The Fluoride in Our Water Might Be Draining Your Thyroid — Here’s How to Fix It

 American ingest four times as much fluoride as we did in the 1940s, when the government first started adding the trace mineral to water supplies to prevent cavities. Today, it’s added to 70 percent of the country’s water supply. Fluoride can also be found in soda, soups, tea, and other foods, which may explain why, according to the CDC, nearly 200 million Americans are exposed to high levels of the mineral. And all this exposure is wreaking havoc on the thyroid, asserts thyroid expert Richard Shames, MD, author co-author of Thyroid Mind Power ($18.99, Amazon).

“Fluoride is a hormone disruptor that negatively affects thyroid function,” says Dr. Shames. “When this happens, the first problem people tend to notice is fatigue, but everything form how fast the brain works to how well the muscles work depends on thyroid function.”

Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, author of From Fatigued to Fantastic! ($13.94, Amazon) observes, “Fluoride overload contributes to as many as three out of four female fatigue cases I treat.” And according to research in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, high rates of hypothyroidism (and the fatigue, brain fog, and weight gain it typically causes) are nearly twice as common in areas where fluoride is added to the water.

Fluoride saps energy by competing with iodine, a nutrient that’s crucial to the thyroid’s ability to produce metabolism-revving hormones. “Iodine is the key that turns on the thyroid’s ‘energy engine,’ but when fluoride intakes are high, thyroid cells pick up fluoride instead,” says Dr. Teitelbaum. “That’s a problem, because fluoride acts like a miscut key that fits in the ignition, but jams it so your engine can’t turn on.” As fluoride builds up in the body, it depletes iodine stores, causing the thyroid to become sluggish.

What’s more, many healthcare providers aren’t aware of the link between fluoride and thyroid health, so they attribute the symptoms of a sluggish thyroid, like irritability, weight gain, and depression, to aging or other health problems like fibromyalgia.............................