A person's overall health is affected by proper nutrition, and dental health is certainly influenced by it too. In particular, dentists have found that appropriate amounts of calcium and fluoride are important for dental health. There is however a major controversy on how much fluoride is necessary and how people should get it.

Homeopathic Insights on the Controversy of Fluoridation
The American Dental Association asserts that water fluoridation decreases dental caries by 50-70%. (4) Opponents of fluoridation question its value in preventing these dental problems and cite dozens of studies which show the toxic effects of fluoridation. Who's right?

The homeopathic point of view on fluoride is that it may be helpful in preventing caries and it may cause various other dental and health problems. The basic homeopathic principle is that a substance in microdose will help cure those similar symptoms that it will cause in larger dose. Fluoride is an effective medicine in preventing caries, but it can also mottle (turn chalky white or yellow) teeth and cause various other symptoms.

The essential question then is: what is the proper dose to prevent caries and what is the toxic dose? This questionis more difficult than it seems. People have varying needs, and what may be helpful to one person may be too much to another. A 1982 article in Science noted that the 1 part per million of fluoride which is commonly added to water may be too much after all. (5) The author noted that 28% of children between 11 and 13 years of age who lived in communities with fluoridation experienced mottling of the teeth.

Fluoride, as an enzyme poison, may in fact help reduce the formation of bacterial acid in the mouth that corrodes teeth. However, even in the same dose, fluoride may create various symptoms because of its side effects on bodily enzymes which are beneficial for health. A new study reported in the New Scientist has provided b evidence that "fluoride switches off the enzyme by attacking its weakest links--the delicately-balanced network of hydrogen bonds surround the enzyme's active site." (6) The researchers theorize that fluoride may interfere with the hydrogen bonding of DNA in the same way that it interferes with certain enzymes, which may then explain how fluoride can cause a wide variety of symptoms and syndromes.

Anti-fluoridationists readily acknowledge that dental caries declined significantly when fluoridation was first tested. However, they also cite the fact that dental caries declined for people in unfluoridated cities as well. (7)
According to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, fluoride is not considered an essential nutrient. (8) A deficiency of fluoride is extremely unusual for those eating a standard American diet. Whereas the American Dental Association asserts that fluoridation assures that people will get amounts of fluoride that will prevent caries, anti-fluoridationists rebut that we are already getting enough, perhaps even too much. The anti-fluoridationists have expressed concern that additional fluoride in the diet will cause a wide variety of serious health problems. It has been estimated that dried cereals, ready-to-drink fruit juices, infant formula, and strained baby food processed with fluoridated water contain up to 20 times as much fluoride as products made with unfluoridated water. (9)