It seems like just about everybody knows about all the studies linking sodium laureth sulfates (not to be confused with lauryl sulfates!) to cancer. What I bet you didn't know is that your toothpaste is chock full of them. Unfortunately, laureth sulfates are what give your toothpaste, shampoo, and other detergents those nice, fun bubbles. These bad boys are in all the major toothpaste brands. Even the "healthy" brands like Tom's.
Not only are your toothpastes full of laureth sulfates, but they have another offender: fluoride. Now, I know we all grew up hearing that this was good for you. A lot of places even add various forms of fluoride to the water supply to help prevent tooth decay. I'm going to give you a nice bullet-pointed list of reasons to avoid fluoride. Or, if you want to read a good article that nicely summarizes the research on fluroide, click here.
- Fluoride makes a lot of little kids sick to their stomach, and may even cause gastrointestinal distress in adults.
- Research has not shown any significant effects of tooth decay prevention from adding fluoride to water. Oh, actually, in New Zealand, kids living in areas with fluoridated water actually had worse tooth decay.
- Fluoride has been shown to decrease your thyroid function, and is one of the leading suspects in the rapidly increasing number of cases of hypothyroidism in the U.S.
- Fluoride accumulates in your body over a long period of time, even if you only get it in low doses.
Because your body cannot dispose of fluoride, even small amounts of it (like what is in your toothpaste) are cause for concern. There is a lot more research about fluorides, but those are the highlights. Anyway, to avoid sodium laureth sulfates and fluoride, I embarked on a toothpaste quest.
As usual, I started by trying ot make my own toothpaste. This was a horrible, horrible mistake. While baking soda is good for your teeth, it tastes like you're brushing your teeth with salt. Nasty! I headed to the stores.
After much whining and reading, I could not find a single toothpaste in store that did not have fluoride or sodium laureth sulfate. If a toothpaste didn't have one, it had the other. Now, I don't know if there is enough laureth sulfate in toothpaste to effect you. I may have been making this a lot harder on myself than it needed to be. But since I'd rather be safe than sorry, I eventually ordered a TON of Burt's Bees fluoride free toothpaste. This stuff tastes MUCH better than Tom's (which was almost as bad as the baking soda experiment).
The all natural toothpaste does not foam as well as my old Colgate did, but that is to be expected sans laureth sulfates. In addition, the Burt's Bees toothpaste is not mint flavored, since whatever it is that cleans your teeth comes from cranberries. I sometimes think I might have bad breath sooner after using this than I did when I used Colgate (a common problem for us heavy coffee drinkers) but I compensate by using a mouthwash more often, which is probably better for me anyway.
