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From The New York Times one week ago:

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Health and Human Services department, says American children face an epidemic of chronic diseases in part because of fluoride in water and vaccines. Medical experts agree there is a health crisis…but they disagree about the cause… 

These are the exact words printed in the New York Times on November 19, 2024, one of the world’s most dominant and respected news organizations. Is this what RFK Jr really believes, or is a staff writer’s idea of a provocative statement to trigger a reader’s interest? For a moment, let’s assume that this statement is accurate. Certainly, fluoride and vaccines are highly contentious topics, which I will partially address…

What seems like a lifetime ago, I was a practicing dentist, having graduated from Georgetown Dental School. In addition to the practice of dentistry, my “inner scientist” wanted to find a new and better way to restore lost tooth structure that created my desire to obtain a PhD in microbiology.

For those of you that don’t know, enamel, the tooth’s outer most layer, is made of calcium and phosphorous which forms the mineral hydroxyapatite…strange name, don’t you think? Enamel is the primary target of tooth decay as acids created by oral bacteria gradually dissolve the inorganic mineral hydroxyapatite, leaving behind the protein matrix that enamel is built upon, which only comprises about 1% of its mass. From there, the bacteria continue to attack the tooth structure to form an increasingly large “cavity”.

In the early 1900s Frederick McKay and G.V. Black (the father of modern dentistry) who practiced dentistry in Colorado Springs discovered that a large percentage of their patients had peculiar brown stains on their teeth that became known as “Colorado Brown Stain”, which was attributed to high levels of fluoride contained in the local water supply. Sometime later it was discovered that fluoride, being a highly reactive halogen bonded to the hydroxyapatite creating a new substance known as fluorapatite. This new substance has been demonstrated to be more than 50% more resistant to tooth decay than hydroxyapatite.

As a result, the practice of adding fluoride to drinking water became common over the next several decades. Following this, the incidence of decay in children and young adults drinking fluoridated water immediately dropped by more than 60%. Anecdotally, I was told by the founding partner of the dental practice that I joined as a young dentist that he was stunned by the ENORMOUS drop in the incidence of decay when fluoride was added to the water in Southern Maryland in the early 50s.

Here is a key point: Regardless of the concentration of fluoride in the water, the amount of fluoride being ingested by a given individual cannot accurately be estimated. This is because the amount of water consumed by a given individual varies and cannot be controlled…and this fluoride is then distributed throughout the body.

If you read the link below you will learn everything there is to know about fluoride, the good bad and the ugly, especially the dangers in an article from NIH. However, these problems ARE NOT an issue when fluoride is applied topically to deciduous (baby) or primary (permanent) dentition

The Untold Story of Floridation

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If you’ll forgive me, I’m going to skip the discussion regarding vaccines, as that would fill a book…and at the end of the day, would not lead to a factual scientific conclusion…It would be mostly political and far too complex for most to understand. However, American children do indeed face an epidemic of chronic diseases, where the cause is much more evident and fixable. This points to one of Kennedy’s major targets…

JUNK and ULTRAPROCESSED FOOD.

Before I dive into the physiological problems, I need to address the psychological issues that contribute to the onset and magnitude of these problems. As you might have guessed, most recently these have been the result of the COVID pandemic that caused our children to become isolated and deprived of usual social development at a critical time in their lives.

The most important factor here is “timing” … It is not so much “what”, as it is “when”. Just as it is vitally important for the development of a baby, interaction with their parents and siblings defines early childhood, forming the basic personality of the individual. Through the remainder of childhood, extending up to adulthood, the individual’s personality becomes fully formed. Missing any part of this developmental process causes problems that must be compensated for later in life. And these problems can play a very important role in the development of chronic illness which has been exploding in children and young adults since 2000.

Currently more than 45% of school-aged children and adolescents in the US have at least one chronic health condition. Over the past fifty years chronic health conditions and disabilities among children and youth have steadily risen, primarily from four classes of common conditions: asthma, obesity, mental health conditions, and neurodevelopmental disorders.

At the same time, we are seeing an even greater increase in chronic illnesses in older individuals over the age of 60. Ironically, a substantial amount of this dietary damage is the result of our government’s attempt to improve our diet by replacing what were thought to be “bad” fats with man-made substitutes and low-fat alternatives that proved to be “Poison”. Aside from stress-related factors, most of this increase in chronic disease is related to diet and lack of exercise.

Apart from sociological issues and reduced physical activity, this trend of increasing chronic disease is overwhelmingly caused by one single factor…DIET.  Our physiology has not substantially changed since the time of Homo Erectus, our hunter-gatherer ancestor that lived about 1.8 million years ago…But our diets have undergone cataclysmic changes since the end of the last ice-age about 11,500 years ago. Back then our ancestors were still hunter-gatherers, that were made up of a single species, homo sapiens (modern man).

Agriculture was just beginning, so our diet consisted mainly of game meat, wild plants, nuts and berries…And these were often SCARCE, especially in colder climates. With the development of agriculture, grains and seeds became plentiful. With this abundance of crop-grown food, man began to domesticate farm animals which then became sources of meat and dairy that were available year-round. From this time up to the industrial revolution our eating habits remained essentially the same.

After WWII “fast food” was introduced. It’s not just that we could get food quickly without cooking… ALL of these new foods were delicious! As I have said before, we have become perverted and guided by our taste buds. The point I’m trying to make is that BIG FOOD knows this, and they have taken full advantage of this fact by designing and providing “Addictive Food” …and as humans, we must recognize that we are all addicts to pleasure…sometimes we dream about our favorite hamburgers or pizza as if pleasure gained from eating them were equivalent to a sexual encounter…sometimes better…think about that for a while!

Our evolutionary adaptations explain why obesity is such a significant problem in this age of food abundance. Without a fat-producing genetic makeup and the ability to metabolize fat into ketones, “skinny” people could have died of starvation in the past. But those days are gone…most of us never even wonder where our next meal will come from or when it will be available. Food is everywhere; in the refrigerator, in the store, on TV, or delivered by Door Dash! Is it any wonder that we have become a nation of chronically ill, obese, sedentary, shadows of our former selves?

Naturally we seek a solution to our condition when pills and increased exercise fail to make a significant difference. Then we think about changing our diets…but which diet? Virtually all adults have experimented with diets of one form or another. These rarely result in long-term success, especially “Fad Diets” because they are radically different from our traditional diet. However, two diets have emerged that have proven most successful: the Mediterranean Diet and the Ketogenic Diet.

To demonstrate the success of the Mediterranean diet, look no further Sardinia, a “Blue Zone”, where it is not uncommon for men to live past 100 years of age…They must be doing something right! But it is not just the food; their lifestyle significantly contributes to their longevity. They spend a great deal of their spare time talking and laughing with family and friends. They stay active by walking, gardening and tending to their land, a key component of their routine. Their Mediterranean diet is rich in whole foods and dairy. They prioritize home-cooked meals with minimal processed foods, and drink a moderate amount of local red wine.

What people don’t realize is that even before the advent of agriculture, the basis of the ketogenic diet was in place. There were few common carbohydrates available until about 10,000 years ago. However, there is evidence that homo sapiens learned to cook wild starchy tubers such as taro and potatoes to provide carbohydrates that prevented ketosis, since this led to weight loss which was not desirable for our hunter-gatherer ancestors. However, hunting wild animals provided ample fat and protein.

When I remind you that we lacked refrigeration, and that fresh food was not always available, it all begins to make sense, particularly in colder climates. When food was scarce, our bodies learned to store excess energy derived from glucose as fat, assisted by insulin. Many mammals such as bears, squirrels, bats, and mice hibernate after gorging themselves in the fall and then “sleep” though the winter by lowering their metabolism.

As humans, we have evolved to metabolize fat to form ketones which serve as a “super-fuel” for the heart and brain when food was scarce.  This had to last until protein became abundant again in the spring. In the fall and winter months, fat became a primary source of food energy. This is especially true for the Inuit who ingest a high percentage of mammal fat and fatty fish in their native diet.

Even though the meat and vegitables pictured above appears healthy, there is more to consider than freshness. What is not immediately evident is that the desire for food producers to earn higher profits and lower cost is ever present. To get the maximum benefit from the food you eat you need to pay attention to things that are not obvious. One of the best ways to increase profit is to increase yield.

Let’s start with animals and animal by-products. Did you realize that most mammals that provide meat for human consumption are ruminants? A ruminant is an herbivorous grazing animal that feeds primarily on grass. Their complex digestive systems allow them to extract all of their essential nutrients from plants by fermentation. Unfortunately, livestock fed on grass take longer to grow and weigh less than the same animal fed on corn and other grains (carbohydrates).

Much of this added weight comes from fat, which ironically tends to produce meat that is more tender and has improved taste… that is desireable to humans. To protect livestock from disease and stimulate them to grow larger, antibiotics and hormones are often added to their diets, although this has been controlled in recent years. While these factors make meat production more profitable, it also helps keep costs down and may offer a preferable product to the consumer.

BUT you have to ask yourself…how do these changes affect the health of humans and other animals that consume this meat? These same practices apply to poultry and eggs. Pasture raised poultry and eggs are always the best choice, but unfortunately, usually twice as expensive…

Next let’s move to the oceans, lakes, and rivers. For wild seafood, pollution is by far the most significant threat, because byproducts of human industrialization are impossible to avoid. Most significant of these are heavy metals such as mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium, and most recently plastics. The best way to minimize these is to avoid wild-caught, long lived apex predators such as tuna in favor of smaller shorter-lived species such as salmon, mackerel, and sardines. In the same way that feeding mammals with non-native foods produces inferior meat, the same is true for farm raised fish.

And last but not least, we need to consider edible plants. As always, eating natural organic plants is best, avoiding GMO-based crops (often used as animal feed), pesticides, and non-organic fertilizers. Regrettably, all of these practices produce a more expensive plant that is sometimes indistinguishable from nonorganic varieties.

The keyword to determine the healthiest choice for any of these is NATURAL… If you are religious, think of this as “The way God Made Them”. If you follow Darwinian thinking, “The way Evolution Made Them” … and if you don’t have money… “The best You can Afford”.

I hope that this information helps you to understand the complexity of these issues. This is not all about money, although that might be the most obvious factor. This also has to do with our nature and our preferences…sometimes we choose things that we know are not the best, even though we recognize the downsides. To avoid these temptations requires maturity and discipline. This is easy to say, but difficult to abide…

If you do nothing else…Watch the following Podcast when you have the time…

The following podcast is 1:12 long. I thought about leaving it out more than once, but after watching it in its entirety, I realized it is just about perfect if you truly care about this healthcare epidemic. It appears that RFK Jr. may play an important role in the Trump administration with respect to our heath as a nation. More importantly, these problems cannot be solved by the FDA or Big Pharma, our survival as a species requires a solution…

The Cause of Obesity, Diabetes, Neurodegeneragtive Disease, and even Cancer

Robert F. Kennedy Junior and Dr. Mark Hyman

If You Have Children…This is for You!

As far as children are concerned, one critical common food item must be minimized in their diet. Can you guess what it is? I’ll give you a clue…one of the richest men in the world made his fortune with this product…and that product is made with sugar. The man I am talking about is Warren Buffett….  In 2024 Berkshire Hathaway is expected to receive $776 million in dividends from Coca-Cola, which is based on the company's current dividend rate. This is a 59.7% yield on Berkshire's original $1.3 billion investment in Coca-Cola.

Can you imagine how difficult it is going to be to change our diet, when that requires moving away from toxic foods that Americans are addicted to, and at the same time, telling millionaires that they will have to sacrifice millions of dollars in profits to save the health of the nation…and the world? I expect that to be a “tough sell”.  Sugar and fructose are among the worst of these because they have no nutritional food value.To expect this to be successful in a period of four years or even 40 years…is wishful thinking. This is going to be a long tough battle, but it is essential if we hope to survive…

If you have children, especially school-age children, I am going to recommend that you watch the following podcast. The interviewer is Mark Hyman (as above) and the guest is Professor Robert (Rob) Lustig, one of my favorites. He is brilliant and has an interesting, entertaining “dry humor” …he says that’s because he’s from New York… This one is 1:15…you don’t have to watch the entire podcast to get the message, but it is LOADED with important and accurate information.

The BITTER TRUTH about SUGAR & How it CAUSES DISEASE!

Proffesor Robert Lustig and Dr. Mark Hyman

If podcasts are not your style, read Robert Lustig’s book “Metabolical” 

I believe that this newsletter provides an excellent summary of the primary causes of our current health crisis. There is overwhelming evidence that the increasing prevalence of chronic disease in children and adults is the result of our western diet and lack of exercise. Contributing to this, the quality of our food is being progressively degraded by food suppliers whose primary concern is profit… aided by our prioritization of flavor and convenience over nutritional value. We need to do something about this…The time to start is NOW!

Until next time, take care and stay positive… Dr. G

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