Tea and Fluoride: Steve do you drink tea?

[fballer11]

I recently read in an older book on herbal medicine that "Tea is good for your teeth because it contains large amounts of fluoride."

Alarm bells. I remembered this article
www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/07/whats-the-deal-with-fluoride
and thought that many people who think they are eliminating fluoride from drinking water and toothpaste sources are actually ingesting much more.

Do a google search "tea and fluoride". There seems to be as much fluoride in 8 oz. of tea as in 6 quarts of the most fluorinated drinking water.

I believe in Steve's reccomendation, I would just like to potentially alert people of this. I am open to opposing views.

[fballer11]

Also I have heard that you absorb way more toxins (fluoride, chlorine) in a shower than drinking something like ten glasses of water. Anybody hear anything on this?
So potentially, if we drink tea and take showers without filters, most of our other detox attempts may be for naught!

[joanmhe]

What I have read is that the body absorbs a fair amount of manganese from inhaling the shower vapors (if you have high manganese in your water). Drinking water standards are based on the levels causing harm from drinking and do not take into account this avenue of absorption. Apparently manganese is not absorbed very well by the digestive tract, but is absorbed when inhaled.
I'm not sure if this carries over for flouride or chlorine, which have much lower allowable quantities. Though I have read recommendations for filtering shower water.
I would be interested in more info also.

[shesaboutspirit]

Has anyone tried a good shower filter? I was wondering about those, because sometimes...my skin will be red and just itch after a shower. And I know it's not heat or soap related. My intuition is that it's chemicals in the water... I hadn't even considered the flouride yet...

yikes.

Pam

[joanmhe]

Hi,
One of the links in Steve's flouride blog says this:

According to ATSDR, "Cooking food in fluoridated water results in increased dietary fluoride levels (p 151)." Approximately 60% of US public drinking water supplies are fluoridated. Unlike chlorine, fluoride does not enter the steam when water is boiled. Thus during cooking the fluoride increases in concentration.

However, I think flouride is absorbed through the skin.
Joan

[Jon]

Originally Posted by shesaboutspirit

Has anyone tried a good shower filter? I was wondering about those, because sometimes...my skin will be red and just itch after a shower. And I know it's not heat or soap related. My intuition is that it's chemicals in the water... I hadn't even considered the flouride yet...

yikes.

Pam

Chlorine is a common culprit for the problem you described, although there may be other factors as well.

I use Aquasana shower filter and highly recommend it. You can get it on Aquasana Water Filters - ON SALE! 23-40% Off + FREE Shipping!

[gelfey]

Hi,

this seems to be defeciency of chlorine, you can use aquasana shower filter from aquasana

[stephencp]

Fortunately I have a well and we then distill all of the water that we drink.
Regardless, I would not think that all flouride is equal. I doubt the chemical (and the effects of) flouride that they add to public water is the same as the flouride in tea, just like the mineral supplements you may take (and are largely not absorbed and ineffective) are not the same as minerals in food.

Stephen
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[ChefSalad]

I love my well-water. I'll never go back to city. No chemicals, and practically crap free, although the calcium content is a bit high, it's nothing that our reverse osmosis water softener can't handle.

[openeyes]

Originally Posted by fballer11

Do a google search "tea and fluoride". There seems to be as much fluoride in 8 oz. of tea as in 6 quarts of the most fluorinated drinking water.

I believe in Steve's reccomendation, I would just like to potentially alert people of this. I am open to opposing views.

I came across this issue with tea a couple months ago. Personally I don't worry about tea that has it in it naturally, but as a child my parents wrote a note for me so I wouldn't have to use the "swish" (high dose of fluoride) that was pushed on kids in elementary school, as it made me sick. For years I even avoided fluoride toothpaste. Then I came across Biotene, a toothpaste that seemed very health oriented but purposefully included fluoride. Since then I've softened my stance a bit.

For people that are set on avoiding tea with fluoride, there are options, versions where it has been removed. Though I haven't tried it personally yet, Mercola pushes a clean version of green tea here, made by Body Ecology:

http://www.mercola.com/forms/tea_extract.htm

For now when I want tea I'll drink the normal (cheap) store bought kind, but it's nice to know what's out there. I treat fluoride just like mercury, everything in moderation. Being paranoid about what I take into my body no longer seems worthwhile. Being informed is nice though.

[ChefSalad]

You know, I seriously doubt that tea contains much, if any, natural fluoride. I do not doubt that pre-made teas made in in-city bottling plants that use city (read:fluoridated) water to make their have buttloads of fluoride. Just like pop, beer, and even some (cheap) bottled water.

So, all in all, if you like tea but don't like fluoride, making your own from non-fluoridated water is the way to go. Drinking that pre-sweetened low quality Lipton/Arizona/Nestea crap is not the way to go. Of course, it never was.

[openeyes]

Originally Posted by ChefSalad

You know, I seriously doubt that tea contains much, if any, natural fluoride.

It seems the high levels of fluoride may be neither natural nor simply from the water added later on:

"Tea is very high in fluoride content. Fluoride in tea is much higher than the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) set for fluoride in drinking water.

Tea leaves accumulate more fluoride (from pollution of soil and air) than any other edible plant (1,2,3). Fluoride content in tea has risen dramatically over the last 20 years, as has tea consumption (4)."

http://www.mercola.com/2000/sep/10/g...de_thyroid.htm

[Boldylocks]

I never considered flouride in tea-- Seems that the longer you steep a tea bag, the more flouride and aluminum seep out. Tea plants suck up large amounts of ground pollutions- including flouride and aluminum. If it werent for man's carelessness with the Environment , tea would be very healthy- especially white and green tea. Now it's the other way around I guess

See this copy/paste below from the website I just googled: Fluoride: Worse Than We Thought



"Tea

In their drive to fluoridate the public water supplies, dental health officials continue to pretend that no other sources of fluoride exist. This notion becomes absurd when one looks at the fluoride content in tea. Tea is very high in fluoride because tea leaves accumulate more fluoride (from pollution of soil and air) than any other edible plant.49,50,51 It is well established that fluoride in tea gets absorbed by the body in a manner similar to the fluoride in drinking water.49,52

Fluoride content in tea has risen dramatically over the last 20 years due to industry contamination. Recent analyses have revealed a fluoride content of 17.25 mg per teabag or cup in black tea, and a whopping 22 mg of soluble fluoride ions per teabag or cup in green tea. Aluminum content was also high--over 8 mg. Normal steeping time is five minutes. The longer a tea bag steeped, the more fluoride and aluminum were released. After ten minutes, the measurable amounts of fluoride and aluminum almost doubled.53

A website by a pro-fluoridation infant medical group states that a cup of black tea contains 7.8 mgs of fluoride54 which is the equivalent amount of fluoride from 7.8 litres of water in an area fluoridated at 1ppm. Some British and African studies from the 1990s showed a daily fluoride intake of between 5.8 mgs and 9 mgs a day from tea alone.55, 56, 57 Tea has been found to be a primary cause of dental fluorosis in many international studies.58-70

In Britain, over three-quarters of the population over the age of ten years consumes three cups of tea per day.71Yet the UK government and the British Dental Association are currently contemplating fluoridation of public water supplies! In Ireland, average tea consumption is four cups per day and the drinking water is heavily fluoridated.

Next to water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world. Tea can be found in almost 80 percent of all US households and on any given day, nearly 127 million people--half of all Americans--drink tea.71

The high content of both aluminum and fluoride in tea is cause for great concern as aluminum greatly potentiates fluoride's effects on G protein activation,72 the on/off switches involved in cell communication and of absolute necessity in thyroid hormone function and regulation. "