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The widespread use of fertilizers could be the case. The thing is, we possibly don't know all the necessary nutrients, and causing an imbalance as the result, w
by PavlikPaja 8y ago
The widespread use of fertilizers could be the case. The thing is, we possibly don't know all the necessary nutrients, and causing an imbalance as the result, where some elements are supplied in excess and others are missing. The myopia and obesity epidemics could also be the result - countries that use lanthanides in fertilizers show lower levels of obesity, minimal rates of mental illness, slower aging and higher IQ, regardless of wealth.
Iron toxicity is also a problem in many places, as the excess iron replaces other metals, especially manganese. Many diseases associated with aging are actually caused by this excess and may have nothing to do with aging at all. Many people are mentally retarded because of irresponsible attempts to increase intake despite inadequate research. (Iron increases the number of D2 and D1 dopamine receptors in the brain, which makes them psychotic, people who don't suffer from this are told to have "high functioning autism". The supposedly neuroptypical people are people who suffer from thought insertions - they can see you're lying, mean something else than what you say etc. and apparently accept it as perfectly normal that each of them interprets the same situation differently. They also hear voices and call it their inner monologue.)
These replacements are the reason why the deficiencies are hard to notice - the protein will usually accept some other metal when the appropriate metal ion is not found, so that the protein may be known to bind to e.g. calcium, when a rare earth element would be preferable.
- orhmeh09 8y agoCould you further explain the relation of iron, psychoticism, and autism? Maybe I misunderstood but the proposed links sound unconvincing.
- PavlikPaja 8y agoThe exposure to excess iron in infancy increases the amount of dopamine receptors in the brain. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18790724 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18790724 Antipsychotics work primarily by blocking those, without activating them. Autism has been called the opposite of schizophrenia. It has been noticed that when autistic people have high fever or encephalitis, they behave "normally". https://embraceasd.com/the-fever-effect/ https://embraceasd.com/the-fever-effect/ I know how it sounds, but that is the best explanation I have.
- novia 8y agoI find your hypothesis intriguing, but I'm curious about how you would be able to test it and possibly disprove it.
- PavlikPaja 8y agoTest if people can actually spot liars (when you know the truth), or if they are not clearly above chance. Place microphone phased arrays in a loud club, to see if people actually understand each other, or if they hallucinate most of what others say. Use the same shot of an actor cut in in different contexts, to test if people can accurately see the expression, or if they making it up based on what they know otherwise.
- PavlikPaja 8y agoAside of the obvious of testing the effects of reduced iron intake directly.
- taneq 8y agoAre you seriously proposing that having an inner monologue is a side effect of psychosis caused by excessive dietary iron? O.o
- PavlikPaja 8y agoI'm indeed seriously proposing that the majority, the so called " neurotypical people" are in fact psychotic and autistic people are those who remained healthy. Inner speech is never mentioned in ancient literature. The voices and thought insertions become so deeply internalized when it strikes so early that the person completely believes this is actually how people communicate with them. It is to some degree influenced by actual events and people can always rationalize when it fails. The majority of people outside the US/Europe seems to be autistic, that is, not psychotic. Many autistic people found out they are normal in Asia.
- zcid 8y agoInteresting perspective. I do note that there are theories such as the bicameral mind that disagree about the lack of inner monologue in ancient cultures.
- PavlikPaja 8y agoThe bicameral mind explains it somewhat bizarrely that the pople actually did hear voices, only that they always attributed them to external sources. But an autistic mind hears no voices, as one consciousness has nothing to tell to itself, as it already knows all that it knows.
- feanaro 8y agoHow would this hypothesis explain the fact that people with low-functioning autism are maladapted to the environment, in the sense that they would have low chances of surviving a few thousand years ago? It seems to me that it is nearly impossible that this form would be naturally selected, unless current levels of dietary iron were always common and are therefore not excessive to begin with.