10 Reasons Why Acne Sufferers Should Avoid Sodium Fluoride

Sodium fluoride is a chemical added to 70% of American water supplies, and most commercial toothpaste brands. The debate over its safety is neverending, stretching back 70 years.

Fluoride proponents point to its enamel-strengthening properties, saying it protects children, while calling the opposition fearmongerers. The opposition blames fluoride for weak bones, mental fogginess, and thyroid issues.

So where does the truth lie? Somewhere in the middle? Not this time – fluoride is a villain through and through…

…and many of its dangers spill over into the acne realm. Fluoride is a classic hidden and insidious villain. It almost certainly isn’t causing your acne outright, but it’s in the same category as pesticides, triclosan, heavy metals – a minor villain that adds up to a significant acne shadow when joining forces with others. Here, we are firmly in the anti-fluoride camp.

There’s so much to discuss with fluoride – its collagen destruction, how countries are banning it, its history. But for now, here’s 10 concise reasons why you as an acne sufferer should avoid it. 

This article is particularly important if you live in Australia, USA, New Zealand, Singapore or Hong Kong, the global capitals of water fluoridation.

 

ONE – depletes antioxidants

The evidence that fluoride lowers antioxidants is rock solid, and strengthening monthly.

Listing all the studies would take centuries, but this 2006 experiment found that Indians with dental fluorosis, when fluoride intake is so high that white spots appear on the teeth, had higher levels of notorious free radicals called thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS). This 2012 study was so confident in fluoride’s free radical-generating dangers that it was testing the ability of black berries to reduce them.

The studies are still coming as of 2020, and this one found a decrease in total antioxidant capacity (TAC) of the brain after rats were given fluoride. An enzyme called NOX4 that generates free radicals was significantly increased.

The precise power is unknown. As a toxin, fluoride could generate free radicals directly by destabilising cells, or it could stimulate your immune system to manufacture free radicals, in order to destroy it.

What is known is the result: depleted antioxidants. Your individual skin cells will lose their glow, adding up to a duller and greyer whole. Most importantly, antioxidants prevent a pore-clogging compound called squalene peroxide from forming, a name that deserves to be extremely famous in acne circles.

This danger is so proven that it’s amazing that fluoride hasn’t been banned yet. 

 

TWO – the dreaded fluoroderma

In the sleazy backalley bar where all the acne villains congregate at night, fluoride has one unique thing to boast about to its mates: it has its own officially recognised skin disease.

It’s called fluoroderma, and the symptoms include plaques, hard nodules, ulcers, and “acneiform eruptions”, AKA spots with close similarities to acne. The standard treatment is – surprise, surprise – avoiding fluoride. However, doctors also give patients diuretics to flush the fluoride out of the body faster. Tellingly, fluoroderma tends to pop up around the mouth or jaw, the chief fluoride hotspots.

Fluoroderma was documented way back in 1979, when two patients applying fluoride gel to their teeth experienced a “papulonodular eruption” (because it always sounds cooler to use the word eruption for acne). This 2011 link features graphic images of a white/red, melting looking rash on a man’s hand after using an inhaled fluoride spray as an anaesthetic. The same fluoroderma patches appeared on his neck, face and arms.

You probably don’t have fluoroderma outright, but this disease illustrates the reach this chemical has over the skin. You probably have more subtle effects. Interestingly, there’s one clear parallel to acne: fluoroderma plaques are particularly dense in neutrophils, immune system agents that produce free radicals. Neutrophil accumulation is also linked to acne.

The question has to be asked – how is this chemical safe to put in your body?

 

THREE – increases inflammation

The partner in crime of danger one. If you’ve been worrying about hormones, hygiene or uncontrollable genetics, then forget it – chronic inflammation and antioxidant deficiencies are the two root causes of acne. Oily skin is in a close third.

Sodium fluoride consistently increases inflammation. This chemical does not belong in the body, and your immune system treats it with the all-out inflammatory response it deserves.

Inflammation rises in the brain, the internal organs, and the biggest organ, your beloved skin. Specifically, drinking fluoridated tap water can increase NK-KappaB, IL-6, IL-1beta, and IL-8 according to a 2019 study, all pro-inflammatory immune system chemicals linked to acne. Fluoride also dabbles in the dark arts of small intestine inflammation, which reversed when fluoride was avoided (2020 study).

Fluoride is probably one character among dozens increasing your inflammation, but an important character nevertheless. A 2011 study observed “rapid inflammatory reactions” involving white blood cells after consuming fluoride, concluding that “NaF (fluoride), even in small concentrations, may induce an inflammatory process“.  This could be happening in your body right now, as you scroll downwards with your mouse.

It’s in the same category as antioxidant depletion. Fluoride’s pro-inflammatory powers have an evidence bank as solid as granite. Coincidentally, they’re in the top 2 causes of acne.

 

FOUR – it’s a sneaky, hidden villain

Everyone knows that sugar is unhealthy. Maybe you’ve restricted it, maybe you struggle with food cravings (here’s how to reduce them), but by 2020, it’s on almost everyone’s radar.

The same can’t be said for fluoride though. If you live in a water-fluoridated area, you probably have no idea that you are regularly consuming an acne-causing villain without ever being consulted.

To some, it feels safe because it’s the government putting it in tap water, and people like to trust authority, but the USDA also granted trans-fats generally recognised as safe (GRAS) status back in 1957. These days, 99.9% of scientists agree that they’re heart disease extraordinaires.

Also, some of the crazier anti-fluoride campaigners tend to make the sensible ones look bad, and stop ordinary folk from listening. For example, back in the 1950s, it was accused of being a communist plot to dumb down the population! The Soviet leadership supposedly had a brainwave and realised that nuking our collective IQ was smarter than actually nuking things.

Thus, we return to the classic glass half full or empty scenario. It always sends a jolt of worry down your spine to hear that you’re accidentally consuming an inflammatory menace, but on the other hand, it gives you a new area to improve.

You may be underestimating fluoride’s dangers, and that’s why you should reduce it. 

 

FIVE – twists collagen

One of sodium fluoride’s more unusual dangers, particularly compared to the widespread danger of increasing inflammation, is warping the shape of bodily proteins.

This extends to the precious youth protein collagen, which is vital for tough and firm skin and accumulates rapidly in the early stages of wound healing (and therefore pimple healing). This old 1983 study gave 18 rats fluoride and 18 rats nothing. In the fluoride rats, the collagen underwent changes; it became “defective”. They didn’t specify precisely what defective meant, but one thing’s for sure – it doesn’t sound good.

20 long years passed, before some new rats were exposed to fluoride, and suffered decreases in the collagen genes. Specifically, the gene (COL1A1) for type 1 collagen, the predominant form in human skin. Type 3 is also found in skin and type 2 makes up the cartilage of your joints.

This 2004 study must have been released on Halloween, as it claimed that fluoride can prematurely age you. Fluoride was blamed for mineralising collagen, damaging the structure of collagen fibers, and plain old reducing collagen. Fluoride even increased collagenase, the skin enzyme that recycles existing collagen.

You could have the exact same rate of acne formation, but if an evil acne magician clicked his fingers and reduced your collagen by 80%, you would have dramatically more pimples, simply because the old ones will heal so slowly.

 

SIX – lowered IQ!

As of 2015, 24 scientific studies had linked sodium fluoride to reduced intelligence in children. The most widely circulated showed a 5 point IQ reduction when consuming 3 parts per million (ppm) daily.

Like any good paperback, it’s a conspiracy that dates back decades to the closing days of the Second World War. Grand Rapids was the birthplace of the fluoride movement, the first town to initiate water fluoridation in 1945.

In the 1920s, Dr Frederick McKay had discovered several towns in Colorado with unusually strong and decay-resistant teeth. Fascinatingly, the local groundwater was also rich with sodium fluoride. That’s another point of this article – we’re not denying that fluoride has benefits for the teeth. We’re saying that they’re not worth it.

Anyway, sodium fluoride was subsequently studied for 20 years, but in 1944, 1 year before operation Grand Rapids started, the first observations were made of “mental confusion, drowsiness and lassitude”. Somehow, this didn’t make a dent in the strategy.

The problem for acne? If your IQ is lower, you’ll believe Ronald McDonald when he bangs on your front door and insists that big Macs are rich in healthy protein. 

 

SEVEN – depletes other nutrients (vitamin C, and E).

Part of the antioxidant stable of acne dangers. Because fluoride is proven to increase free radicals, it can also reduce vitamins with antioxidant functioning as a bonus to their normal powers. A vitamin E molecule could be seconds away from entering newly manufactured oil on your skin and making it stabler, before it receives the message that fluoride is on a mindless free radical joyride and has to divert away to deactivate them.

This study on 100 children showed outright that vitamin C helps to mitigate the free radical damage of fluoride. At first, that sounds promising – a proven solution. It is a good strategy, but it also hints that vitamin C is depleted by fluoridated water, whether you live in Idaho, Singapore or Australia. Vitamin C is vital for forming collagen, combining with lysine to form the initial base protein.

Vitamin A is the top nutrient for controlling oil production – it’s also an important antioxidant. Fluoride is a needless distraction.

The USDA recommends that smokers eat 35mg more vitamin C per day, and fluoride could be similar, if slightly less dramatic.

 

EIGHT – a by-product of heavy metal manufacturing

It’s one of the most persistent myths – that fluoride is a “natural mineral”, gently extracted from the earth, preferably a luscious hillside with swaying blades of grass.

In reality, almost all fluoride given to citizens for remineralisation, whether in toothpaste or in drinking water, is hydrofluorosilicic acid. This chemical has a molecular similarity to sodium fluoride, but is actually a by-product of heavy industry: aluminium, nuclear weapons, steel and cement manufacturing.

It served no purpose until 1983, when encouraged by the EPA, it was diverted to drinking water. As of 2020, 40-50% of US drinking water contains hydrofluorosilicic acid. It accomplishes remineralisation, but what else does it accomplish? All sorts of toxins and by-products could be created in this heavily industrial process. Mercury, arsenic and lead (heavy metals) have been confirmed.

Sometimes you have to trust your instincts, and say “I’m not putting this in my body”.

This industry report gives the economic side, predicting how the hydrofluorosilicic acid market will expand from 2019-2025. It’s interesting from a money-making perspective, but get this. Hydrofluorosilicic acid is expected to gain popularity in the fabrics sector as a stain and rust remover, yet the authors aren’t completely confident. Why? Because of hydrofluorosilicic acid’s “corrosive nature”.

Picture the bleakest, greyest, smokiest factory you’ve ever seen, maybe while gazing out of the window on a relaxing train journey. That’s where the fluoride in your $5 tube of toothpaste comes from. This might sound like scaremongering, but the facts speak for themselves.

 

NINE – not stressful to implement, like lowering sugar

This is a great strategical reason to follow the anti-fluoride path.

Replacing toothpaste and drinking water is undeniably cumbersome at first. You have to research the best natural toothpaste substances, and then hunt down a brand you like, making sure it’s available in your location. With tap water, you might have to buy a reverse osmosis filter, a brita filter or even a whole house water filter. There’s hours of slogging research to endure, and then there’s the pricetag.

Yet once you’ve completed those tasks, your work is done. There’s no months of resisting the urge to eat sugar while your dopamine and opioid receptors readjust. Once you’ve found your fluoride solution, you are effectively on cruise control. If you replaced them properly in the first place (choosing a toothpaste that actually works), you’ll never have to think about it again. There’s no intricate moisturising strategy which adds 10 minutes to your morning makeup preparation. The effort comes at once, and then suddenly, there’s no effort. It’s like free clear skin.

Some great natural toothpaste ingredients include coconut oil (antibacterial), baking soda (antibacterial and alkaline) and theobromine from dark chocolate, which strengthens the apatite crystals in your enamel.

 

TEN – you’ll automatically avoid other chemicals

Staying in the strategy bunker, dodging the fluoride flying at you from all angles will also free your life from triclosan, titanium dioxide and many more villains.

The former is a once dominant antibacterial chemical. It’s a cancer-causing agent which the FDA banned in 2017 in handwashes, but still clings on in toothpastes and mouthwashes. Triclosan is actually why toothpaste can improve acne, by wiping out acne bacteria (not that I’d recommend this), but inside the body, it runs riot causing inflammation.

Titanium dioxide is one of the whitest substances known to mankind. God knows why making a toothpaste brand white increases its popularity so much – it’s one of those laws of the universe which defy explanation. But regardless, titanium dioxide is linked to, you guessed it, inflammation.

Sodium lauryl sulfate is another villain. It’s behind the classic frothing effect, which gets the toothpaste into every nook and cranny, but triggers irritation around the mouth in the susceptible. Reports on the internet are everywhere, and if the skin responds with irritation, then it’s a likely candidate for triggering inflammation inside the body.

With tap water, we’d need a whole book to cover the villains. Arsenic, lead, pesticides like atrazine and glyphosate, rocket fuel, cocaine. I would advise everyone, not just acne patients, to investigate their local tap water quality using the internet. Dodgy water will add a subtle layer of inflammation to your body, and a subtle layer of inflammation to your acne.

If you’re in an unlucky town, then invest in a reverse osmosis water filter, or a simpler portable water filter.

 

Conclusion

You’re now equipped with all the basics facts you need to know about fluoride.

Don’t listen if people say it’s harmless, and supported by decades of science. In fact, the dangers are supported by decades of science, including inflammation and antioxidants depletion – these aren’t fearmongering tales pulled out of a hat.

As dodgy as fluoride is, I would definitely advise you to focus on reducing sugar and vegetable oils first. Both pile on the inflammation; sugar is harmless in normal amounts of 50 grams daily, while there’s no need to even touch soybean oil. The beauty of it is that you can do all three, but if you’re busy, then start with sugar and vegetable oils.

In fact, just kick processed food to the curb, and you’ve eliminated a giant chunk of acne in one smooth and swift motion.

 

Thanks for reading!