering the incidence of cavities, well, let’s toss chemicals in everyone’s water! 

You see this same brain-dead approach to regulating chemicals everywhere among our regulators (perhaps they were fluoridated as children?). Glyphosate is an effective pesticide, so let’s spray it on all the crops and do nothing about it until Monsanto gets sued. Smart! 

For me, this last part is the most frustrating. Not only was fluoride added to most drinking water without much (any?) benefit, but it took a 7-year lawsuit to get the EPA to even consider that fluoride might be harmful. 

Similar things have played out in trans fats, PFAS, glyphosate, and countless other chemicals introduced to our environment. Maybe, just maybe, we should follow the EU’s lead and require more stringent proof of efficacy before introducing thousands and thousands of chemicals into our environment. 

Sigh. 

So, fluoride is bad and it’s probably all around you. What do you do? My top 3 recommendations are:

1. Install a great water filter. You’ll mostly want to look for reverse-osmosis filters, which will remove any fluoride from your tap water. There are also good countertop filters (like Rorra) that will help remove fluoride, though are less effective than a full reverse osmosis system. I wrote more about water quality here if you want to go deeper. 

2. Swap out your toothpaste. Almost all toothpaste has fluoride in it. I use David’s toothpaste and like it, though there are plenty of other good fluoride-free brands out there.  

3. Avoid products that use tap water. Unfortunately, this is likely the hardest of the bunch. Fluoride watch has a solid list of consumer products that use fluoride; practically any coffee shop or consumer product that uses tap water as a base (ie Coke products, Starbucks, etc) is likely to contain fluoride and other toxins. This is one of the many reasons we’ve invested so much in filtering our water at Kettle & Fire: because what’s in the water ends up in the final product! 

This fluoridation issue is just another example of the Great American Poisoning I talk about here. Unfortunately, our environment is compromised, and it’s up to you to take your health into your own hands. Fortunately - at least in the case of fluoride - the steps to do so are relatively simple. 

🤑 Biz stuff

The more I learn about the poisoning of our environment, the more convinced I am that regulatory capture is the core meta-issue of our time. Fundamentally, a whole host of companies make more money when the average consumer is sick. And so the incentives tilt the average American towards food and lifestyle choices that make them sicker, as I covered in The Great American Poisoning.

This issue has me thinking about business models. Today, there are a lot of companies that make money when you’re sick and few that make money when you’re healthy. In a healthier world, multiple entities would do well when you’re healthy, and suffer when you’re sick.

I think there’s a huge opportunity to build a new kind of institution (a company, town, religion, whatever) that aligns with its member’s health outcomes. If you’re sick, it does poorly. If you’re healthy, it benefits. 

Historically, churches (via the muscular Christianity movement), governments, and strong local communities supported default health and a food system that wasn’t actively poisonous. Today, I suspect that fixing this problem requires a new kind of organization. 

So far, my best idea for the kind of institution that benefits from a healthy population is a new kind of life insurance company, though I’m open to other ideas. All I know is that corruption and regulatory capture are among the biggest issues we face today, and I suspect only a new kind of institution can solve such a massive structural problem. 

😌 Dope stuff on the internet

Some of my favorite things since the last newsletter (note: I don’t get paid to recommend anything here):

• 📰  Article - This recent study compared nutrient density between pasture (ie grass) finished cattle and grain-fed cattle. What they found is (as an astute reader of this newsletter might expect), from the standpoint of nutrient density, these are practically different animals! Grass-fed animals were more nutrient-dense, and had fewer markers of stress, inflammation, and other markers that you probably don’t want to see in the food you’re eating.
  

• 📚 Book rec - Made in America, Sam Walton’s biography, is an excellent read. Sam is a compelling founder, and as someone deeply interested in the retail world, I enjoyed it. If you’re tight on time, I also highly recommend listening to the Founder’s podcast episode on the same book.
  

• ⌚ Cool product -  I spend a lot more time than I’d like on a computer. And though it makes me feel a bit like a hamster in a wheel, I’ve been really enjoying the walking treadmill I got a few months back to take walking Zoom calls or just pound through emails. Easy way to get in another 5000+ steps each day.
  

• 🎵 Music - This Fred Again.. rooftop set is just impeccable. I’ve probably listened over 20x at this point. 
  

• 🏀 Random - I agree with the sentiment in this tweet: the repercussions of our poor diet and lifestyle choices will hugely impact future generations. As this linked study shows, diet-induced weight gain (mainly from linoleic acid, aka seed oils) persisted for 4 generations.
  I increasingly think that future issues around “health inequality” will become larger than those around income inequality. We are poisoning our kids and drugging them for profit, decisions which seem likely to have consequences for literally 100+ years. But hey, KFC is delicious 🤷
  

• 🔥Hot take - We are very early in understanding the relationship between hormones and political beliefs. This tweet is telling, as the males on NPR found they had extremely low testosterone. And there are studies showing that testosterone interventions shift individuals generally towards more centrist viewpoints. Wild!
  

• 🙋‍♂️ Ask - Got nothing for you this month: be free.

***

I’m writing this on a flight back from Maui, after hunting and getting to see the incredible operation that the Maui Nui team is building. I’ll have a lot more to share here, but am so impressed with their operation and am a very happy customer. 

• Justin