Swallowing toothpaste leads to Crohns!

Somebody said...
Fluoride can lead to Crohn’s disease when swallowed and it can corrode tooth enamel. It doesn’t reduce cavities and scientists have linked it to 10,000 deaths every year from cancer, allergic reactions, arthritis, and dental deformities.

worldental.org/oral-hygiene/healthy-toothpaste-dental-health/1677/

Great, just after I removed all my modern toilets...

Probely should start using childrens toothpaste its milder

Absolute rubbish that modern toothpastes are bad for your teeth; developing a thorough toothbrushing habit is what has saved my teeth.

But the bit about swallowing fluoride leading to Crohn's is depressing. I hope it isn't true. I did swallow a lot of toothpaste when young, and I would go out of my mind if such a ridiculously easy-to-avoid habit was the trigger for developing Crohn's later on in life.

I'm gonna google this and see what I can find.

I am with Navy I seriously doubt toothpaste as being the cause for Crohns. GDEN where do you find these crazy studies??

Well for that theory I would disagree, my brother and I have crohn's, two of my sisters have UC, my one sister that is unafflicted is the only one who had braces and the orthodontist had her use gel cam for years which is a highly concentrated fluoride treatment. Therefore if I wanted to make my own assumption I would conclude that Fluoride prevents crohn's disease.
I doubt that it has any thing to do with it.

Better remove your shower because I have read somewhere that the chlorine is suspected of causing Crohn's and it was suggested that a filter was necessary for even bathing because the chlorine seeps into the skin. I will admit now that at the time my husband put a filter on the shower my daughter used but the water pressure was so poor, she could not wash the soap out of her hair and we eventually took it off. My daughter had braces right before her first episode with Crohn's and I also read that the metal was suspected of causing Crohn's. I heard about toothpaste too. I use to drive myself nuts reading everything out there until I finally couldn't take it any more!

I was told that and I did switch to natural toothpaste but that stuff was awful.. I need my teeth! Bad enough to have a belly thats out of wack, dont need a messed up grill too.. So not attractive. And at this point in my Crohns I dont think a toothpaste is gonna make or break me.. So many interesting ideas as to where Crohns originates but I dont fully buy into any of them. I feel like it is what it is and we need to make the best of what we have been dealt.

The point that is usually made is that these things can be triggers in some of those that are susceptible to Crohn's. My daughter still avoids swimming pools because of the chlorine. It's horrible to wonder and worry about so many things.

The article doesn't seem to offer any alternatives. If you are going to discredit something like flouride toothpaste I think the author should offer alternatives. I only skimmed the article though so maybe I missed it.

No alternatives to flouride?? Stop brushing your teeth! I did, right after reading this article. ;) I also now get all my drinking water out of my rain gutter because tap water also has flouride. But it hasn't rained lately so I'm getting a bit thirsty...

I've never tried that natural toothpaste at the health food store. Maybe I will, just for kicks. I do buy a lot of food there, mainly because a lot of it isn't loaded with salt, sugar, etc.

I read about toothpaste being a possible trigger for crohn's back in the early 90's when I got DX with it...I too used to swallow toothpaste from time to time (cuz I had bad breath issues so I thought it would help with that, of course it didn't and very well could have been one of my triggers for getting CD)...don't forget that what is one CDers trigger may not be anothers and that for some it's a combination of triggers (smoking is a KNOWN trigger for CD) that can bring out the disease and even with smoking (including second-hand smoke) being a known trigger for CD doesn't mean that it is for every CDer either. S

So yes, the toothpaste suspicion has been around for around 20 yrs....BTW, birth control pills are another suspect for triggering CD in women...hormones are also known to be linked to IBD.

Where I live (Alberta, Canada) we have floride in our water system (since the early-mid 90's).

Hey pb4,

Where'd you read/hear that smoking is a "known" trigger for CD? I don't think they know that anything is a known trigger (i.e. do this, get CD). Smoking makes CD worse but makes UC better. But I also think I remember reading or hearing that smokers are less likely to get CD but more likely to get UC.

GDen, I read about the smoking (including second-hand smoke) being a known trigger for crohn's via my CCFC journals (crohn's and colitis foundation of Canada), it's also on the net. UCers that tend to quit smoking brings out the UC (since with smoking for a UCer can keep their UC at bay because of the carbon monoxide via smoking is known to keep inflammation in the colon at bay) and once a UCer quits smoking then it triggers the UC to become active..KEEPING IN MIND, that this is not necessarily the case for every UCer just as it's not necessarily the case of smoking and second-hand smoke being the trigger for every CDer either.

For myself, I think that when I was a teenager, I started smoking first then I went on the birth control pill then I developed my perianal crohn's skin tags (which just came and went on their own and every doc I saw at that time said it was just hemherroides), it wasn't until about a yr and a half after I had my first baby (in my early 20's) that my crohn's became completely full blown active... As I mentioned in my reply above, I did swallow toothpaste, I smoked (still do cuz when I quit I got even sicker maybe cuz my crohn's is affecting mainly my colon and anus with perianal crohn's skin tags) and I took birth control pills and the hormonal changes from having a baby were more than likely my combination of triggers for the disease becomming active....when I mentioned in this reply about the perianal crohn's skin tags first appearing in my teens after I went on the BC pill and was already a smoker at the time, I had absolutely no other symptoms of CD other than those tags on my anus, my bowels functioned completely normally until the time after I had my first baby in my early 20's. Also, when I was about 19 yrs old, just out of the blue, my bottom lip swelled up like crazy, looked like I got punched, it bothered me cuz how messed up it made me look, I went to the hospital cuz it freaked me out and the ER doc said he'd never seen anything like it before and for it to get so big within a day and no other symptoms/issues going on anywhere else (except my anal skin tags were also "flaring" at the same time)...he told me just to put ice on it, so I did and it finally went away, that only ever happend to me once in my life (so far) and I'm sure it's related to me getting/having crohn's since crohn's can affect any part of the GI tract from mouth (starting at the lips) to anus.

So you see, it can take time and be subtle for IBD to develop, even though for the most part it seems like it hits ppl hard and out of the blue, when I think back to my own personal history, there are the obvious signs that I was doomed.