The Truth About Fluoride with Melissa Gallico

Dr. Hedberg: Well, welcome everyone to the “Dr. Hedberg Show.” This is Dr. Hedberg, and really looking forward to the interview today. I’m talking to Melissa Gallico. And Melissa is the author of the book “The Hidden Cause of Acne: How Toxic Water Is Affecting Your Health and What You Can Do About It,” and also a book called “F is For Fluoride: A Feasible Fairy Tale for Free Thinkers 15 and Up.” She’s a former military intelligence officer, Fulbright Scholar and intelligence specialist at the Federal Bureau of Investigation where she instructed classes for FBI analysts at Quantico, and provided analytics support for National Security Investigations. She graduated with honors from Georgetown University, and she has a master’s degree from the University of St Andrews in Scotland. So, Melissa, welcome to the show.Melissa: Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Hedberg: Yeah. So I heard you on the…first I heard you on the “15-minute Matrix” podcast, and was really interested in what you were talking about. I’ve studied fluoride a little bit over the years, but just mainly related to how it affects the thyroid. But why don’t we just start out with some basics regarding fluoride and fluoridated water? So can you talk about why fluoride was added to the water? Why did they do that, how did it happen, and how can people tell if they have fluoridated water?

Melissa: Sure. So in the mid-20th century, dentists started…well, originally, they noticed that fluoride caused brown stains on teeth, and it’s a condition called dental fluorosis. So that’s where they started studying fluoride and its effect on tooth enamel. And eventually, they started developing a theory that, you know, too much fluoride is bad for your tooth enamel, it causes this cosmetic staining, but maybe a little bit of fluoride is actually good for your tooth enamel and makes it stronger and prevents cavities.

So that’s the theory behind why they add it to the water supply today. They’ve been doing it for over 70 years. And they just think of it as adjusting the fluoride level to, like, this optimal dose that helps prevent cavities. And that’s what I always assumed it was, I always drank fluoridated water, and I used fluoride in my toothpaste, and I had the treatments at the dentist. I never really thought about it. But when I got older and I realized that fluoride was affecting my health in negative ways, I looked into it more. And I looked into the history and realized that behind that very nice story that I believed and that I, you know, told myself and just assumed was true, there’s actually a very deep pollution scandal there.

And people are always surprised when I talk about pollution and fluoride, because we’ve forgotten that fluoride was the leading form of air pollution at the time the science was being developed in the mid-20th century. It’s a common element in the earth’s crust. So when we started these large-scale mining operations for things like aluminum or phosphate, these companies were emitting just toxic amounts of fluoride into the atmosphere, and it was causing a lot of lawsuits. So the fluoride would go into the atmosphere, it would end up on the grass, poisoning cattle, poisoning crops, and the people that live nearby as well.

So those lawsuits led to, you know, these big powerful corporations hired lawyers, they had like a fluoride lawyers committee to take care of this problem. And they had their own medical advisory board and they just poured tons of money into all the premier research institutes to find studies that would show that fluoride is safe, not only is it safe, but it’s actually good for you. So that’s where that science came from, it was very biased science, really one-sided science, that was being used in court to refute these lawsuits. So that’s the deeper story of why we add it to our water, or where that came from.

And then your other question was, you know, how to tell if the water is fluoridated. The easiest way is to call your local water provider and just ask them if they add fluoride to the water. Ask them what the fluoride level is. Right now, the government recommends 0.7 parts per million fluoride. So that’s when it’s artificially fluoridated. It’s usually around 0.7. It can be naturally-occurring, and that depends on if those rocks that, you know, when we started building these deep water wells, they can sometimes contain natural fluoride contamination as well. So you can ask your water provider is it natural? Is it artificial? Natural is not quite as bad because the artificial fluoride can have a lot of other contaminants in it as well, including arsenic and aluminum and lead as well. But if it’s naturally occurring, it’s still not ideal. So you wanna look for something that is more in line with the mean fluoride content of fresh water, which is 0.05 parts per million. It’s 14 times lower than what they’re artificially adding to the water supply.

Dr. Hedberg: And… Go ahead.

Melissa: I was just gonna say, another way instead of calling, you can also Google the name of your town and “Water Quality Report.” Your town is required to provide this annual Water Quality Report. Sometimes they send it out each year with your bill, and it’ll have it listed on there, the fluoride level. So if you see ND, which means not detected, you’re in really good shape. But you might see something closer to 0.7 and then that means it’s probably artificially added.

Dr. Hedberg: I was very excited to learn when we moved that our local water supply is not fluoridated. So it can be kind of a pain to filter it. So if someone finds out that they have it in their water supply, there are filters available. Can you talk a little bit about those and what you recommend?

Melissa: Yeah, I’ve never recommended one certain filter because there are a lot of different ones you can use that are effective at removing fluoride. I’ve always told people reverse osmosis is very reliable. A lot of people don’t like it because it does waste water. So for every gallon that you purify, there’s like a couple gallons that are wasted and that’s where all the contaminants go. And some people also don’t like it because it removes a lot of things that you do want in the water like beneficial minerals. But it is one reliable option, and some people will add the minerals back in or just, like, make sure they have a really mineral-rich diet. So reverse osmosis is relative inexpensive, and it’s a decent option for drinking water.

But if you want a whole house filter, there are a few companies that are making bone char filters, and they are very effective at removing fluoride from the water. They are used in parts of the world where high amounts of fluoride is really endemic and it causes a lot of problem. It accumulates in your skeletal system, and can lead to a lot of like joint and bone disorders. So bone char, because it, you know, attracts fluoride so much, is actually a really good filter. So if you find a whole-house bone char filter, that can remove it even from your bathwater and your shower water.

Dr. Hedberg: Yeah, and a lot of the companies out there that make filters are offering fluoride attachments or fluoride filters now, at least as far as what I’ve seen. So there are a lot of options out there. So that’s one thing I was gonna ask you specifically. So do you recommend that even the water that we shower in be filtered of fluoride or just drinking water is the main concern?

Melissa: Drinking water is definitely the main concern, so that would be the priority. A lot of people are really sensitive to it. That’s how I got into all of this, discovering my sensitivity. So for me, washing my face in fluoridated water is really not a good idea. I have a pretty strong reaction to it. Some people can’t even wash their hands in it. I can luckily do that. So when I’m, you know, eating out at restaurants and things, it’s not as difficult. But some people really can’t even shower in it or wash their hands in it. So in that case, you know, you definitely want the whole-house filter.

Dr. Hedberg: So let’s just talk about some other common sources of fluoride other than the water. I know there’s some in certain teas and then also dental products, can you also talk about those? Do we really have to worry about using fluoride-free toothpaste and things like that?

Melissa: Yeah. So I never knew how much fluoride was making its way into my daily life until I realized that I was having this skin reaction to it. So that became kind of like my barometer where I was able to root out all of these different sources of fluoride. Just once I knew that that was the reaction that my cystic acne was caused by fluoride, I could go back and say, “Okay, what did I eat in the last 24 hours?” Because it’s a very immediate reaction, and then that’s how I learned that things like chicken soup can be very high in fluoride. And that makes sense because, you know, chickens are consuming feed that is covered in fluoride-based pesticides, and that fluoride accumulates in their bone, just like it would if, you know, we were consuming fluoride and it accumulates in our bones. So if you’re making soup out of chicken bones, and those chickens had eaten high amounts of fluoride on their feed, or in their water, those bones would be really high in fluoride. So I figured that out the hard way, and then I would go on PubMed and like do the research and see like, oh, chicken products, you know, if they have the bone. Even things like chicken lunch meat, because a lot of, like, little shards of bone end up in the finished product, can be very high and fluoride. And I would never have expected that. I had no idea.

Other sources, you mentioned black tea. Tea is one of the few edible plants that uptakes fluoride naturally from the soil in large amounts. So everything has like trace amounts of fluoride. And I don’t react to like those kinds of trace amounts in vegetables, but the tea plant really accumulates a lot of fluoride. It’s enough for even…some people who are very avid tea drinkers will develop skeletal fluorosis. So they’ll start having hip and joint and bone problems from the fluoride in the tea. And doctors very rarely put this together unless they’re from, like, India where it’s really common because of all the fluoride in the water, or somehow it’s on their radar. Usually they will diagnose it as, like, early-stage arthritis or something. But the symptoms are very, very similar. So you can see studies like where the Mayo Clinic has said, “Oh, this is actually fluoride. This is actually skeletal fluorosis. So that’s something definitely to look out for if you drink tea. And Rooibos tea as well is another plant that takes up fluoride from the soil.

And then the other sources are just anything made with fluoridated water. So like soft drinks or, you know, pre-made beverages, soups, mashed potatoes, pasta, rice. You know, if you’re eating out at a restaurant and it’s fluoridated, you know, the fluoride in that water will be in your food. So it can be very tricky eating out if you’re sensitive to fluoride.

And then the last big group of fluoride sources are from pesticides. And it’s really a common pesticide used on grape crops in California. So any grape products like grape juice, California Wine, raisins, those things are super high in fluoride, so I had to cut those out as well.

Dr. Hedberg: Yeah, going back to the tea, so it has to really depend on how much fluoride is in the soil. And so you mentioned tea from India, you said, it tends to have some of the highest levels?

Melissa: No, just tea really from anywhere where the soil is high in…really just where there’s fluoride in the soil, which is very common. It is commonly found in the soil. So I avoid black tea altogether because I don’t know of any that is shown to be low in fluoride. I guess theoretically, if it was hydroponically grown, you know, without soil, you could grow tea leaves that are low in fluoride. But just naturally, it just finds that fluoride and it brings it up into the plant

Dr. Hedberg: Yeah. And I know green tea also has some and white tea, which is just green tea, basically, harvested much earlier, at least from what I’ve read, that’s going to have the lowest content of the green teas.

Melissa: Yes, exactly. Yeah, they all vary.

Dr. Hedberg: So your particular interest was in fluoride and acne. So can you talk about that connection and how you came to that conclusion of the fluoride acne connection?

Melissa: Yeah, that’s how I became interested in fluoride because I had struggled with cystic acne for about 20 years. And I went to the dermatologist and I tried Accutane. I tried all the conventional treatments, the prescription creams, facials like every week, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. But the weird thing was that whenever I lived overseas, it just cleared up naturally. And this happened several times. I lived in a few different places in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe. And finally the last time, I spent a year in Scotland as a Fulbright Scholar. And again, my skin just completely cleared up. And I was in my 30s, and I thought, “Okay, maybe I just outgrew acne.” But every time I came to the States for a visit, it would start back up again. And then I would go back to Scotland, and it would go away. And it was just so obvious that it was something environmental or something in my diet. Like there was something causing it. And so that’s why I just thought, “Okay, I’m an intelligence analyst, you know, I need to figure this out.” And I suspected it was something in the water because I could usually tell within a few days of moving to a new place, when I was washing my face, you know, it would kind of hurt certain places. Like it was like, not like burning, but it just was very uncomfortable feeling.

So I felt like it was something in the water. And my first thought was lead, because that’s just like the first water contaminant that came to mind. But I couldn’t find a correlation with the amount of lead in the water and my acne. And then I thought, “Well, maybe it’s fluoride, because I had seen reports that fluoride can cause a condition called perioral dermatitis, which is like acne, but it’s more like a topical reaction to fluoride, like fluoride in toothpaste. And so I knew it could cause it. And I thought, “Well, maybe drinking it could cause acne.” So I just switched my water source and I started drinking bottled water that was low in fluoride, and I saw just a huge dramatic improvement. And I thought, “Oh, maybe you know, I’m onto something. Maybe that’s it.”

And so that’s when I started…every time I had a flare up, I would go back and see what I ate. And there was, 100% of the time, a correlation with something that was high in fluoride in my diet. And so over the months…I have this, like, on my website, because I was taking pictures of it with my MacBook, so I have, like, you can see how my skin cleared up over the months that I was figuring out, you know, how to eliminate all these extra sources of toxic fluoride from my diet. And after about a year, my skin was like really, really clear. And now I can live in the United States, even in a fluoridated residence and not have cystic acne, which is just amazing to me.

And I thought it was this very weird condition, you know, this bizarre allergy that I somehow developed. And I wrote like a little free PDF guide and put it on the internet for anybody who has the same weird allergy as me, and I started hearing from so many people. I just thought, “This is strange, you know, because there’s not a lot of people reading this PDF guide, so how am I hearing from so many people who are healing their acne?” And that’s really where the book came from. I started looking into it more, and I realized this is actually a very common condition, but it’s not widely known about because of this, you know history… Are you there?

Dr. Hedberg: Yeah.

Melissa: Oh, okay. Sorry.

Dr. Hedberg: You faded out there for a second.

Melissa: Oh, no.

Dr. Hedberg: So fluoride, this acne connection, you would think that dermatologists would have caught on by now. Why do you think this just isn’t talked about by dermatologists?

Melissa: So yeah, I was really surprised that it was so common because I thought, you know, it makes sense if they hadn’t picked up on it if it was this really rare condition. But when I started researching that literature on acne for the book, I was really shocked because, like, Johns Hopkins University did a study in the early…I think 2001 or so. And they looked at all the literature on acne from the second half of the 20th century, and over 99% of it didn’t even mention diet. It was all about pharmaceuticals and different, like, topical applications, but it wasn’t about diet. It’s really something that they were not focused on. It’s been a little bit better recently with how popular the Paleo diet is, and there have been some really good studies about the Paleo diet and acne. So I think they’re getting more interested in diet, and especially as acne gets worse and worse, and these conventional treatments aren’t working, they’re starting to look at diet more. But it’s still not something that they’re really very interested in. It’s hard to get funding for those types of studies. And then fluoride is just so hidden within the diet. It’s not on ingredient labels, it’s not a major food source. It’s so insidious. So I think that’s why it’s not on their radar yet.

Dr. Hedberg: I just had a thought going back to what we were talking about earlier with the foods. So potentially, bone broth could actually be high in fluoride. Would that be true?

Melissa: Yes, it is very high in fluoride. And some of my worst breakouts were from chicken products. And I was really excited when we actually moved to a non-fluoridated neighborhood, and I was able to go to a restaurant and have soup, because I hadn’t had soup at a restaurant for a long time. And I ordered like a chicken soup and I had a horrible reaction to it. And then I thought, “Oh, is this fluoridated? Like why am I having this reaction?” And that’s where I did, you know, and I found out that the chicken bones can be very high in fluoride. And then I wasn’t able to have chicken soup for years. I would try it, I would buy, you know, the best poultry I could find, and I would still get a reaction to it. And then eventually, I tried it from a local farm, an organic farm that I found, and I didn’t have any reaction. So I knew that their poultry must have been raised differently where it just wasn’t exposed to fluoride. And so it is possible. You just have to buy really high-quality chicken bones.

Dr. Hedberg: Okay. Yeah, that should be a relief for a lot of the listeners to find out it’s just really about the quality of the animals and the source.

Melissa: Yes.

Dr. Hedberg: Let’s talk a little bit about the thyroid, which is gonna be a big interest for a lot of my listeners. There’s not a lot out there on it. There’s some, and I’m just talking about published literature. There was a paper a few years ago I read out of the UK. where they found that the areas that had fluoridated water had a greater incidence of hypothyroidism. So can you talk about the fluoride-thyroid connection?

Melissa: Yeah, there’s a lot of literature that fluoride depresses the thyroid function. And that is something that I noticed. Personally, I wasn’t diagnosed with hypothyroidism. But I did have, like, a very low basal body temperature. I was experiencing depression. And I never really thought about it until it went away and I realized, like, what a difference it is, you know, not being exposed to fluoride and how that affected my mood. And I wouldn’t characterize myself as depressed, but now that I look back, you know, yeah, it was pretty clear I was depressed.

So things that are often correlated with people who have low thyroid function, I was experiencing that personally. And I’ve heard from other people, like there’s a woman who read my book, she lives in Melbourne, Florida, she actually found the book because she was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, prescribed a medication for it, and she just said, “I don’t wanna be on this for the rest of my life. Let me see if I can find a natural solution.” She cut out all fluoride from her diet and her thyroid normalized just by doing that. And now she’s very active and getting fluoride out of the water supply there in Melbourne. So one thing just led to another with her where she’s trying to, you know, help her community get rid of fluoride in their water. But I’ve heard from a number of people who were diagnosed with hypothyroidism and eliminated fluoride from their diet, and their numbers went back to normal and they didn’t have any symptoms.

Dr. Hedberg: Right. So fluoride is a halide along with bromide and iodide. So can you talk a little bit more about the connection there with fluoride and iodide and how those compete?

Melissa: Yeah, so I got into looking at iodine because I wanted to…I knew that I was, you know, sensitive to fluoride. I knew that I had been exposed to very high amounts of fluoride. When I was a child, I was doing fluoride supplements, and it caused my teeth to be discolored by that dental fluorosis condition I mentioned. So when I was a child, I was accumulating all this fluoride in my teeth, in my bones, in my body, and it somehow made me sensitive to it. And so now I wanted to figure out if there was a way to detoxify this fluoride. And there’s a group of doctors referred to as the iodine doctors who, you know, started experimenting with higher doses, higher amounts of iodine in the diet as a way to displace fluoride. And they’re actually able to measure it in the urine, you know how, much fluoride is being displaced with these large doses of iodine. So I became really interested in that, and I started…I wrote…the whole last chapter of the book is about iodine and about my experience trying to detoxify fluoride from my body by including iodine in my diet.

It was very challenging because, as someone who’s sensitive to fluoride, I wasn’t even able to take a really small dose of iodine. Like they’re using milligram doses, I couldn’t even take 200 micrograms without experiencing really strong negative side effects. And it took me a long time to find a doctor who would deal with that, who would, you know, acknowledge my sensitivity and start me at a super-low dose. Like I started at a 20 micrograms drop, one drop of Dulse Seaweed, a liquid seaweed, and that was totally fine for me. I was able to handle that and then I very, very slowly built up over time where I added two drops, you know, and then three drops. So it was a really slow process, but I didn’t have any negative side effects building up that slowly.

And so that’s what I always recommend to people is if you’re doing iodine supplementation, first eliminate the fluoride, you know, clear your skin, because the people I’m dealing with are sensitive to fluoride. So it’s really hard if you’re taking iodine and then you’re also have fluoride in your diet somewhere, and you don’t know, like, what’s causing the negative reactions. So I always tell people to heal their skin by eliminating all these sneaky sources of fluoride from their diet and then add the iodine really, really slowly. Start really low, find a health care practitioner who knows, you know, about the side effects and will work with you to make sure you’re avoiding those side effects, and then you can build up from there.

Dr. Hedberg: Yeah. What I would I do with patients is I actually have a…there’s a particular multi that I use and it has, I think it’s 20 or 25 micrograms of iodine in it, and we just start with that, you know, a very, very low dose. And it sounds like you kind of did that. Twenty micrograms per drop?

Melissa: Yeah, exactly. And I just started with one drop, and that was fine for me.

Dr. Hedberg: Yeah, that’s really the only way I’m aware of to really get it out is with iodine either from supplements or from foods like seaweed and things like that. Anything else come up in your research on how to get it out?

Melissa: Yeah, boron is another one that will eliminate fluoride, and I had an even stronger reaction with boron, and so I ended up just not pursuing that. There’s not a lot of research on it. And it was hard to find the supplements and I wasn’t really sure if they were pure supplements. You know, I just didn’t want to deal with that. And I also had more of, like, gastrointestinal problems with it. Even like a small dose of borine, I would feel really queasy. I started getting motion sick in the car. And, you know, I didn’t wanna deal with that. And the research on iodine, to me, was a lot stronger, and there’s a lot more supplements available. So I ended up going with iodine.

There’s also, like, tamarind, the fruit, that’s supposed to detoxify fluoride. I haven’t experimented with that. But there are some other, like, fruits. I just saw a study about black cherry juice, I think it was, protecting against fluoride somehow. So I haven’t experimented with it. But there’s a lot of natural treatments. Cilantro was another one that is supposed to help detoxify fluoride. But I think iodine is really the best option. And I think from like an ancestral diet perspective, iodine is a really important part of the diet that we need to start focusing on more.

Dr. Hedberg: Right. Right. So if people find out that they have fluoridated water and they want to take action to potentially get it out, what are some of the channels they can use to try and get fluoride out of their water? You have a website and a petition, is that correct?

Melissa: Yeah. So with readers of the book, I’m directing everyone to sign this petition on www.change.org for the Senate to stop recommending the addition of fluoride to public drinking water. You know, there’s a Senate subcommittee on fisheries, wildlife, and drinking water. And about…I think it was in 2000, the EPA union testified in front of that Senate subcommittee and called for an immediate moratorium on fluoridation over concerns that it’s a carcinogen. In the ’70s the Senate ordered these studies about fluoride and cancer. It took 14 years for them to do the studies. The scientists who performed them thought the studies did show that fluoride is a carcinogen, but they went back and like redid it so that it was kind of like swept under the rug. That’s how the union got involved is because the scientists at the EPA were been pressured to say that fluoride is safe when they didn’t think it was.

So the union started looking into it and they voted unanimously to oppose fluoridation, and they testified in front of the Senate, calling for an immediate moratorium. The Senate never did that, so my petition is for the Senate to follow through and call for that moratorium on fluoridation. Of course, that’s, like, a big national thing that’s going to take a lot of local grassroots efforts, you know, before we’ll reach that national level, but that’s happening right now. There’s over 70 towns that have rejected fluoridation in the last five years. And so there’s, like, a growing movement. I think every alternative health person that I’ve talked to, people that are into, like, natural forms of health, knows that fluoride is not a good idea. And so as the natural health movement grows, the movement to end fluoridation will gain more steam.

Just this last week, there was an accident in Utah where a snow storm caused, like, the fluoride pump to malfunction, and it was just dumping undiluted hexafluorosilicic acid, which is the fluoride chemical added to water, into the water supply. And people, you know, a lot of people were sick, they were calling poison control, they didn’t know what was happening. And it just continued for two days where they were dumping this fluoride acid into the water. And people don’t realize how toxic the chemical is, you know, until you have an accident like that. And so I think as more people become aware that this chemical, you know, that they’re purchasing directly from phosphate fertilizer plants in Florida, you know, it’s not like a pharmaceutical-grade sodium fluoride that your dentist uses. This is a fluoride acid that they’re buying from a fertilizer plant. It’s not filtered. You know, every single sample tested has shown to contain arsenic, lead, aluminum, like really dangerous neurotoxins and carcinogens. And we’re adding that to the water. So when people learn that, the pollution story behind fluoridation, there’s usually a very strong motivation to get rid of it.

And so I think if you are wanting to do that in your town, it’s a great time to organize and do that. I’m putting together at guide, actually, it’s just like a free PDF that I’ll send to people. So if you’re listening and you wanna end fluoridation, send me an email and I’ll send you this guide. I’m almost done with it. But it’s kind of, like, how to get started ending fluoridation your town, very practical grassroots action. You know, here are the things that have worked in other towns and here’s, you know, how to get your footing in ending fluoridation. It’s a great time to do it. There’s a lot of support. There’s the Fluoride Action Network, that”s a national, you know, global group that has a lot of expertise about fluoride and, you know, there’s a lot of people ready to help you. The International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology is a great resource as well. It’s hundreds of dentists and health professionals who oppose fluoridation, and they understand the history of fluoride and why it’s such a bad idea to put it in the water supply. And they’re also very active and very supportive in local efforts to end fluoridation

Dr. Hedberg: It is very important that we do have strong skeptics in our society. I know a lot of the skeptics out there say that there’s nothing wrong with fluoride and it’s scientifically sound. Have you gotten any push-back from any of the skeptics online, and how do you communicate with them? Because I think if we can give them enough, you know, science behind what you’re saying, we can change some minds in this area. So what do you think about that?

Melissa: I haven’t been approached by them too much online. I’m not super active on Twitter or, you know, I focus mostly on my private Facebook group where everyone’s there for the same reason, you know, to help each other figure out how to eliminate fluoride from our diet. So I’m not really exposed to a lot of that. I get the occasional tweet like, “Fluoride and acne? These people are crazy.” You know, stuff like that. But recently, I gave my first presentation to the local city council, too, and it was the woman I mentioned in Melbourne, she actually got all the way to a vote where her city council was voting on whether or not they should continue fluoridation. And she invited me and Dr. Paul Connett of the Fluoride Action Network to come and give the presentation on why we should end fluoridation. And there was a dentist there from the American Dental Association. He’d started his own group called the American Fluoridation Society, I think it’s called. And so he travels around the world and gives these presentations on why we should continue fluoridating or why you should start fluoridating. So they were hearing both sides.

And that was such a surreal experience to be in the room not only with a fluoride promoter, but the American Dental Association, you know, they send out an email blast and they tell all their dentists that they need to show up and talk about why they need to keep fluoridating. So there were like maybe a dozen or 20 dentists there, and they were all vouching for the safety of fluoride and the effectiveness of fluoride and why we need to use it. And there were only two who spoke up and said, “No, I’m concerned about its effect on the thyroid. I’m concerned that it’s a neurotoxin.” And it was so surreal to hear all these dentists who…I don’t know how many of them even have looked at the literature. Because the literature is very, very concerning, but it’s just, like, they’ve been taught it since dental school and it’s such a part of their culture that fluoride, “Yeah, of course fluoride is great,” and, “Oh, people that, you know, oppose it are crazy. They’re crazy.” You know, like they don’t even really look at the science.

Dr. Hedberg: Yeah. I mean, the American Dental Association they have a lot more problems than just fluoride and their position on mercury. So the fact that they think that mercury and fluoride are both fine, you know, in the human body is a major problem. But in any case, as far as how to find you online, can you mention your books again and where people can get those as well as, you said you had a Facebook group and your website and things like that?

Melissa: Yeah. The book is called “The Hidden Cause of Acne.” It’s available on Amazon or bookstores, and it should be available internationally as well. If you can’t find it, shoot me an email and I could probably figure out the nearest retailer. The website is www.hiddencauseofacne.com and that’s where you can find my newsletter sign-up where I have a free, like, a one-page guide on the most common sources of fluoride exposure. And there’s actually an invite to the Facebook group. So if you wanna come on Facebook and be part of the community and just ask questions or, you know, get people’s experiences with eliminating fluoride from their diet, from their public water supply, that’s what the Facebook group is for.

Dr. Hedberg: Excellent. Well, thanks for coming on, Melissa. This is really great work. I think it will definitely be a surprise to a lot of people. I think, some people, you know, know about the thyroid connection, but I think most people, including myself…I wasn’t aware there’s such a strong connection to acne. So I really appreciate what you’re doing, and thank you for coming on today.

Melissa: Thank you for having me.

Dr. Hedberg: Well, go to www.drhedberg.com, everyone, and look up this article and podcast. I’ll have a full transcript posted as well as links to Melissa’s books and her Facebook group, her petition, and website. So take care, everyone. This is Dr. Hedberg. And I will talk to you next time. Take care.