Tea and Fluorosis

My mom mostly drank tea with her breakfast of two slices of whole wheat toast. As a teenager, I joined her in drinking Constant Comment in the morning with milk and a spoonful of sugar. In my early 20s, I traveled to Ireland a few times, and I started drinking Barry's Tea, even going so far as to bring large packages home with me.I lived in China for years. I returned to China and Hong Kong many times. While there, I drank gallons of tiěguānyīn tea, which is prized in China.

My friends brought me to tea shops where I could buy the best and bring it home. Then, when I studied naturopathy, I stopped drinking tea due to its fluoride content. Tea plants absorb fluoride from the surrounding soil and store it in their leaves. They are called hyperaccumulators of fluoride. The fluoride content in tea makes it a powerful goitrogen, but it also causes fluorosis.

Fluoride accumulation causes skeletal, heart, kidney, and liver degeneration. 100% of the fluoride in a cup of tea is directly absorbed in the intestines. Imagine this in addition to other sources of fluoride. How can any iodine get past this? It can't.

Fluoride causes hypothyroidism because it prevents the absorption of iodine. It also collects in bone tissue, which becomes too hard and loses its elasticity, leading to fractures. It may not be the lack of estrogen or vitamin D that causes osteoporosis. It could be just the tea.

In a state of fluorosis, collagen cannot be synthesized, and too much calcium is absorbed. Fluoride prevents the synthesis of the thousands of IUs of Vitamin D everyone consumes for their health.

Fluoride is as harmful as lead, mercury, and arsenic. Yet it is found naturally in places where volcanoes have erupted and their emissions mix with the soil of the surrounding land. Like iodine, fluoride is a halogen found in rocks, soil, water, air, and plants, especially tea plants.

Whatever is in the soil gets into the water, so scientists have noticed the health issues common in people living in areas with high fluoride content in the water.

The first observation was in 1913 in Punjab, India, where there was a lot of fluoride in the soil. All the villagers, men, women, children, and even goats and dogs who lived in the area had goiter. Scientists also recorded a higher rate of skeletal dysplasia (short stature), learning disabilities, and Down's syndrome.

In 1928, British researcher P. Stocks observed dental fluorosis, the demineralization of tooth enamel, and goiter in children who had been drinking the local well water, which had a high level of fluoride.

In 1941, Dr. Dagmar Curjel Willson's research demonstrated the correlation between learning disabilities and goiter in children in Punjab, India, an area with high fluoride levels.

These observations continued with several studies, one of which used fluoride to make rats form goiters.

Incidentally, Grand Rapids, Michigan, deep in the United States goiter belt, so named because the soil is deficient in iodine, is where the US government first added fluoride to city water. Despite the inconclusive research done by Dr. H. Trendley Dean, head of the Dental Hygiene Unit at NIH in the 1930s, there was no adequate evidence that fluoride improved dental health and would reduce cavities. Instead, there has always been abundant evidence that it was harmful. A study from Taiwan found a high incidence of bladder cancer in women from areas where natural fluoride is high. China and Vietnam have an epidemic of thyroid cancer. Is it the soil, or is it the tea?

A research paper from 2021 mapped the areas with the most incidents of congenital hypothyroidism in newborns in China. I compared this map to the regions in China that grow the most tea. I superimposed both maps and found the areas were identical.

High fluoride levels in the soil give the tea humans cultivate worldwide a particularly acidic taste. Wherever tea plants grow, the soil is rich in fluoride. Wherever tea plants grow, you find the highest rate of hypothyroidism and learning disabilities.

Tea consumption is ubiquitous worldwide. Still, several papers from India, China, and Ireland have focused on the damage to children's mental and skeletal development caused by exposure to fluoride. These countries are researching the impact of drinking tea on national health.

In India, levels of thyroid cancers have skyrocketed, and scientists blame fluoride in drinking water for the low thyroid levels in Indian children. Several papers from Indian researchers address the high incidence of learning disabilities, low IQ, deafmutism, dental fluorosis, knock-knees, and bow legs in children living in areas of Punjab. Since hypothyroidism causes all of these, the researchers studied the hormone levels of the children and found their TSH high and their free t3 and free t4 levels low.

Fluoride prevents the absorption of iodine, which is what thyroid hormone is made of. It also prevents the enzymes deiodinase 1 and 2 from converting T4 into the active T3 hormone. Furthermore, thyroid peroxidase, the enzyme crucial for hormone production, is damaged because fluoride increases nitric oxide levels. Fluoride destroys thyroid tissue itself. It damages the thyroid follicles that produce thyroid hormone.

A 2013 case study showed the shocking skeletal fluorosis of a 47-year-old American woman who drank a pitcher of iced tea made from 100 teabags daily. Her tea habit came to light when she went to the doctor after having five years of extreme pain in her lower back, arms, legs, and hips. Her teeth had no enamel and had to be extracted. Her bones were weak and brittle. It takes years for fluoride to be eliminated from bones; the doctors used a parathyroid hormone analog to encourage bone remodeling.

The scientists most concerned about tea and health are currently in Ireland. Irish study states that fluoride has no essential function in the human body, there is no such thing as a fluoride deficiency, and the lack of fluoride does not cause cavities. Ireland is one of the few countries in Europe that insists on adding fluoride to drinking water, even though the rest of Europe forbids it.

The main concern is that the Irish drink so much tea, and with fluoride in the drinking water as well, the health ramifications are enormous. Adults don't only drink tea. Children drink just as much in sweetened forms. Ireland has high rates of chronic pain caused by skeletal degeneration, and that pain is associated with daily fluoride intake. There is a high rate of children born with lower IQ, down's syndrome, and learning disabilities. There are high rates of hypothyroidism in Ireland as well. These rates are also associated with the high consumption of fluoride.

Irish land is known to be iodine deficient, which makes fluoride even more poisonous. Vitamin D levels are also low in the Iris population, as fluoride prevents the absorption of Vitamin D. Diabetes is high in Ireland and India. Scientists in both countries are pointing the finger at fluoride toxicity. Fluoride increases blood glucose levels and impairs glucose tolerance. The Irish study concludes that the high intake of fluoride by the Irish in the form of tea is the root cause of most health issues.

I stopped drinking tea for this reason. Considering how long the fluoride stays in bones, I don't recommend an occasional cuppa. I would want that out of me as soon as possible. Think of all the people swallowing vitamin D in the morning with their cup of tea, thinking they are preventing osteoporosis.

How much is too much? According to the European Food Safety Authority, two cups of tea with an average of 5 mg of fluoride added to the fluoride in tap water and possibly other sources would mean a daily intake of 6 mg. The EU recommends no more than 1.5 mg in small children and 5 mg in children 9-14.

The average person in Ireland drinks 4-6 cups of tea daily, and the fluoride in drinking water puts Irish tea drinkers at risk of fluorosis. Some bag teas have as much as 6 mg of flu ride per bag. Cheaper and older teas have more. What quality of tea do you think goes into iced tea drinks? And if you look up green tea, you'll find articles proclaiming that the catechins in green tea are antioxidants that can improve thyroid issues. A group of scientists illustrated how the catechins and fluoride in green tea destroy rat thyroids, causing goiter and cancer.

Green tea is promoted as a natural way to improve thyroid function, but the flavonoids in green tea have an antithyroid effect rather than a positive one. Everyone will be wondering what to drink besides water. I'm not a run-for-the-hills kind of person. Many herbs used in teas are either stimulatory, goitrogens, or estrogenic. We know most plants are poisonous, especially the medicinal ones. I'm okay with organic or water-process coffee with decaf coffee in the morning. Otherwise, I drink water.