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139 points PaulHoule | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.21s | source
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zug_zug ◴[] No.42070418[source]
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.
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sva_ ◴[] No.42071975[source]
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.
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sapphicsnail ◴[] No.42072225[source]
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.

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rgbswan ◴[] No.42075016[source]
Combo of tricyclic antidepressant and amphetamines "turned me gayer and gayer" (and gave me the shitters) which reversed a few weeks after I stopped them. My Testosterone was stable throughout those months.

And I just remembered a girl I studied with whose ex-boyfriends turned gay or bisexual post-relationship. Pretty sure it was her gut bacteria.

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1. BizarroLand ◴[] No.42091256[source]
Completely anecdotal, but I recently did a round of oral antibiotics and afterwards followed up with an expensive probiotic.

It was like $60 a bottle for a 1 month supply, but I was told that oral antibiotics can wreck your gut biome so I figured this was the ideal time to repair/replace the biome I have.

In the 6 weeks since then I've lost ~30 lbs (I am following a diet, of course, this has been wildly successful but intentional in the abstract) and I have more energy, sleep better, and have lost my baseline "snack late at night" urges. Physiologically I do not feel deprived of food, hungry, or tired all the time like I have with previous diets. I've also cut my caffeine intake to almost 1/3rd of its previous amount and I drink more water.

I am sure there's a lot going on beside that, so I am not blaming my progress on the 1 thing by itself, but that being said, it does seem highly coincidental and correlated.

Might be worth a deeper dive, blow out (mostly) healthy people's gut bacteria, replace it with very specific blends, accumulate the data on what changes happen or what people report happening in the 2 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months 1 year afterward.