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.