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In other words, what happens when a population suddenly stops taking fluoride in their drinking water, like Juneau's citizenry did?
Now, thanks to a recent study led by first author and public health researcher Jennifer Meyer from the University of Alaska Anchorage, we've got new insights into the subsequent effects.
In the study, Meyer assessed Medicaid dental claim billing records for two groups of children and adolescents aged 18 or under.
One of these groups represented what the researchers call "optimal" community water fluoridation (CWF) exposure: 853 non-adult patients on behalf of whom Medicaid dental claims were filed in 2003, years before the fluoride cessation began in 2007.
The other group was made up of 1,052 non-adult patients from families who similarly met Medicaid income requirements, and who made the same kind of dental claims almost a decade later, in 2012.
[...] "By taking the fluoride out of the water supply... the trade-off for that is children are going to experience one additional caries procedure per year, at a ballpark (cost) of US$300 more per child," Meyer explained to KTOO News.
Reference: Jennifer Meyer, Vasileios Margaritis & Aaron Mendelsohn, Consequences of community water fluoridation cessation for Medicaid-eligible children and adolescents in Juneau, Alaska, BMC Oral Health, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12903-018-0684-2
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 16 2019, @03:10PM (1 child)
I've had essentially zero cavities in 50 years, still got 2 fillings (ever so tiny, didn't even need to use novacaine, but still got the full billing) on the first visit after my parents got "dental insurance" that covered them, and another one that was just a sharp spot on a tooth face - not growing, but that dentist liked to play with his UV epoxy, so we smoothed and filled the sharp spot.
I would attribute this primarily to the series orange flavored high intensity fluoride treatments I received shortly after my permanent teeth came in, though there was also municipal fluoride in most of the water I was exposed to at the time as well.
My children have had a couple of those fluoride treatments, and zero fluoride in their drinking water for the past six years - still holding at zero cavities, but then again, they hate coca cola even more than I did...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17 2019, @01:45AM
Or simply your family has harder tooth enamel than average or your bodies are better at rebuilding that enamel than others (yes, your body tries to fix itself). Some people have such soft enamel that they end up having nearly all of their teeth replaced by the time they're adults and it's not because of what they're eating.