I would like to weigh in on the subject of water fluoridation in Red Deer. To date I have not noticed a lot of comment coming in from people in the community with thyroid disease, and especially those who are hypothyroid. I take information from an article by Dr. Barry Durrant-Peatfield, MBBS, LCRP, MRCS, who was a leading authority in the U.K. on thyroid and adrenal management.

Fluorides are toxic and are Schedule 2 poisons under the Poisons Act of 1972, U.K. Fluoride is an enzyme poison. Enzymes are complex protein compounds that vastly speed up biological chemical reactions while themselves remaining unchanged. There occurs in all of us a vast multitude of reactions to maintain life and produce energy to sustain it. These chains of amino acids that make up these complex proteins are linked by simple compounds called amides, and it is with these that the fluorine molecules react, splitting and distorting them, thus damaging the enzymes and their activity.

Fluorides are accumulative and build up steadily with ingestion of fluoride from all sources, which include not just the water, but foods we eat and fluoridated toothpastes.

The body can only eliminate half of the total intake, which means the older you are the more fluoride will have accumulated in your body. Inevitably this means the aging population is particularly targeted.

And even worse for the very young, there is a major element of risk in baby formula made with fluoridated water. The extreme sensitivity of the very young to fluoride toxicity makes this unacceptable.

The distortion of protein structure causes the immune proteins to fail to recognize body proteins and so instigate an attack on them, which is autoimmune disease. One such disease is thyroid disease.

The thyroid gland produces hormones which control our metabolism, the rate at which we burn our fuel. Concentrations as low as 1PPM can damage the thyroid system on four levels.

One, in the enzyme manufacture of thyroid hormones within the thyroid gland itself. The process by which iodine is attached to the amino acid tyrosine and converted to the two significant thyroid hormones, thyroxine (T4) and liothyronine (T3) is slowed.

Two, the stimulation of certain G proteins from the toxic effect of fluoride has the effect of switching off the uptake into the cell of the active thyroid hormone.

Three, the thyroid control mechanism is compromised. The thyroid stimulating hormone output from the pituitary gland is inhibited by fluoride, thus reducing thyroid output of thyroid hormones.

And four, fluoride competes for the receptor sites on the thyroid gland which responds to the thyroid stimulating hormone, so that less of the hormone reaches the thyroid gland and less thyroid hormone is manufactured.

These damaging effects, all of which occur with small concentrations of fluoride, have obvious and easily identified effects on the thyroid status. The running down of the thyroid gland means a slow slide into hyperthyroidism.

To condemn the entire population to the progressive failure of their thyroid system, and damage to those already compromised thyroids borders on lunacy.

Margaret Beres

Red Deer