Exposure to phthalate compromises brain function in adult vertebrates

Obviously this is baseless speculation, but I sure do wonder if various psychological conditions that are so diverse and hard to pin down (i.e. 3 out of these 9 symptoms around attention, social behavior, or impulse control) are ultimately just going to be proven to be purely biological. And since genetics can only explain less than half of it, it sure seems that something messing with chemical signaling would be a reasonable explanation for the rest.

Food. It’s food. We are only just beginning to understand the less obvious effects of the modern diet, including all the processing and additives. Much has not been explored, such as is if the abundance of various toxic chemicals at supposedly safe levels has a synergistic effect, for example the many endocrine disrupting compounds with diverse mechanisms. But over the past decade it has become pretty clear that the Gut-Brain relationship is extremely important, including in understanding psychopathology.

Another emerging idea is that much of the negative health trend that’s been progressing extra rapidly since the 90’s is the result of mitochondrial dysfunction, driven by the multifactored (ultraprocessed foods, icides and tives, sedentary lifestyle, the incessant toxin-boosted immune shocks throughout development, possibly even omnipresent modulated emf) assault on our biology. It makes a lot of sense, to me at least, that crippling the source of cellular energy would precipitate seemingly unrelated chronic pathologies. This last paragraph especially is still highly speculative and controversial.

Thanks for clearing this up, I certainly find your citations compelling.

It’s trivial to find studies detailing lower-magnitude negative effects of the things mentioned, but in isolation. As far is I’m aware, the net impact on our biology of the dozens of environmental stressors we face remains to be studied.

This doesn’t directly go to anything I said, but I will share this fun review: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221475002...

I've been speculating on industrial pollutants that act as endocrine disruptors for years now, and every so often some evidence emerges. People understandably don't like such mundane explanations when they've built large parts of their identity around the issues it may have caused them though.

They should look on the bright side: eliminating plastic exposure could be a great wellspring of identity. I mean to really avoid them you’d have to make all your food from raw unprocessed ingredients, and then there’s clothing, all the objects you interact with throughout the day, etc.

Edit: expanding a bit more on the idea. DIYing all the stuff you’d need to avoid plastics is a much bigger identity statement than neurodivergent. Tho saying I’ve been subtly poisoned is far less sexy than saying I’m neurodivergent.

You're idea is hardly novel. I've had plenty of people tell me this or that chemical caused me to be trans. I've also spent plenty of time researching possible biological causes of transness. I'm personally open to the idea that maybe there's a biological cause but I haven't found a convincing explanation yet.

The problem is that when I have conversations with people about soy turning me trans or social media turning me trans they are often trying to use that as a way to deny me any agency over my own life.

Ah, VAERS strikes again.

> I've had plenty of people tell me this or that chemical caused me to be trans.

Isn't this pretty obviously true? Some chemical in the womb caused every one of us to be or feel the gender they do.

Sure? Is “Of all reported SIDS cases post-vaccination, 75 % occurred within 7 days (p < 0.00001)” that simple?

No, it's just a lie. For example, vaccines _prevent_ SIDS: https://www.chop.edu/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety...

But wait, there's more: https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/missed-vaccinations-did-n...

Missing vaccines did not reduce the incidence of SIDS. This is as close to a clean experiment as possible to get.

Trans people have been around ages, same as gays and all that. Yet no gay gene discovered.

We know that a living being is just not only DNA, but also its environment; now on top of that add all the big complexity of human social behaviour and gender into it. I doubt they will find a "cause" to trans-ness.

Removing plastics from my apartment has made it come to life

The biggest change was giving all of my plants real planters. They are so much happier now :)

It's not so trivial as you're making it out it be. But at the same time I agree that if there's a chemical influence, I would not be surprised if it's occuring in utero.

That’s what the study concluded, how is it a lie? I don’t see where your first source says they prevent SIDS, it cites some studies that found no effect and one where “The authors concluded that these data support findings of past controlled studies showing that the temporal association between infant vaccination and SIDS is coincidental and not causal.”, so perhaps the reasoning about the findings in the paper I linked are off the mark, but what you linked does not show that the statistics are wrong.