JTG #52 The Hidden Cause Of Acne: How Fluoride May Be Wrecking Your Skin With Melissa Gallico

*Special announcement about the podcast*
Hi, I’m Caroline Dalia Kaliani, Functional Nutrition Practitioner, Herbal Medicine Mama & formulator of a botanical skincare line for rosacea.
A few years ago, I launched this free educational platform called Journey to Glow.
The goal? To explore natural, holistic and effective solutions for skin “issues”.
In my quest to share the effectiveness of natural medicine, I interviewed over 75+ holistic skin experts (Functional Medicine Practitioners, Naturopathic NDs, Holistic Nutritionists, Integrative Dermatologists, and Ayurvedic doctors…) as well as dozens of womxn who fully healed rosacea.
The Journey To Glow podcast reached over 100,000 listeners and received hundreds of 5 stars reviews in 30 different countries. But the best part? Were the weekly emails from listeners and readers who shared they have regained hope that they could heal their skin!
Mission accomplished!
After years of making the episodes available for free on mainstream podcast platforms, we are now rethinking how we want this information to be accessed.
If you’d like to be notified of the next steps, sign up for the Glowletter at the bottom of this page.
Thank you for listening and for being on the journey with us!

JTG #52 The Hidden Cause Of Acne: How Fluoride May Be Wrecking Your Skin With Melissa Gallico
In this podcast episode we talk to Melissa Gallico, an FBI Intelligence Analyst, about fluoride and how it may be wrecking your skin.
Melissa Gallico is a former military intelligence officer, Fulbright scholar, and intelligence specialist at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She graduated with honors from Georgetown University and has a master’s degree from the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom. The Hidden Cause of Acne is her first book.
After several stints living abroad in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean, Gallico noticed the cystic acne that plagued her for two decades while living in the United States was non-existent when she resided in certain countries. This simple observation turned out to be a critical clue that would help unravel the whole case.
In this interview, Melissa shares:
- The link between fluoride and acne
- How she figured out fluoride was causing her cystic acne
- What she did to clear her skin
- How fluoride is hiding in food and how it’s affecting your skin
- She also exposes the biggest pollution scandal which prompted the creation of her podcast #fpollution
This is a podcast episode that will blow your mind. The fact that authorities are blatantly lying to us, FOR-PROFIT is unacceptable and needs to stop.
Please take a moment to share this interview with your friends, loved ones or anyone you know suffering from acne. If you share on Instagram or Facebook, please tag @lovemyjourneytoglow so we can thank you!
This is taken from Melissa’s post on CHANGE.ORG:
“In 2012, Harvard researchers published a systematic review and meta-analysis implicating fluoride as a potential neurotoxin affecting the developing brain. [source: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1104912/]
Three years later, in December 2015, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) admitted: “the existing literature is limited in its ability to evaluate potential neurocognitive effects of fluoride in people associated with the current U.S. Public Health Service drinking water guidance (0.7 mg/L).” [source] The NTP then outlined a plan to study the extent of fluoride’s impact on children’s neurodevelopment.
Why is the Department of Health and Human Services still recommending the addition of fluoride to the public water supply while toxicologists in the National Toxicology Program admit we do not have a clear understanding of its neurotoxic effect on children?
When water fluoridation was first endorsed by government dentists seventy years ago, we didn’t realize the effect chronic exposure to toxic chemicals can have on long-term health. We had to learn the hard way that chemicals such as lead, mercury, asbestos, and DDT are more dangerous than we originally thought. Given this history, the prudent course of action is to stop endorsing public water fluoridation until our leading toxicologists (not dentists) fully study its safety.
Here’s how I became interested in fluoride.
Nearly all my life, I drank fluoridated water without questioning the health authorities who said it was good for me. But when I spent a year in Scotland as a Fulbright scholar, I experienced the dramatic difference it makes living in a non-fluoridated country. Over 95 percent of Western Europe does not fluoridate its water supply.
For me, the major difference living without fluoridated water was the disappearance of the cystic acne that plagued me throughout my adult life. I eventually figured out that fluoride was the cause of my acne.
Sensitivity to fluoride is not an uncommon condition, it’s just not commonly diagnosed because few people understand the extent to which fluoride has infiltrated our modern lives. In addition to public drinking water and toothpaste, we are exposed to fluoride through fluoride-based pesticides that accumulate in fruit, vegetables, and even chicken nuggets and lunch meat, as well as fluorinated pharmaceuticals like Prozac and Paxil.
When I started researching fluoride, I was shocked to learn that according to the CDC, 90 percent of the fluoride added to the water supply is hydrofluorosilicic acid, an unfiltered byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer industry. Fluoride is considered a pollutant when released through factory smokestacks but after fluoride pollution devastated thousands of acres of agricultural land in the 1950s, regulators restricted its release into the atmosphere. This is the same industrial byproduct that is now packaged and sold to local water utilities for addition to public water supplies.
The research on fluoride has been flagrantly skewed by corporate polluters who had a strong self-interest in proving the safety and effectiveness of fluoridation. In a comprehensive review conducted in June 2015 by the Cochrane Group, a U.K.-based organization described in Newsweek as “the gold standard of scientific rigor in assessing the effectiveness of public health policies,” reviewers concluded: “There is very little contemporary evidence, meeting the review’s inclusion criteria, that has evaluated the effectiveness of water fluoridation for the prevention of caries.”
Learn more and sign Melissa’s petition here.
PS: If you enjoyed this podcast interview, you’re going to love my conversation with Melissa on Clearing Cystic Acne. And don’t forget to check out our library of free resources to help you heal acne naturally and holistically, click this link to dive in: journeytoglow.com/category-acne.
Melissa’s before & after…

Links & Resources
Hidden Cause of Acne website hiddencauseofacne.com
Buy the book on Amazon
#FPOLLUTION on Youtube
Listen to more episodes on healing acne naturally journeytoglow.com/category-acne
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