Keitha Berry's List: ENG 122

• *Thyroid Disruption - affecting the complete endocrine system and leading to obesity and diabetes
  *Neurological - diminished IQ and inability to focus (ADD), lethargy, weariness, possibly fibromyalgia.
  *Melatonin Disruption - sleep disorders, increased aging, lower immunity to cancer.
  *Alzheimer's Disease
  *Pineal Gland - calcification of this gland located in the middle of the brain.
  *Cancer
  
• Calcium fluoride is in several ground water sources, especially wells. The worst it can do is cause tooth enamel or bone damage if consumed daily over the long term. Pharmaceutical grade sodium fluoride is meant to be applied topically to teeth as a dental procedure. But if swallowed or otherwise ingested, it is extremely toxic.
• But the most pernicious of all sodium fluorides is either fluorosilicate acid or sodium silicofluoride. These are the waste products of industry, originally from the nuclear and aluminum industries, but now mostly from the phosphate fertilizer industry.
• The gases emitted from phosphate fertilizer processing plants are so toxic that nearby crops were destroyed by the emissions and serious health problems rose among nearby residents. So the EPA forced the processing plants to use scrubbers in their stacks to clean the exhaust.
  
• A recent spill from a fluorosilicate container in Illinois had to be contained by workers wearing the same type of protective gear worn near the damaged reactors in Fukushima.
• Deceptive PR campaigns and the American Dental Association's urging of fluoridation as the panacea for tooth decay created a profitable side industry: Selling phosphate toxic sludge as sodium fluoride for community water supplies. Fluoridated water proponents argue that low doses are safe while ignoring how these daily doses deposit and accumulate in our bones and organs.
• Even if not fluoridated, tap water contains chlorine compounds that tend to leach lead. This lead leaching gets with the sodium fluoride added. It has been declared that there is no safe level of lead in our bodies.
  
• Don't drink tap water that has not gone through reverse osmosis, at least. Avoid commercial sodas and juices. Most food stores contain reverse osmosis purifiers that you can use to load large jugs cheaply. There are household purifiers available as well.
• Reverse osmosis removes over 85% of sodium fluoride from water, but some of the good minerals are removed as well. Add some sea salt or mineral powder to compensate. Do this to stay healthy and join the growing resistance against forced toxic medication via our water supplies.

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• Melatonin is a hormone that helps regulate the onset of puberty and helps protect the body from cell damage caused by free radicals.
• The soft tissue of the adult pineal gland contains more fluoride than any other soft tissue in the body - a level of fluoride (~300 ppm) capable of inhibiting enzymes.
• The pineal gland also contains hard tissue (hyroxyapatite crystals), and this hard tissue accumulates more fluoride (up to 21,000 ppm) than any other hard tissue in the body (e.g. teeth and bone).
• Luke found that animals treated with fluoride had lower levels of circulating melatonin, as reflected by reduced levels of melatonin metabolites in the animals' urine. This reduced level of circulating melatonin was accompanied - as might be expected - by an earlier onset of puberty in the fluoride-treated female animals.
• "In conclusion, the human pineal gland contains the highest concentration of fluoride in the body. Fluoride is associated with depressed pineal melatonin synthesis by prepubertal gerbils and an accelerated onset of sexual maturation in the female gerbil. The results strengthen the hypothesis that the pineal has a role in the timing of the onset of puberty. Whether or not fluoride interferes with pineal function in humans requires further investigation."

  • Good quote and source to use for paper.
• “The single animal study of pineal function indicates that fluoride exposure results in altered melatonin production and altered timing of sexual maturity.
• The two studies of menarcheal age in humans show the possibility of earlier menarche in some individuals exposed to fluoride, but no definitive statement can be made.
• Recent information on the role of the pineal organ in humans suggests that any agent that affects pineal function could affect human health in a variety of ways, including effects on sexual maturation, calcium metabolism, parathyroid function, postmenopausal osteoporosis, cancer, and psychiatric disease.”
   SOURCE: National Research Council. (2006).
• SOURCE: Luke J. (1997). The Effect of Fluoride on the Physiology of the Pineal Gland. Ph.D. Thesis. University of Surrey, Guildford. p. 177.
• It has the highest calcium concentration of any normal soft tissue in the body because it calcifies physiologically in the form of hydroxyapatite (HA).
• It has a high metabolic activity coupled with a very profuse blood supply: two factors favouring the deposition of F in mineralizing tissues.
• The fact that the pineal is outside the blood-brain barrier suggests that pineal HA could sequester F from the bloodstream if it has the same strong affinity for F as HA in the other mineralizing tissues.
• The intensity of the toxic effects of most drugs depends upon their concentration at the site of action.
• The mineralizing tissues (bone and teeth) accumulate high concentrations of F and are the first to show toxic reactions to F. Hence, their reactions to F have been especially well studied. If F accumulates in the pineal gland, then this points to a gap in our knowledge about whether or not F affects pineal physiology. It was the lack of knowledge in this area that prompted my study."
   SOURCE: Luke J. (1997). The Effect of Fluoride on the Physiology of the Pineal Gland. Ph.D. Thesis. University of Surrey, Guildford. p. 1-2.
• "After half a century of the prophylactic use of fluorides in dentistry, we now know that fluoride readily accumulates in the human pineal gland. In fact, the aged pineal contains more fluoride than any other normal soft tissue. The concentration of fluoride in the pineal was significantly higher (p <0.001) than in corresponding muscle, i.e., 296 ± 257 vs. 0.5± 0.4 mg/kg (wet weight) respectively."
   SOURCE: Luke J. (1997). The Effect of Fluoride on the Physiology of the Pineal Gland. Ph.D. Thesis. University of Surrey, Guildford. p. 167.
• "Fluoride is now introduced at a much earlier stage of human development than ever before and consequently alters the normal fluoride-pharmacokinetics in infants
• A complex series of enzymatic reactions within the pinealocytes converts the essential amino acid, tryptophan, to a whole family of indoles.
• If F accumulates in the pineal gland during early childhood, it could affect pineal indole metabolism in much the same way that high local concentrations of F in enamel organ and bone affect the metabolism of ameloblasts and osteoblasts."
• The controlled animal study carried out in this study produce compelling evidence that fluoride inhibits pineal melatonin output during pubertal development in the gerbil."
• At 7 weeks, the HF females were significantly heavier than the LF females (p < 0.004); as heavy as the HF males and LF males. The ventral gland in the HF female developed significantly earlier than in the LF female (p < 0.004). Vaginal opening occurred earlier in the HF female than in the LF female (p <0.03)."
• "The first step in assessing a health risk by a substance to humans is the identification of its harmful effects on animals. A health risk to humans is assessed using results from human epidemiological studies in conjunction with results from animal studies. The Newburgh-Kingston Study (Schlesinger et al, 1956) showed an earlier age of first menarche in girls living in the fluoridated Newburgh than in unfluoridated Kingston. The current animal study indicates that fluoride is associated with an earlier onset of puberty in female gerbils. Furthermore, more research was recommended on the effects of fluoride on animal and human reproduction (USPHS, 1991). This project has contributed new knowledge in this area."
• Fluoride may affect the enzymatic conversion of tryptophan to melatonin.
• fluoride may also affect the synthesis of melatonin precursors, (e.g., serotonin), or other pineal products, (e.g., 5-methoxytryptamine).
• For some unknown reason, pineal calcification starts intracellularly. Calcium has been demonstrated in pinealocyte mitochondria.
• it may be a mitochondrial enzyme that is sensitive to the effects of fluoride, e.g., tryptophan-5-hydroxylase. Alternatively, fluoride may affect pinealocyte enzymes which require a divalent co-enzyme because such enzymes are particularly sensitive to fluoride."
• if increased plasma-fluoride levels cause a decline in the levels of circulating melatonin during early human development, significant physiological consequences may have already occurred. Changes in plasma melatonin concentrations are serious functional disturbances because melatonin has many functions in the organism. The pinealogists have not completely unravelled the mechanisms by which the pineal gland performs its tasks in the brain.
• The neurochemical phenomenon elicited by melatonin in CNS are unclear.
• I do not intend to discuss the relative merits of the claims made by the anti-fluoridationists that chronic ingestion of low levels of fluoride has harmful effects on human health, i.e., increases the risk of cancer, affects the immune system, and hastens the aging process. These claims could be associated with the effects of fluoride on the pineal because the gland has been linked to oncogenesis, immunocompetence, and, in recent years, to the process of aging.

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• seat of the soul and the place in which all our thoughts are formed
• the pineal gland is an endocrine organ, which produces the hormone melatonin in amounts which vary with the time of day
• “psychic pneuma,” a fine, volatile, airy or vaporous substance which he described as “the first instrument of the soul.
• according to which the pineal gland regulates the flow of psychic pneuma in the canal between the middle and posterior ventricles of the brain, just as the pylorus regulates the passage of food from the esophagus to the stomach
• it cannot move on its own
• the pineal gland is attached to the outside of the brain
• presented by Posidonius of Byzantium
• first theory
• imagination is due to the forepart of the brain, reason to the middle ventricle, and memory to the hind part of the brain
• Nemesius of Emesa
• the anterior ventricle is the organ of imagination, the middle ventricle the organ of reason, and the posterior ventricle the organ of memory
• Avicenna
• projecting the psychological distinctions found in Aristotle's On the soul onto the ventricular system of the brain
• treatise called On the difference between spirit and soul, Qusta ibn Luqa (864-923) combined Nemesius' ventricular localization doctrine with Galen's account of a worm-like part of the brain that controls the flow of animal spirit between the middle and posterior ventricles
• people who want to remember look upwards because this raises the worm-like particle, opens the passage, and enables the retrieval of memories from the posterior ventricle. People who want to think, on the other hand, look down because this lowers the particle, closes the passage, and protects the spirit in the middle ventricle from being disturbed by memories stored in the posterior ventricle
• the term pinea was applied to the worm-like obstacle, so that the view that the pineal gland regulates the flow of spirits (the theory that Galen had rejected) made a come-back
• Niccolò Massa (1536, ch. 38) discovered that the ventricles are not filled with some airy or vaporous spirit but with fluid (the liquor cerebro-spinalis)
• Treatise of man
• The passions of the soul
• pineal gland played an important role in Descartes' account because it was involved in sensation, imagination, memory and the causation of bodily movements
• the gland is surrounded by veins rather than arteries
• phylogenic relic, a vestige of a dorsal third eye
• The hormone secreted by the pineal gland, melatonin, was first isolated in 1958. Melatonin is secreted in a circadian rhythm, which is interesting in view of the hypothesis that the pineal gland is a vestigial third eye. Melatonin was hailed as a “wonder drug” in the 1990s and then became one of the best-sold health supplements.
• theosophy
• the pineal body of modern man is an atrophied vestige of this “organ of spiritual vision”
• “eye of Shiva” of “the Hindu mystics”
• Journal of Pineal Research

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• Calcium fluoride appears naturally in underground water sources and even seawater. Enough of it can cause skeletal or dental fluorosis, which weakens bone and dental matter. But it is not nearly as toxic, nor does it negatively affect so many other health issues as sodium fluoride, which is added to many water supplies.
• Sodium Fluoride is a synthetic waste product of the nuclear, aluminum, and phosphate fertilizer industries.
• This fluoride has an amazing capacity to combine and increase the potency of other toxic materials.
• The sodium fluoride obtained from industrial waste and added to water supplies is also already contaminated with lead, aluminum, and cadmium.
• It damages the liver and kidneys, weakens the immune system, possibly leading to cancer, creates symptoms that mimic fibromyalgia, and performs as a Trojan Horse to carry aluminum across the blood brain barrier. The latter is recognized as a source of the notorious "dumbing down" with lower IQ's and Alzheimer's effects of fluoride.

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