Try This – 3 big shares on bone health, fluoride, and your bedtime.

Try This community, today I’m sharing some truths about fluoride in our water, PFAs and bone health, and why our bedtime matters so much more than we think. 

Let’s get into it.

No Link Between Fluoride and IQ? Not so fast!

Some of you might have seen the headlines this week claiming a major new study proves fluoride in drinking water has zero impact on IQ or brain function. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tracked over 10,000 people from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study and found no link between community water fluoridation and cognition from adolescence all the way to age 80. 

I've always been interested in this topic, but as a father now, I'm even more concerned about fluoride's impact on brain health and IQ in babies, especially boys.

The NBC article headline sounds definitive, right?

“Fluoride in drinking water has no effect on IQ or brain function, long-term study shows!”

Not so fast. I've covered fluoride concerns on the podcast before, including with functional dentist Dr. Mark Burhenne, and the existing data on fluoride's developmental risks to kids is much stronger than these headlines suggest.

Here’s one problem with the study: The study population was born in 1940, five years before any U.S. community began fluoridating water. The critical window for fluoride's cognitive effects is in utero and infancy, when the brain develops rapidly.

Another issue: the authors didn’t have fluoride measurements from the 1940s, so they had to make inferences about fluoride levels and exposures based on this 2020 publication. The study basically tested roughly 2 wells per county in Wisconsin for natural fluoride levels. If the well test resulted in ‘optimal’ fluoride levels, the authors assumed every child in that county was historically ‘exposed’ to fluoridated water. 

Fluoride lawyer and advocate Michael Connett put it bluntly: it's like trying to determine if prenatal Tylenol exposure causes autism by measuring the neighbor's Tylenol use instead of the mother's.

The earlier studies showing IQ effects in children of mothers with higher fluoride exposure during pregnancy haven't been overturned. They've just been overshadowed by an incomplete, potentially misleading headline.

Dr. Mark Burhenne put it best on our past podcast: There's enough evidence to take a precautionary approach to fluoride, especially for kids under 2. Since babies don't have teeth until 6 to 12 months, fluoride offers no benefit during that critical window. You might as well play it safe and filter your water with a high-quality reverse osmosis filter.

Forever Chemicals Might Be Weakening Bones

Speaking of toxins and kids…

Last week, we covered how a new study published in The Lancet found phthalates contribute to preterm births globally. This week, another piece of the forever chemicals puzzle.

A new study tracked 218 children from birth to age 12, looking at PFAS and bone density measurements. Higher PFOA levels were consistently linked to weaker forearm bones at age 12. Those with the highest PFA exposure had a 30% higher chance of bone fractures than those with the lowest. 

Adolescence is one of the most important periods for building lifelong bone strength (almost 40% of total bone mineral is acquired during adolescence). Anything that disrupts that process could potentially increase the risk of fractures, osteoporosis, and long-term skeletal issues later in life.

There are also plausible biological mechanisms here. PFAS may interfere with vitamin D signaling, hormone regulation, and bone-building pathways.

This doesn’t mean we need to panic. But it does reinforce a bigger point:

The everyday environmental exposures we barely think about may be shaping our health in ways we’re only beginning to understand, and anything we can do to minimize kids’ exposure can help. 

Some easy ways to reduce exposure are:

• Drink filtered water

• Replace non-stick (Teflon) cookware

• Reduce consumption of packaged and ultraprocessed foods

Small swaps can have a huge impact.

Your Bedtime Schedule Might Matter More Than How Long You Sleep

A massive new study from Finland tracked over 3,000 middle-aged adults for more than 10 years, monitoring their sleep patterns using wearable devices.

The finding that caught my attention and re-emphasized something we've talked about before: irregular bedtimes can double the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and cardiovascular death.

But here's the twist. This only applied to people sleeping less than 8 hours per night.

If you are getting enough sleep, bedtime irregularity doesn’t seem to matter much. But if you are one of those people burning the candle at both ends with shorter sleep, going to bed at wildly different times each night can become a major cardiovascular risk factor.

In the study, researchers split participants into three groups based on how much their bedtime varied night to night. The "irregular" sleepers had bedtimes that swung by nearly 2 hours from night to night. Sometimes 9 PM, sometimes 1 AM. Compare that to "regular" sleepers whose heads hit the pillow within a 33-minute window each night.

What really struck me was that wake-up time variability didn't predict heart disease risk at all. It was specifically the consistency of when sleep was initiated that mattered.

This makes biological sense. When bedtime bounces around, you're repeatedly forcing your cardiovascular and endocrine systems to enter sleep at different circadian times, which can ultimately be damaging. 

Brady Holmer (who’s awesome) talked about this study in his Substack, Physiologically Speaking, and called this, "one of the most important studies on sleep in the last decade." That sounds about right!

The practical takeaway: If you're not getting a full 8 hours, your bedtime consistency becomes critical. It's not just about sleep quantity anymore. It's about sleep rhythm.

Alright, that’s it for this week! 

Much love,
Dhru Purohit 

The information in this newsletter is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice; please consult a qualified healthcare professional before making any health-related decisions.