The lack of exposure to fluoride or the ingestion of inadequate amounts of fluoride at any age places the individual at increased risk for dental caries.
....and that seems to be the overwhelming consensus.
well, if the reason for that is that your body uptakes the fluoride into your enamel as an adult and stores it as hydroxyfluorapatite, what does your body do with the fluoride if your enamel is cracked or degraded?
what i can't figure out is why it does this reaction when you have unblemished enamel and doesn't when you have damaged enamel. how does your body know? that even almost sounds backwards. you'd think that there's more space for the reaction in damaged enamel.
i know, i know - i've read the consensus position. i just can't find a clearly described mechanism. maybe i need to rent a textbook from the library, or at least look it up on google books.
but, despite what they're telling me, it doesn't make any sense to me to think that a massive fluoride bombardment - in the presence of all of the other minerals - won't produce hydroxyfluorapatite, in even the most damaged teeth. for that to make sense, you'd have to demonstrate an association between remineralization and the ameloblast cells that adults lose, which, as far as i can tell, is demonstrably false...
i will let them drill, if they can find caries underneath the plaque. and, as stated, i think there is at least one.
but, i'm struggling to make sense of the mechanism underlying this.