I’ve read multiple journals on this subject, and I can’t seem to find a logical explanation as to why they substitute calcium fluoride for sodium fluoride. Matter of fact, all the research i’ve read highlights dangers with the use of the sodium fluoride version including reductions in intelligence (in mice ).
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So, tooth decay happens when bacteria in your mouth eat sugars and excrete acids. Those acids break down the enamel that protects our teeth. While our mouths have a natural process to help remineralize our teeth, our high sugar/carb diets provide extra sugars in the mouth, leading to extra bacteria, leading to more acid. That is why tooth decay is problem in our society and not a problem in societies not as reliant on grains as a staple food.
Sodium fluoride helps produce a compound – fluorapatite – that is more resistant to acids than what we would normally produce. When this compound is used in remineralization, the result is stronger, more resistant enamel than we would otherwise make.
The dangers of sodium fluoride are basically non-existent in the quantities present in municiple water supplies. The studies you have seen are when mice are exposed to fluoride levels hundreds or thousands of times higher than what you are exposed to. As is always the case with poisons, it isn’t the substance – it is the dose.
Fluoride is the chemical we want for teeth. It’s an ion, which is why the chemical additive is sodium/calcium fluoride. It basically helps to strengthen tooth enamel and has huge public health benefits as a result.
As far as the dangers of sodium fluoride… I would recommend that you be cautious about anything you read regarding it. There’s a lot of people that are anti-fluoridation of the public water supply and sodium fluoride is a common compound used for it. They tend to use very questionable “scientific” methods to claim that it’s unsafe.
Strictly speaking, what we get in our teeth from fluoride is fluoroapatite rather than calcium fluoride.
But we don’t use calcium fluoride, a.k.a. fluorite in toothpaste because it isn’t very soluble in water. The fluoride ions are locked in a crystal structure with calcium ions and don’t readily transfer to our teeth. So calcium fluoride in toothpaste would be useless. Sodium fluoride is much more soluble in water. Free fluoride ions in solution can easily find their way to our teeth.
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The sodium fluoride (or stannous fluoride in many new toothpastes such as Crest Pro-Health), helps to replace the enamel mineral (hydroxyapatite) with a stronger mineral (fluorapatite). As for why sodium fluoride and not calcium fluoride? Simply, sodium fluoride is more water soluble, making it more effective in lower concentrations.
[This](https://youtube.com/watch?v=TyVV0UDQ_f4&feature=share9) video gives a quick explanation.
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