AMA #15: Fluoride Benefits/Risks & Vagus Nerve Stimulation

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.260 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.900 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology

00:00:12.260 | and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.340 | Today is an Ask Me Anything episode or AMA.

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00:01:42.540 | So without further ado,

00:01:44.220 | let's get to answering your questions.

00:01:46.720 | The first question is about fluoride.

00:01:48.860 | And the specific question is,

00:01:50.940 | why is fluoride in our water and how much is it harming us?

00:01:55.660 | Okay, well, that might seem like a short question,

00:01:58.180 | but there's actually a lot to that question.

00:01:59.960 | And I want to be very clear by posing the question,

00:02:03.540 | how much is it harming us?

00:02:05.240 | It implies that fluoride is harming us.

00:02:08.320 | And I want to be very clear,

00:02:11.140 | the degree to which fluoride can harm you or not harm you

00:02:15.300 | depends on how much of it happens to be in the water

00:02:18.640 | or toothpaste or some other thing that you're consuming.

00:02:21.760 | Okay, so this is very important.

00:02:23.340 | I don't want the question to seem like a leading question

00:02:26.620 | to imply that fluoride is necessarily harming us

00:02:29.240 | because as I'm about to tell you,

00:02:31.360 | there are clear benefits of fluoride for tooth strength

00:02:35.500 | and for warding off cavities.

00:02:37.560 | But if you get too much fluoride into your system,

00:02:40.860 | it is dangerous.

00:02:42.540 | It is a poison at certain levels.

00:02:44.980 | So as you've probably heard before,

00:02:46.420 | the dose makes the poison.

00:02:48.940 | So let's take this seemingly simple question

00:02:51.440 | and dissect it in two.

00:02:53.540 | The first part of the question was,

00:02:55.260 | why is fluoride in our water?

00:02:58.100 | And believe it or not, even that is hard to answer directly

00:03:00.800 | because here's what's happening right now in 2024.

00:03:05.800 | There is a major lawsuit in the state of California

00:03:09.780 | to try and get fluoride removed from the drinking water.

00:03:13.980 | The outcome of that case is still yet to be determined,

00:03:16.620 | but the case was filed by a group of individuals

00:03:20.340 | who strongly believe that fluoride at any concentration

00:03:23.800 | in the drinking water is bad.

00:03:25.940 | Why would they say that and what is their evidence

00:03:29.180 | and how strong is that evidence?

00:03:30.440 | Well, there is some evidence that if levels of fluoride

00:03:34.580 | in drinking water exceed a certain threshold,

00:03:37.360 | it can cause problems with thyroid hormone function

00:03:40.360 | and perhaps even certain aspects of brain function.

00:03:43.460 | Again, if the levels exceed a certain threshold.

00:03:47.180 | So in the state of California, there is a major lawsuit

00:03:50.720 | to try and get fluoride removed from the drinking water.

00:03:53.460 | Now at the same time, meaning right now,

00:03:55.660 | there is also a major lawsuit in the United States,

00:03:58.020 | this one taking place in Buffalo, New York,

00:04:00.420 | whereby citizens are suing the city

00:04:03.660 | because they insist that there is not enough fluoride

00:04:08.220 | in the water and they are suing for damages

00:04:11.060 | based on the dental health needs of their children

00:04:13.740 | that did not, in their opinion,

00:04:15.720 | get enough fluoride in the drinking water.

00:04:17.760 | So I'm telling you about all of this

00:04:19.080 | because the question again was,

00:04:20.660 | why is fluoride in our drinking water?

00:04:22.640 | And believe it or not,

00:04:23.680 | there are certain states in the United States,

00:04:25.300 | certain areas of the United States where the fluoride levels

00:04:28.060 | in the drinking water are low, are zero, perhaps.

00:04:32.720 | That's what the lawsuit in Buffalo is about.

00:04:35.160 | And by the way, the city of Buffalo may have now corrected

00:04:40.160 | the amount of fluoride in the water,

00:04:41.780 | taking it from zero to something.

00:04:43.240 | Whether or not it was actually zero is still debatable,

00:04:45.520 | but I think you're starting to get the point

00:04:47.140 | that there is a wide, wide divergence

00:04:49.960 | in terms of how safe people feel

00:04:52.020 | about having fluoride in drinking water.

00:04:54.320 | Some people want it and are suing cities

00:04:56.620 | because they feel there wasn't enough of it

00:04:58.340 | in their drinking water,

00:04:59.860 | and others don't want any fluoride in their drinking water,

00:05:03.160 | and they're suing cities because of that, okay?

00:05:04.940 | So this is a really barbed wire topic, as I like to say.

00:05:09.220 | It's one that no matter how close you get to it,

00:05:11.780 | whatever angle you look at it,

00:05:13.100 | you're likely to get stuck a little bit

00:05:15.460 | it's going to be a little bit painful.

00:05:17.120 | Okay, why is fluoride in some drinking water at all?

00:05:21.900 | Okay, let's set aside the levels

00:05:23.220 | and just answer that question.

00:05:24.540 | Well, in an upcoming episode of the Huberman Lab podcast

00:05:28.180 | about oral health, I'll get into this in a lot more detail,

00:05:31.380 | but fluoride is a really interesting compound

00:05:33.980 | with respect to oral health, and here's why.

00:05:36.880 | Your teeth, believe it or not, are always in a state

00:05:40.420 | of either demineralization or remineralization.

00:05:45.460 | Those are tricky words to say.

00:05:46.720 | Go ahead and try and say it.

00:05:47.620 | Demineralization, remineralization.

00:05:49.740 | So I'm going to refer to them as demin for demineralization

00:05:53.900 | and remin for remineralization.

00:05:57.080 | Okay, your teeth are always in one state or the other,

00:06:00.300 | where one state predominates versus the other.

00:06:02.700 | Now, a cavity in your mouth occurs when bacteria,

00:06:07.740 | in particular, Streptococcus mutans,

00:06:11.140 | sometimes called strep mutans,

00:06:13.660 | feeds on sugars in your mouth,

00:06:17.100 | and then as a byproduct of that feeding,

00:06:19.660 | creates acids that then erode the enamel

00:06:22.960 | and deeper layers of your teeth.

00:06:25.140 | In other words, it demineralizes the tooth.

00:06:28.580 | Now, I just told you that your teeth can be in a state

00:06:30.540 | of demin or remin at any moment.

00:06:33.520 | The way that your teeth remin, the way they remineralize

00:06:38.680 | and can potentially fill in little cavities

00:06:41.120 | that have not yet made it to the deeper layers of your teeth

00:06:44.380 | is through a process that involves the construction

00:06:47.300 | of crystals from minerals.

00:06:49.380 | Okay, that's why it's called remineralization.

00:06:52.440 | And get this, this is really wild.

00:06:54.740 | These minerals actually stack together

00:06:57.220 | in very organized little sequences,

00:06:59.300 | kind of like Lego blocks.

00:07:00.900 | And the critical element within those blocks

00:07:04.780 | is something called hydroxyapatite.

00:07:07.220 | I love that it has the word apatite in it

00:07:08.680 | 'cause we're talking about oral health.

00:07:09.900 | That's the normal process.

00:07:12.140 | Fluoride was discovered not because it's a vitamin,

00:07:15.300 | not because it's an essential nutrient.

00:07:17.000 | In fact, at high concentrations, it's actually a poison.

00:07:19.520 | I'll tell you a story about that in a moment

00:07:21.560 | where I was actually poisoned by fluoride

00:07:23.400 | at the dentist when I was a kid,

00:07:24.960 | in large part due to my own error.

00:07:27.580 | Fluoride, it was discovered,

00:07:31.020 | can actually get inside of those Lego chain-like crystals,

00:07:35.840 | the building of those, and form bonds between them

00:07:39.200 | that are actually stronger than the hydroxyapatite bonds

00:07:42.920 | that would normally form.

00:07:44.260 | In other words, if you consume fluoridated water

00:07:48.880 | or use toothpaste with fluoride,

00:07:52.560 | especially if you do this when you're a kid,

00:07:54.700 | what ends up happening is that the crystals

00:07:58.000 | and the mineralization structure of the teeth

00:08:01.240 | becomes ultra strong, meaning super physiologically strong,

00:08:05.920 | which then limits the ability for that strep mutans

00:08:09.280 | and the acid strep mutans produces when it eats sugar

00:08:12.620 | to erode the enamel of your teeth,

00:08:15.200 | causing what we refer to as cavities.

00:08:17.720 | Okay, so I went and asked several dentists

00:08:20.720 | and a periodontist about why is fluoride in drinking water?

00:08:23.800 | Why is fluoride in toothpaste?

00:08:25.680 | And they, of course, gave me the explanation

00:08:27.820 | that I just gave you,

00:08:29.440 | which is a chemical mechanical explanation or rationale.

00:08:33.520 | However, most of the things for our health,

00:08:36.360 | such as the foods we eat, the amount of exercise that we do,

00:08:39.520 | are not naturally put into our environment, right?

00:08:43.280 | But tap water, which goes out to everyone

00:08:45.960 | who consumes it from the tap,

00:08:47.920 | is basically a government

00:08:51.800 | or local government supplied resource.

00:08:54.900 | And basically the rationale was,

00:08:56.720 | and I believe this took place first in the 1950s,

00:08:59.040 | was, okay, given the potential for fluoride

00:09:00.920 | to make super physiologically strong teeth,

00:09:04.500 | what can we do to reduce the cavities and tooth decay

00:09:08.440 | that would occur in children and adult populations?

00:09:11.200 | Let's put fluoride in the drinking water.

00:09:13.540 | So that's what they did.

00:09:14.800 | They did not do this, I was told,

00:09:16.920 | because it was necessarily the best way

00:09:19.040 | to take care of teeth and avoid cavities.

00:09:21.240 | It turns out there are a bunch of other things

00:09:22.820 | that you can do.

00:09:24.180 | Even if you consume no fluoridated water or toothpaste,

00:09:28.320 | there are things that you can do

00:09:29.340 | to enhance the mineralization state of your teeth,

00:09:31.900 | even fill in cavities, provided those cavities

00:09:34.160 | haven't made it into the deeper so-called

00:09:36.280 | dentine layers of the teeth.

00:09:37.740 | I'll get into all of this in that future episode.

00:09:40.120 | But what the US and other governments decided,

00:09:42.980 | this of course varies across the world

00:09:44.400 | to the extent to which there's fluoride

00:09:45.580 | in the drinking water or not,

00:09:46.700 | was that by putting fluoride in the drinking water,

00:09:50.000 | they could prevent a large amount of tooth decay

00:09:52.560 | and cavities that would otherwise occur, okay?

00:09:55.520 | It was a, and remains, a fairly low cost approach

00:09:59.740 | for these cities to introduce fluoride

00:10:01.300 | to the drinking water.

00:10:02.300 | And that's why fluoride is in drinking water.

00:10:04.900 | It is to try and create super physiologically strong teeth.

00:10:08.800 | And indeed, every single dentist I spoke to,

00:10:11.020 | including functional dentists, I spoke to periodontists,

00:10:14.200 | I spoke to several dentists ranging from,

00:10:16.400 | let's call them more traditionally trained dentists

00:10:18.240 | to more, let's call them alternative dentists,

00:10:20.160 | all of them agree that at a chemical, mechanical level,

00:10:23.660 | fluoride creates stronger teeth.

00:10:26.340 | However, every single one of them also acknowledged

00:10:29.120 | that the bonds that are created

00:10:31.460 | in those mineralization chains, as I'm referring to,

00:10:34.260 | I realize that's not the technical term,

00:10:36.780 | is not the normal hydroxyapatite bonds that would form.

00:10:41.780 | They are stronger than the bonds that would normally form.

00:10:44.860 | They are structurally different.

00:10:46.300 | If you look at them down what's called

00:10:47.740 | an electron microscope,

00:10:48.660 | you'll see that they're structurally different.

00:10:50.100 | And some, not all of the dentists I spoke to,

00:10:52.940 | said, yeah, you know,

00:10:53.900 | it would be best to remineralize the teeth

00:10:56.420 | to fill in any cavities that initially have formed,

00:10:58.820 | again, not down to the deep layers,

00:11:00.120 | but they could still be filled in naturally

00:11:01.900 | through the building up

00:11:03.540 | of those hydroxyapatite natural bonds.

00:11:06.380 | But they acknowledged that many people,

00:11:08.660 | perhaps most people, don't take adequate care

00:11:11.540 | of their mouths and their teeth.

00:11:13.540 | So they understood the rationale

00:11:15.620 | of putting fluoride into drinking water.

00:11:17.540 | And of course, that's also why fluoride

00:11:19.180 | is in many, not all toothpaste.

00:11:21.580 | Okay, so I'm hoping that clearly answers for you

00:11:24.060 | the question of why there is fluoride

00:11:25.980 | in our drinking water at all.

00:11:27.660 | At least in most American cities,

00:11:29.980 | there is fluoride in the drinking water.

00:11:31.540 | Although this lawsuit in Buffalo,

00:11:34.620 | I guess soon to be determined,

00:11:37.740 | will probably tell us whether or not indeed

00:11:39.700 | there was a total lack or a partial lack of fluoride

00:11:42.320 | in the drinking water there.

00:11:43.260 | I'm presuming that the accusation is true,

00:11:45.600 | but I don't actually know that to be true.

00:11:47.060 | I just know that there's a lawsuit that exists.

00:11:48.760 | If you Google that,

00:11:49.600 | you can see some YouTube videos about it.

00:11:50.900 | There's information about this happening.

00:11:54.060 | There are a bunch of angry parents

00:11:55.460 | and I'm sure there are angry parents on the other side.

00:11:57.700 | And I don't know what the kids are saying,

00:11:59.220 | but hopefully no matter what,

00:12:01.680 | they're saying them through healthy teeth.

00:12:03.620 | Okay, now the second half of the question was,

00:12:05.640 | how much is the fluoride in drinking water harming us?

00:12:09.420 | Okay, I'm going to answer this question very specifically.

00:12:11.180 | The person asks, how much is the fluoride

00:12:13.100 | in our drinking water harming us?

00:12:15.320 | Well, I already told you ways in which

00:12:16.740 | it is helping the strength of your teeth, right?

00:12:19.920 | That's not debated.

00:12:21.520 | Okay, again, there might be some dentists that say,

00:12:23.340 | oh, you know, the bonds that are formed by fluoride

00:12:26.280 | are different than the ones that are naturally created

00:12:28.960 | with no fluoride.

00:12:29.920 | And so there might be some debate about that,

00:12:31.580 | but all of them acknowledge that those bonds

00:12:33.900 | and the mineralization of the teeth

00:12:36.260 | is stronger with fluoride.

00:12:38.160 | They understand and agree with the rationale,

00:12:40.420 | even if they don't necessarily agree with the practice

00:12:42.980 | as the best practice.

00:12:44.340 | How much is fluoride in drinking water harming you?

00:12:48.760 | Well, there are two things you need to ask.

00:12:50.960 | One is how much fluoride are you actually drinking?

00:12:53.260 | Because it turns out there's a tremendous range

00:12:55.600 | of fluoride concentrations in tap water,

00:12:57.900 | depending on what city you live in.

00:12:59.660 | Now, I did an entire episode

00:13:01.060 | of the Huberman Lab podcast about water.

00:13:03.900 | We talked about distilled water versus spring water.

00:13:06.340 | We talked about hydrogenated water.

00:13:07.560 | We talked about alkaline water.

00:13:08.660 | We talked about all of those things.

00:13:10.120 | And we did talk about fluoride.

00:13:11.620 | And one of the key takeaways

00:13:14.000 | when you're thinking about fluoride in drinking water

00:13:16.180 | is to know that if fluoride concentrations

00:13:18.940 | in drinking water are too high,

00:13:21.640 | or, and this is a very important or,

00:13:23.720 | or you're consuming a lot of a particular water

00:13:27.640 | that contains even low levels of fluoride,

00:13:30.040 | well, there's the potential.

00:13:31.240 | And again, I want to highlight the word potential here.

00:13:33.220 | I don't want to cause alarm.

00:13:35.340 | That the fluoride is causing disruptions

00:13:38.600 | to thyroid hormone output or on the receptor end,

00:13:43.200 | in other words, disruptions to thyroid hormone metabolism

00:13:46.360 | and usage in the body.

00:13:47.980 | Okay, I want to be really clear here.

00:13:49.380 | I don't want people to think,

00:13:50.460 | oh, fluoride destroys your thyroid hormone.

00:13:52.920 | It's the dose that makes the poison.

00:13:55.860 | It depends on how much.

00:13:57.240 | Now, the Center for Disease Control

00:13:59.800 | have set a recommended level of 0.7 milligrams per liter,

00:14:04.800 | 0.7 milligrams per liter of fluoride in drinking water

00:14:09.200 | as the level, and here I'm paraphrasing,

00:14:11.440 | that can help prevent tooth decay

00:14:13.920 | and promote good oral health and that they have deemed safe.

00:14:17.460 | But if you want to know how much fluoride

00:14:19.840 | is in your drinking water,

00:14:21.220 | whether or not it is above, at, or below that value,

00:14:24.820 | you need to get your tap water tested.

00:14:27.100 | Now, fortunately, there are websites that can tell you

00:14:30.660 | how much fluoride is in your drinking water.

00:14:32.920 | And if you trust the data on those websites,

00:14:35.060 | you can simply put the city you live in

00:14:36.680 | into one of those websites

00:14:38.520 | and you'll get the information back.

00:14:39.720 | I'll provide a few links to those different websites

00:14:42.080 | in the show note captions for this episode.

00:14:43.800 | We also provided those links in the show note captions

00:14:46.580 | for the episode on water.

00:14:48.320 | And then you can see,

00:14:49.160 | are you adjusting the level of fluoride

00:14:50.640 | in your drinking water that's deemed safe,

00:14:52.880 | less than that value, or more than that value?

00:14:55.320 | But keep in mind that if you drink a little bit,

00:14:56.960 | a moderate amount, or a lot of fluoridated drinking water,

00:15:00.520 | you're going to be consuming either more or less fluoride.

00:15:03.320 | Just because there's a concentration that's been deemed safe

00:15:05.560 | by the Center for Disease Control

00:15:07.960 | does not actually tell you whether or not,

00:15:10.600 | okay, if you're drinking half a gallon of tap water a day

00:15:12.840 | versus a gallon versus just a couple cups,

00:15:15.340 | whether or not you are in that safe zone.

00:15:17.520 | And of course, this is going to vary by body weight, right?

00:15:19.760 | If you're a small child,

00:15:21.200 | those lower levels of fluoride are going to equate

00:15:25.420 | to a larger total amount of fluoride

00:15:29.000 | as seen by the volume of the body, right?

00:15:31.400 | If you think about this, right?

00:15:32.440 | Everything's by body weight volume.

00:15:34.120 | This is why drug dosages are most typically calculated

00:15:36.980 | as a function of pounds or kilograms of body weight, right?

00:15:40.320 | Not everybody gets the same dose of every drug.

00:15:44.020 | And if you're a very large person,

00:15:45.320 | maybe you can tolerate more fluoride.

00:15:47.480 | As I mentioned before,

00:15:48.720 | high levels of fluoride have been shown

00:15:50.320 | to disrupt thyroid metabolism.

00:15:52.480 | It has also been hypothesized,

00:15:54.480 | again, this is still highly debated,

00:15:56.160 | hypothesized to be neurotoxic under certain conditions,

00:15:59.740 | that is toxic to neurons that can kill neurons

00:16:02.480 | at certain concentrations,

00:16:03.880 | not necessarily the concentrations present

00:16:05.720 | in your drinking water.

00:16:07.420 | A lot of the evidence that fluoride is neurotoxic

00:16:10.500 | is from so-called in vitro studies.

00:16:12.320 | So studies done effectively in a dish,

00:16:14.020 | although there is some in vivo evidence

00:16:15.860 | that it can cause neurotoxicity, AKA neurodegeneration.

00:16:19.620 | So I think when it comes to the topic of fluoride,

00:16:22.500 | people tend to bin out into not concerned

00:16:25.980 | and simply want fluoride to strengthen their teeth.

00:16:28.540 | Mildly concerned, you know,

00:16:29.880 | kind of keeping an eye on this stuff.

00:16:31.380 | You know, okay, fluoride doesn't sound great for me,

00:16:33.340 | but you know, as long as the concentrations aren't too high,

00:16:35.840 | you know, as people will say,

00:16:36.840 | I've been drinking tap water my whole life

00:16:38.240 | and I feel great, you know, my teeth are strong

00:16:39.980 | and my brain works and my thyroid seems fine.

00:16:42.500 | Okay, and then people who are very, very concerned

00:16:45.240 | about fluoride at any concentration in their drinking water,

00:16:48.440 | hence the lawsuit in California

00:16:50.500 | and other lawsuits around the country.

00:16:52.900 | So I believe that when we're talking about fluoride,

00:16:55.700 | you really need to think about the dosages

00:16:57.360 | and you need to ask yourself

00:16:58.720 | which one of those three categories you fall into.

00:17:01.460 | Now, if you are concerned about fluoride,

00:17:05.460 | it does not necessarily mean that you can't drink tap water.

00:17:08.220 | The suggestion simply would be to filter that tap water.

00:17:11.900 | And during the episode I did on water,

00:17:14.380 | I talked about a number of different filtration approaches.

00:17:18.020 | Many of those filters will filter out fluoride

00:17:20.260 | and you can simply look up, you know,

00:17:21.620 | water filters that eliminate or reduce fluoride.

00:17:24.260 | And then some people have enough disposable income

00:17:27.160 | and/or are concerned enough about fluoride

00:17:29.700 | in their drinking water that they will purchase

00:17:32.680 | or create very extensive, very thorough filtration systems

00:17:36.660 | to completely eliminate fluoride from their drinking water.

00:17:39.300 | Okay, so you'll find different ranges of concern.

00:17:42.540 | Again, aside from the data of high fluoride levels

00:17:46.820 | being disruptive to thyroid hormone pathways

00:17:48.860 | and possibly neurotoxic,

00:17:51.020 | I personally am somebody who filters the drinking water

00:17:56.020 | I consume out of the tap.

00:17:58.080 | Unless that is, I'm going to boil water with it

00:18:00.780 | for making things like loose leaf yerba mate,

00:18:02.840 | which is one of my favorite drinks.

00:18:04.400 | Although lately I drink this cold brew Matina yerba mate,

00:18:07.840 | which by the way is made with purified water, no fluoride,

00:18:10.740 | and so on and so forth.

00:18:12.940 | But if I'm making rice or I'm making pasta

00:18:15.080 | or I'm making oatmeal and I need to use tap water,

00:18:17.840 | I don't worry about removing the fluoride from that water.

00:18:20.280 | However, if I'm going to drink water,

00:18:21.880 | if I'm going to mix, you know,

00:18:22.800 | an element electrolyte pack in

00:18:24.040 | or just drinks a glass of water

00:18:25.640 | or go out on a hike and take some water with me,

00:18:28.040 | I do use a water filter,

00:18:29.940 | either a filter that fills from the top and then seeps down

00:18:33.160 | and the ones you put in the refrigerator,

00:18:34.720 | or I recently purchased a whole house filter

00:18:37.140 | for the drinking water taps in my house

00:18:39.480 | so that it does remove all the fluoride

00:18:41.280 | and remove some other contaminants as well.

00:18:42.980 | So it's going to depend on your level of concern

00:18:45.000 | and it's going to depend on your disposable income

00:18:47.160 | and any number of other things.

00:18:48.400 | And I must say that every once in a while,

00:18:50.080 | I'll drink a little bit of tap water out of the tap

00:18:52.420 | without any concern about filtering the fluoride.

00:18:54.320 | I'm not somebody who gets hyper concerned about these things

00:18:56.500 | but I do understand why some people do get hyper concerned

00:18:59.460 | about these things,

00:19:00.300 | especially people who've read up on fluoride

00:19:02.680 | and some of the health concerns

00:19:03.800 | of consuming too much fluoride,

00:19:05.220 | because I also find it very logical and understandable

00:19:08.580 | that as people learn more about how a particular substance

00:19:11.220 | might be harming their brain or bodily health,

00:19:13.000 | that they would become more concerned

00:19:14.600 | about consuming that substance.

00:19:15.800 | It just stands to reason.

00:19:17.500 | So what am I suggesting?

00:19:18.500 | I suggest that you figure out how much fluoride

00:19:21.200 | is in your tap water.

00:19:23.240 | I suggest that you then make a decision

00:19:25.180 | as to whether or not to filter that water or not

00:19:28.240 | before drinking it.

00:19:30.140 | And then of course, you have to make a decision

00:19:31.920 | about what sort of financial investment

00:19:34.000 | you're willing to make to filter that water.

00:19:36.000 | You can find a list of different price ranges

00:19:38.960 | of water filters in the show note captions

00:19:41.680 | in the water episode.

00:19:43.540 | You may also want to watch that episode

00:19:45.000 | and go to that timestamp.

00:19:46.580 | And there's an enormous range there.

00:19:48.520 | I want to be very clear.

00:19:49.440 | I don't have a financial relationship

00:19:50.820 | to any of those filtration mechanisms.

00:19:53.440 | Again, some people have $0 to devote to that process

00:19:56.880 | of taking the fluoride out of their water

00:19:58.780 | and other contaminants.

00:19:59.840 | Some people have many, many tens of thousands of dollars.

00:20:02.080 | So it really just depends on your disposable income

00:20:05.140 | and your level of concern.

00:20:06.320 | But if you were to ask me, I would say, yeah, I think,

00:20:09.160 | given that the cost of most of the filters

00:20:11.360 | that can remove most of the fluoride is low,

00:20:13.640 | and given that there is some health concern

00:20:15.360 | of consuming too much fluoride,

00:20:17.320 | why not just remove fluoride from the drinking water?

00:20:19.740 | And then if you say, well, won't that weaken my teeth?

00:20:22.420 | Then I would say, well, watch the episode

00:20:23.880 | that's soon to come out on oral health,

00:20:25.340 | because it's going to explain a lot of approaches,

00:20:27.180 | including fluoride containing toothpaste,

00:20:29.080 | but some other non fluoride containing toothpaste

00:20:31.540 | and other things that one can do

00:20:33.800 | that the community of professionally trained dentists

00:20:38.380 | all agree can really help improve

00:20:40.600 | the mineralization state of your teeth.

00:20:42.420 | And indeed can fill in cavities that have begun to form,

00:20:44.960 | but haven't yet made it to the deeper layers of your teeth

00:20:47.440 | and on and on.

00:20:48.920 | Now, I do have a brief story about fluoride

00:20:50.760 | that I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you,

00:20:52.800 | which essentially shows that fluoride is designed

00:20:54.920 | to strengthen teeth, but is also indeed a poison.

00:20:58.380 | So when I was a kid, I had a lot of dental issues.

00:21:01.260 | I didn't consume much sugar.

00:21:02.900 | My mother fortunately was good

00:21:04.640 | about not letting us consume too much sugar,

00:21:07.360 | but for whatever reason, my mouth was kind of a mess.

00:21:10.200 | I'd brush, I'd floss, I would do all these things,

00:21:12.140 | but I actually had my adult teeth

00:21:14.240 | coming behind my baby teeth.

00:21:16.760 | So it didn't push out my baby teeth.

00:21:18.720 | So not only did I not collect from the tooth fairy,

00:21:21.960 | which I only recently discovered isn't real,

00:21:24.040 | but how would I know?

00:21:25.680 | 'Cause the tooth fairy never showed up

00:21:26.840 | because all of my adult teeth came in behind my baby teeth.

00:21:29.840 | So I had to have all of my baby teeth pulled on the top.

00:21:32.920 | So I did not have a good relationship to the dentist

00:21:35.300 | as a location or a person.

00:21:36.800 | In fact, they had to tell me not to bite the dentist.

00:21:40.080 | By the way, I haven't bitten a dentist in a long time.

00:21:42.760 | So hopefully my dentist, if watching this,

00:21:44.340 | is not too concerned.

00:21:45.740 | I do get twice a year cleanings.

00:21:48.120 | Every dentist agrees that's a good thing to do.

00:21:50.580 | Some people may need less, some people may need more,

00:21:54.100 | but how do you know?

00:21:54.940 | You need to go to a dentist to find out.

00:21:56.560 | Back to the story about fluoride.

00:21:58.640 | I started going to the dentist quite a bit

00:22:00.600 | because of all these dental issues that I had as a kid.

00:22:03.640 | And what they used to do,

00:22:04.740 | I don't know if they do this anymore,

00:22:05.720 | but what they used to do is they give you these little trays

00:22:07.640 | which are kind of like mouth guards

00:22:09.160 | that you would use for boxing or hockey

00:22:10.860 | so your teeth don't get knocked out.

00:22:12.120 | And they would fill those trays with this jelly-like stuff

00:22:15.040 | that contained fluoride.

00:22:16.120 | And they put it on the top and on the bottom.

00:22:18.320 | And the stuff just, little bits of it would seep

00:22:21.380 | onto your tongue and your throat.

00:22:22.620 | And it was so sour, it was so awful.

00:22:24.640 | And they'd seat me in this little wicker chair

00:22:28.120 | in front of a television and turn on cartoons

00:22:30.360 | as if that was supposed to make me forget

00:22:31.880 | how awful the whole experience was.

00:22:34.520 | If anything, it probably just created

00:22:35.920 | a Pavlovian condition response to hate cartoons,

00:22:39.560 | which I suppose did not work 'cause I liked cartoons then.

00:22:43.560 | I don't watch them now, truly, I don't watch them now.

00:22:47.600 | So I sit down in this wicker chair,

00:22:48.700 | I've got the fluoride in my teeth with these two trays,

00:22:51.200 | and I'm just hating this whole process.

00:22:53.140 | I think I must've been about five or six years old.

00:22:55.000 | So I decide in my infinite wisdom

00:22:58.140 | to just swallow all the fluoride pace.

00:23:02.300 | So I start shucking it down through these mouth guards.

00:23:05.380 | I can feel it going back into my throat

00:23:07.320 | and it's sour and it's stinging, it's awful,

00:23:09.200 | but I'm thinking, okay, I'm just going to like, you know,

00:23:11.040 | do this and I'm going to sit there.

00:23:12.080 | I'm basically going to, I'm going to beat the test.

00:23:14.660 | And so I drink all this fluoride paste.

00:23:17.600 | And then of course I got immensely sick

00:23:20.160 | within about three minutes.

00:23:21.360 | I stood up, I turned around

00:23:22.560 | and puked all over the wicker chair.

00:23:24.040 | I think that was deliberate.

00:23:25.240 | Actually looking back, it was deliberate.

00:23:27.240 | And puke all over the wicker chair.

00:23:31.520 | My mom comes running in, what happened?

00:23:33.500 | What'd you do to him?

00:23:34.480 | You know, she was very protective of me, thanks mom.

00:23:37.540 | What'd you do to him?

00:23:38.380 | And then I said, you know, I just swallowed the stuff.

00:23:40.880 | They wanted to do it again.

00:23:41.820 | And I stopped doing the fluoride treatment at that point.

00:23:44.060 | Why did I vomit?

00:23:45.540 | Well, I vomited because fluoride is indeed a poison

00:23:48.500 | at high concentrations.

00:23:50.100 | Now, do I tell you that story to make you afraid

00:23:52.300 | of giving your kids fluoridated toothpaste

00:23:54.480 | or fluoridated water?

00:23:55.320 | No, by all means, do what you think is best for you

00:23:58.900 | and for your children.

00:24:00.060 | For me, however, I've made some effort

00:24:02.300 | to avoid fluoride toothpaste.

00:24:04.740 | I do go to the dentist, as I mentioned, about once a year.

00:24:08.240 | I confessed during the pandemic, it was probably less

00:24:10.420 | as they were, you know, busy

00:24:11.940 | and it was hard to schedule, et cetera.

00:24:14.580 | I've had very, very few cavities in my adult life,

00:24:18.100 | hardly any.

00:24:19.260 | And my gum health is very strong, et cetera, et cetera,

00:24:22.380 | largely through taking on protocols

00:24:25.860 | that I'm going to describe in the oral health episode

00:24:28.060 | and that were recommended to me by friends

00:24:29.900 | who are both dentists and other friends who are periodontists

00:24:33.220 | because again, there are a lot of things that we can do

00:24:34.820 | to strengthen our teeth in natural ways

00:24:37.300 | by building up those hydroxyapatite bonds,

00:24:39.940 | which are the natural bonds that teeth form.

00:24:42.520 | And yes, believe it or not,

00:24:43.740 | being able to reverse some early formed cavities

00:24:46.420 | as long as they haven't made it deep into the tooth.

00:24:48.380 | Also things like using a soft toothbrush,

00:24:51.240 | because if you brush too hard, you know,

00:24:53.240 | if you take that approach,

00:24:54.080 | you're going to brush your teeth really hard,

00:24:55.140 | get them really, really clean.

00:24:56.140 | Yes, you'll scrape off all the biofilm,

00:24:58.280 | you'll avoid tartar buildup,

00:24:59.460 | but you can really cause some tenting of the gum tissue

00:25:02.060 | above the teeth.

00:25:02.900 | And those little recesses back in there

00:25:04.580 | are where bacteria get in.

00:25:05.620 | And there's now a lot of really strong evidence

00:25:08.620 | showing that some of that bacteria

00:25:10.420 | can translate into cardiac disease,

00:25:12.920 | can translate into metabolic disease,

00:25:14.660 | and maybe even into some neurologic disease.

00:25:16.900 | So it's serious stuff.

00:25:17.860 | Oral health is one of the most important areas of health,

00:25:21.300 | and it's one of the most overlooked areas of oral health.

00:25:23.940 | And I think people generally fall into two categories,

00:25:26.660 | and I'll use these two categories

00:25:27.960 | to frame up the episode on oral health that's coming.

00:25:30.620 | One category of person seems really bullish

00:25:33.260 | on their oral health.

00:25:34.100 | They're like, "Keep my teeth white and clean,"

00:25:35.620 | and they floss and brush twice a day, every day,

00:25:37.860 | and they use tooth whiteners and mouthwash

00:25:39.940 | and all those things.

00:25:40.780 | And the other category is kind of blase about it.

00:25:43.220 | "Yeah, brush my teeth in the morning

00:25:44.920 | so that my breath doesn't kill every person

00:25:47.260 | I get into an interaction with," and so on and so forth.

00:25:50.740 | But in reality, both the group of people

00:25:53.000 | that are doing an immense number of things

00:25:54.980 | to try and keep their teeth white and their breath fresh

00:25:58.420 | are, yes, doing things that are good for their oral health,

00:26:01.220 | but also no doubt damaging their oral health,

00:26:03.800 | in particular, the oral microbiome,

00:26:05.980 | which is absolutely critical.

00:26:07.460 | And then, of course, the other category of people

00:26:09.540 | that are neglecting their oral hygiene

00:26:12.740 | and are not taking mouthwashes and things like that

00:26:14.700 | are also damaging their oral health, but in different ways.

00:26:17.600 | So during the episode on oral health,

00:26:19.160 | I'll spell out all the things that you can do,

00:26:20.940 | most of which, by the way, are completely zero cost.

00:26:23.780 | Many of them actually will save you money,

00:26:25.740 | both in the short and long-term,

00:26:27.580 | and can really help you improve your oral microbiome,

00:26:30.740 | the strength of your teeth,

00:26:32.700 | and reduce the number of cavities,

00:26:34.680 | maybe even reverse cavities that have begun to form

00:26:37.800 | and are not too deep into the tooth yet.

00:26:39.320 | And in a really nice way,

00:26:40.800 | all of that independent of your stance on fluoride.

00:26:44.240 | Thank you for joining

00:26:45.080 | for the beginning of this Ask Me Anything episode.

00:26:47.760 | To hear the full episode and to hear future episodes

00:26:51.120 | of these Ask Me Anything sessions,

00:26:52.720 | plus to receive transcripts of them

00:26:55.000 | and transcripts of the Huberman Lab podcast standard channel

00:26:58.240 | and premium tools not released anywhere else,

00:27:01.240 | please go to HubermanLab.com/premium.

00:27:04.240 | Just to remind you why we launched

00:27:05.440 | the Huberman Lab podcast premium channel.

00:27:07.640 | It's really twofold.

00:27:08.520 | First of all, it's to raise support

00:27:10.440 | for the standard Huberman Lab podcast channel,

00:27:12.920 | which of course will still be continued

00:27:15.180 | to be released every Monday in full length.

00:27:17.640 | We are not going to change the format

00:27:19.040 | or anything about the standard Huberman Lab podcast.

00:27:22.620 | And to fund research,

00:27:24.060 | in particular research done on human beings.

00:27:26.120 | So not animal models, but on human beings,

00:27:28.160 | which I think we all agree is a species

00:27:29.960 | that we are most interested in.

00:27:32.160 | And we are going to specifically fund research

00:27:35.160 | that is in toward developing further protocols

00:27:37.800 | for mental health, physical health, and performance.

00:27:39.840 | And those protocols will be distributed

00:27:41.740 | through all channels, not just the premium channel,

00:27:44.160 | but through all channels,

00:27:45.000 | Huberman Lab podcast and other media channels.

00:27:47.160 | So the idea here is to give you information

00:27:49.720 | to your burning questions in depth

00:27:51.920 | and allow you the opportunity to support

00:27:54.100 | the kind of research that provides those kinds of answers

00:27:56.840 | in the first place.

00:27:57.840 | Now, an especially exciting feature of the premium channel

00:28:00.200 | is that the tiny foundation has generously offered

00:28:03.160 | to do a dollar for dollar match on all funds

00:28:05.520 | raised for research through the premium channel.

00:28:08.440 | So this is a terrific way that they're going to amplify

00:28:11.040 | whatever funds come in through the premium channel

00:28:13.000 | to further support research for science

00:28:15.060 | and science related tools for mental health,

00:28:16.840 | physical health, and performance.

00:28:18.360 | If you'd like to sign up

00:28:19.200 | for the Huberman Lab premium channel,

00:28:20.960 | again, there's a cost of $10 per month,

00:28:23.040 | or you can pay $100 upfront for the entire year.

00:28:25.800 | That will give you access to all the AMAs.

00:28:28.140 | You can ask questions and get answers to your questions,

00:28:31.020 | and you'll, of course, get answers to all the questions

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00:28:35.000 | There will also be some premium content,

00:28:36.940 | such as transcripts of the AMAs

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00:28:48.560 | You can sign up for the premium channel

00:28:49.960 | by going to HubermanLab.com/premium.

00:28:52.640 | Again, that's HubermanLab.com/premium.

00:28:55.520 | And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

00:28:58.380 | (upbeat music)

00:29:00.960 | (upbeat music)

AMA #15: Fluoride Benefits/Risks & Vagus Nerve Stimulation

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