So I’m having a stupid facebook argument with an acquaintance who thinks fluoride is evil.
He keeps going on about how it “accumulates in your pineal gland and stifles your dreams and imagination” thus making the population more docile.
I am already aware that fluoride has been demonstrated to reduce cavities, and also that the Nazis did not use it.
My questions are:
Have there been any reliable studies about whether fluoridated tap water makes fluoride build up in your pineal gland? Either for or against?
If it did, would it actually affect your dreams or cognitive functioning in any way?
Thanks. (Yes, I know that arguments with wingnuts are pretty much unwinable, I’m also actually curious at this point too)
This pops up on search, indicating that fluoride does indeed accumulate in the pineal gland, but I can’t determine from the abstract whether this is unusual or noteworthy.
ETA: A fairly woo-y site appears to cite this same research but seems content to let the conclusion that Fl does accumulate in the pineal stand as its own conviction.
It’s worth noting that most woo claims like this are based on supposed superiority, e.g. “Most people have a bunch of fluoride inhibiting their brain activity but my enlightened group doesn’t.” Another form of “I know The Truth and am therefore better than the unanointed.”
Your link didn’t quite work. Are you talking about this one? I’m not super good at reading science stuff, but it seems to say there was more calcium in there than fluoride, and that the fluoride levels in the pineal gland don’t really correlate with bone levels of fluoride?
The pineal gland produces melatonin, which helps you sleep, so that may be relevant to dreams. Whether fluoride affects that function is another matter. (I very much doubt it, but I can’t say it is impossible.)
Probably more the point, the philosopher (and, indeed, pioneering neuroscientist) Descartes held that the pineal gland was both the point of connection between the brain and the immortal, conscious and immaterial soul, and that it was the seat of the imagination. At teh time he had some plausible reasons for thinking this, but it is now known that there is no truth in either of these claims (even that small minority of philosophers and scientists who still believe we have an immaterial soul no longer think it has any special relationship with the pineal). Nevertheless, the ideas may still have some resonance in wooville, where people tend to believe that “great” minds have some special access (beyond that of ordinary evidence and reason) to truths that are inaccessible to the rest of us.
It was Galileo who started the ball rolling with modern scientific thought that didn’t spend its time adhering to the wisdom of the ancients, and we have come a long way since then. But it seems that there is always a hard core of people who want some sort of soft simple navel gazing philosophy of the universe, and then confound it with misunderstood snippets of modern science, totally missing the inherent contradiction in this.
I have one more question. In the study posted above, there were much higher levels of calcium in the pineal gland than fluoride. Now dude is saying that fluoride exposure somehow caused the calcium accumulation. Is there any way that consuming fluoride would cause deposits of calcium or calcium phosphates? I really have no idea, but strongly suspect not. Both of us have high school educations tops, so please let me know in layman’s terms if possible.
Slightly off topic but relevant IMO. I have a cousin who believes in the "flouride conspiracy ". Her mouth is a walking billboard for adding flouride to the water supply. Her maw is so disgusting, littered with pointy brown, black, green and yellow remnants of teeth that it is hard to even be near her. She actively participates in the Waco bunch, lives off grid in Houston, knows Sandy Hook was a false flag, birther, Ron Paul organizer…
She likes to pop in randomly at my local drinks spot :rolleyes: she is largely responsible for my intense hatred for woo conspiracy theorists.
I think in this case, it’s more like “I would have had much more success in my creative endeavors if I didn’t have all this fluoride mucking up my brain”
I have decided to give up on this particular argument, but I am still curious. I have learned more about fluoride in the past few days than I ever wanted to know, so might as well keep going
