Tag: Arthritis
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Skeletal Fluorosis in the U.S.
Although there has been a notable absence of systematic studies on skeletal fluorosis in the U.S., the available evidence indicates that the consumption of artificially fluoridated water is likely to cause skeletal fluorosis and other forms of bone disease in people with kidney disease and other vulnerable populations.
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Fluoride, Arthritis, and the Specter of Misdiagnosed Skeletal Fluorosis in the US
It has been known since the 1930s that ingesting too much fluoride can cause stiff and painful joints. According to scientists who have studied this condition (commonly referred to as skeletal fluorosis), the joint damage caused by fluoride may mimic other, more common, forms of “arthritis,” making it easy to misdiagnose — especially by doctors […]
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Symposium on the non-skeletal phase of chronic fluorosis: The Joints
Of 300 patients with endemic skeletal fluorosis 187 (110 children and 77 adults) showed evidence of arthritis. The spine, especially its cervical portion, appeared to be mainly involved; elbow, hip and knee joints followed next in order.
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Fluoride & Rheumatoid Arthritis
The symptoms of skeletal fluorosis can closely resemble rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and thus individuals with fluorosis can “easily be mistaken” as having RA. In addition, clinical research on fluoride-treated osteoporosis patients has found that fluoride exposure can exacerbate pre-existing RA, and recent research shows that the levels of fluoride found in the blood of the general population (19-57 ppb) are sufficient to effect an enzyme (15-lipoxygenase) implicated in the inflammatory process of RA.
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Exacerbation of rheumatoid arthritis by sodium fluoride treatment of osteoporosis.
The following is an excerpt from: Duell PB, Chesnut CH. (1991). Exacerbation of rheumatoid arthritis by sodium fluoride treatment of osteoporosis. Archives of Internal Medicine 151:783-4. “Recent studies have suggested that sodium fluoride therapy may be an effective treatment for vertebral osteoporosis. Unfortunately, the high frequency of side effects may limit the use of this treatment modality. This report documents […]
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Joint pain? It could be fluorosis
The next time you suffer from a persistent backache or an irritating stiff joint, don’t attribute it to long hours spent at the computer. It could well be the result of fluorosis, a disease thought to affect people in rural India with no access to safe drinking water.
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Fluoride & Spondylosis; Spondylitis
Among individuals with skeletal fluorosis, the fluoride-induced changes to the spine, and the accompanying symptoms, can bear a close resemblance to spondylosis and spondylitis (as well as DISH). Spondylosis is a (non-inflammatory) degenerative disease of the spine marked by bony outgrowths (spurs) which can produce nerve cord compression. Spondylitis, by contrast, is an inflammatory form of arthritis that causes inflammation in the joints between the vertebrae. Whereas spondylosis is generally asymptomatic, spondylitis generally causes significant pain and stiffness in the spine.
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“Pre-Skeletal” Fluorosis
As demonstrated by the studies below, skeletal fluorosis may produce adverse symptoms, including arthritic pains, clinical osteoarthritis, gastrointestinal disturbances, and bone fragility, before the classic bone change of fluorosis (i.e., osteosclerosis in the spine and pelvis) is detectable by x-ray. Relying on x-rays, therefore, to diagnosis skeletal fluorosis will invariably fail to protect those individuals who are suffering from the pre-skeletal phase of the disease. Moreover, some individuals with clinical skeletal fluorosis will not develop an increase in bone density, let alone osteosclerosis, of the spine. Thus, relying on unusual increases in spinal bone density will under-detect the rate of skeletal fluoride poisoning in a population.
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Skeletal Fluorosis: The Misdiagnosis Problem
It is a virtual certainty that there are individuals in the general population unknowingly suffering from some form of skeletal fluorosis as a result of a doctor’s failure to consider fluoride as a cause of their symptoms. Proof that this is the case can be found in the following case reports of skeletal fluorosis written by doctors in the U.S. and other western countries. As can be seen, a consistent feature of these reports is that fluorosis patients–even those with crippling skeletal fluorosis–are misdiagnosed for years by multiple teams of doctors who routinely fail to consider fluoride as a possible cause of their disease.
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The Lancet: Fluoride Studies in a Patient with Arthritis
It is possible that fluoride intake from tea may be sufficient to cause fluorosis, and I report here a case which gives some evidence for this.