reply to post by beefragafragious
I have seen many arguments about how fluoride is dangerous. But many of these arguments have holes in them. For example, you say that smokers find
prozac less effective and you tie that to fluoride. How do you make that connection? Please show me the actual clinical studies.
Smoking lowers the efficacy of certain drugs that are metabolized by certain enzymes because smoking causes those enzymes to be induced.
Cigarette smoking induces an enzyme called CYP1A2. This enzyme (like the others in the CYP superfamily)is involved in metabolizing lots of drugs (eg.
Clozaril, Zyprexa, Elavil etc.). Prozac, Luvox, Paxil et.al. are metabolized primarily by an enzyme called CYP2D6. There are no interactions between
cigarette smoke and this enzyme.
I'm too tired to write a page-long post on drug pharmacokinetics right now so I'll keep it short. When liver enzymes are induced, it can lower
plasma concentrations of drugs metabolized by that enzyme. It is not something unique to cigarettes. Example, Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft inhibit the
enzyme CYP2D6, so if you take drugs that need to be metabolized by that enzyme in order to be effective (eg. Ultram, Codeine), those drugs will lose
their efficacy and the dosage would need to be increased.
Fluoride ions are toxic because fluoride acts as an inhibitor of oxidative phosphorylation in red blood cells. (same way cyanide ions do in most other
cells.) But Adding a Fluorine atom to a molecule doesn't mean that the molecule becomes toxic somehow. There are plenty of pharmaceuticals that have
a fluorine atom(s) in its/their chemical structure(s).
Remember that fluorine and fluorinated carbon compounds are very different creatures. It is not correct to make genaralisations about the toxicity of
organic molecules containing Fluorine atoms.
There are a lot of other holes in your argument but I'm too tired to go through them at the moment. I will come back to this thread definitely. If
you want to research more into the role of F atoms in a molecule, then you need to study basic organic chemistry, pharmacology as well as advanced
concepts like SAR (Structure Activity Relationships).
[edit on 26-10-2008 by AnubisOfTheEast]: to make it a bit easier to read
[edit on 26-10-2008 by AnubisOfTheEast]