[clothdiapermama]

My pediatrician recommended floride drops as my 18 month old has a tooth with cracked enamel. I checked with our dentist and he also thought that it might help strengthen the enamel. Our drinking water has very low amounts of flouride. But I'm nervous about giving flouride supplements. (I've heard scary stories about too much flouride.)

What has your experience been with flouride drops? Do the advantages outweigh the risks? TIA

 

[slightly crunchy]

This is a tough subject.

I went through a similar decision making process last year. Our drinking water is also not fluoridated. We use tiny amounts of fluoridated toothpaste to brush our son's teeth, but do not give the drops/supplements. Our pediatrician also recommended them because of the water issue. However, most of the dentists we saw on our dental caries journey recommended toothpaste over drops (except one who was very old school on everything). From what I understand, having the fluoride internally (which is what the drops would be doing) would only affect the permanent teeth that are still being formed, and would not help the baby teeth. To have positive effects on the enamel that is already there, you need topical fluoride.

Check out the sticky on archived threads, there is much information there.
HTH.

 

[clothdiapermama]

Thank you for your input - I will look it up in the archives. I'm new to this site so I didn't even realize that there were archives. Thanks!

So are you giving your son drops and using flouridated toothpaste?

 

[Smilemomma]

 

[slightly crunchy]

Nope, we were told that the toothpaste AND the drops would be way too much fluoride.

Just a tiny smidgen (I just get the tiniest scrape on my clean finger and then rub it on the toothbrush) of children's fluoridated toothpaste 1-2 times/day.

THe archives are now under a sticky called "index of topics". Here's the thread on fluoride: http://www.mothering.com/discussions...=&threadid=299

 

[clothdiapermama]

Thank you both for the info! I had no odea that this was such a hot topic!