Your Lifetime Toothpaste Use

I recently read in the Real Simple, February 2015 issue, that Renaissance Dental Insurance Company reported our toothpaste intake. It was stated that if a person brushes their teeth twice a day for two minutes their average life intake of toothpaste is 20 gallons. Wow!

What concerns me is that by law, on every toothpaste package, there is a “Drug Fact Statement”. The following is the statement you will see on every package of toothpaste sold unless it is considered a natural toothpaste.

WARNINGS

Keep out of reach of children under 6 years of age. If more than used for brushing is accidentally swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away.

Hmmm. I want to give you a thought provoking idea. We were taught in medical school that the fastest, quickest way to get anything into the blood stream is by Intravenous (IV). Another quick way is considered sublingual. Sublingual means putting something under the tongue. Lets use the example of when a person has angina or chest pains. They are instructed to put the agent Nitroglycerin under the tongue to control the pain. The nitroglycerin dissolves under the tongue and goes straight into the bloodstream, thus helping the chest pain. Many medications are prescribed sublingual. Get my point?

When we brush our teeth twice a day for two minutes using the toothpaste carrying such a warning that a Poison Control Center needs to be called, thats concerning to me. How much of this poison are we absorbing? Possibly 20 gallons over a lifetime? We have all heard about the medical problems fluoride can cause. Other first world countries have banned it.

Fluoride can be a problem. Just google it and you can see. Did you notice the word WARNINGS? It has an “S” on the end of WARNING. I was taught in grammar school that an “s” on the end on a word denotes there are more than one. It appears there is only one warning in the wording but are there more? Look at everything else in the ingredient section. I would think there is more to warn us against. What do you think?

-Dr Fredda Branyon