Thank you for this piece! Also love your writing style as well and it reminds me of derrangedphysiology blog which might be of interest. Looking forward to the next writings!!
I spent some time looking at bacteria that actually produce plastics as well as enzymes that can break it down. I also looked at the silk worm. I looked at this partly because I looked at Mycobacteria’s connection to PD. They break down hydrocarbons and their cell walls are problematic. There is an enzyme from papers in the 1940’s from Russia and Iran discussing this enzyme. It cured TB. It was called cerase. It has obviously been renamed because I found no current reference to the name. The enzyme is found in the wax moth gallinarium. It comes from the bacteria in the gut. I’ll have to look but I believe it may be an Enterococcus. This may seem like a random sidebar but I don’t think so. I need to revisit all of the Kynurenine papers I have. 😂
Every time a new article of yours comes out, I close all my tabs, stop what I'm doing and dedicate my time to reading it...as someone who has a schizophrenia "diagnosis" this one is particularly pertinent.
I have a couple of questions for you...
How much of the rise in mental health issues do you think correlates to the increase in plastic around food?
Can we reduce the amount of quinolic acid being generated by supplementing with niacin, because then we wouldn't need to convert from tryptophan?
My first thought was that you could look at historic data on e.g. suicide at the introduction of phthalates (1920s) vs. later rises, but the US suicide data around 1900 is just fucking wild so I have no idea.
>Every time a new article of yours comes out, I close all my tabs, stop what I'm doing and dedicate my time to reading it...as someone who has a schizophrenia "diagnosis" this one is particularly pertinent.
Very kind words, brother. Thank you. I will do a post on schizophrenia specifically soon. I have a hypothesis on that one.
>How much of the rise in mental health issues do you think correlates to the increase in plastic around food?
I truly can't even speculate here. I'm sorry.
>Can we reduce the amount of quinolic acid being generated by supplementing with niacin, because then we wouldn't need to convert from tryptophan?
Maybe! The enzyme that diverts toward picolinic acid and away from quinolinic is called ACMSD. A lot of enzymes are on feedback switches like that—where higher amounts of NAD+ would upregulate expression of ACMSD by telling the body it's okay to focus on picolinic acid. But I have no idea if this particular enzyme system is on a feedback switch like that.
Of course, as acreol points out below, the enzyme QPRT—which is the one that turns quinolinic acid into niacin—is also probably an important player in preventing the stuff's accumulation. And if you supplemented a bunch of niacin, you might risk cranking that enzyme way down.
I really look forward to hearing your hypothesis on schizophrenia!
One thing that I've always found amusing (or disturbing depending on how cynical I'm feeling) is that whenever I challenge the necessity of medication, I'm told that schizophrenia is an illness like diabetes, the medication is insulin.
However, you'd never give insulin to someone without checking their blood sugar, but I'll get prescribed strong dopamine antagonists without undergoing a spinal tap to check my dopamine levels.
Yeah, I mean that feels like the result of a very doctrinaire approach to medicine which prioritizes the physician covering their ass so they can say "we did everything we could"—even if it's not necessarily the best thing for the patient.
Tricky thing about the "spinal tap" is that I don't even think there's evidence of a generalized dopamine excess in the brain in schizophrenia. Kynurenic acid—one of the compounds that I touched on in this post, and which is involved in (IMO) the best theories of the biochemistry of schizophrenia—alters the firing patterns of dopamine neurons in certain specific brain regions. This may be responsible for (or upstream of) some of the hallucinatory aspects of the disease.
This is something that a dopamine antagonist might help with, but it's not something that would necessarily show up as "high dopamine" on a spinal tap. It would be cool if we had a reliable biomarker-based diagnostic for this disease :|
Looking through the "distribution in plants" section makes it sound like apples and chocolate are probably the most abundant sources in your average person's diet. I'm reminded of the recurring bit in the third Harry Potter book where chocolate is the most powerful antidote to the lingering aftereffects of a dementor encounter. Something there!
I'm convinced my grandmother who is 96 owes much of her good health to her steady consumption of dark chocolate. I'm glad to see the science is catching up :)
I'm sure someone has sent this to you Stephen but reading about actual efforts to test phthalate content in food - https://x.com/natfriedman/status/1872728491290189944?t=1DKeJ11omvc6l9NakZfjKg&s=19 - reminded me of this article. You were very far ahead of the popular reporting on this topic. Love the substack and hope to read more from you.
Your writing style is so amazing. Maybe this is a tall ask for just a comment, but anyway I've been wondering more generally about order of magnitude propensities of different materials shedding and the risks on the route of exposure, I guess you don't seem concerned with aluminum foil for example. Scraping cheese seems wild to me though, I guess sharp knives exist.
As I said in the post, I'm a little skeptical of any attempt to engineer around the problem. Phrases like "derived from wood-based cellulose" and "primarily" CaCO3 makes me want to see the rest of the ingredients & process, but such things are often very hard to find.
Thank you for this piece! Also love your writing style as well and it reminds me of derrangedphysiology blog which might be of interest. Looking forward to the next writings!!
Grape seed https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1756464620300852
I spent some time looking at bacteria that actually produce plastics as well as enzymes that can break it down. I also looked at the silk worm. I looked at this partly because I looked at Mycobacteria’s connection to PD. They break down hydrocarbons and their cell walls are problematic. There is an enzyme from papers in the 1940’s from Russia and Iran discussing this enzyme. It cured TB. It was called cerase. It has obviously been renamed because I found no current reference to the name. The enzyme is found in the wax moth gallinarium. It comes from the bacteria in the gut. I’ll have to look but I believe it may be an Enterococcus. This may seem like a random sidebar but I don’t think so. I need to revisit all of the Kynurenine papers I have. 😂
Every time a new article of yours comes out, I close all my tabs, stop what I'm doing and dedicate my time to reading it...as someone who has a schizophrenia "diagnosis" this one is particularly pertinent.
I have a couple of questions for you...
How much of the rise in mental health issues do you think correlates to the increase in plastic around food?
Can we reduce the amount of quinolic acid being generated by supplementing with niacin, because then we wouldn't need to convert from tryptophan?
My first thought was that you could look at historic data on e.g. suicide at the introduction of phthalates (1920s) vs. later rises, but the US suicide data around 1900 is just fucking wild so I have no idea.
https://www.annualreviews.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/ar/journals/content/publhealth/2022/publhealth.2022.43.issue-1/annurev-publhealth-051920-123206/20220321/images/medium/pu43099.f1.gif
Yeah, I guess there's so much else going on too that it would be impossible to parse out the effects of plastic.
>Every time a new article of yours comes out, I close all my tabs, stop what I'm doing and dedicate my time to reading it...as someone who has a schizophrenia "diagnosis" this one is particularly pertinent.
Very kind words, brother. Thank you. I will do a post on schizophrenia specifically soon. I have a hypothesis on that one.
>How much of the rise in mental health issues do you think correlates to the increase in plastic around food?
I truly can't even speculate here. I'm sorry.
>Can we reduce the amount of quinolic acid being generated by supplementing with niacin, because then we wouldn't need to convert from tryptophan?
Maybe! The enzyme that diverts toward picolinic acid and away from quinolinic is called ACMSD. A lot of enzymes are on feedback switches like that—where higher amounts of NAD+ would upregulate expression of ACMSD by telling the body it's okay to focus on picolinic acid. But I have no idea if this particular enzyme system is on a feedback switch like that.
Of course, as acreol points out below, the enzyme QPRT—which is the one that turns quinolinic acid into niacin—is also probably an important player in preventing the stuff's accumulation. And if you supplemented a bunch of niacin, you might risk cranking that enzyme way down.
I really look forward to hearing your hypothesis on schizophrenia!
One thing that I've always found amusing (or disturbing depending on how cynical I'm feeling) is that whenever I challenge the necessity of medication, I'm told that schizophrenia is an illness like diabetes, the medication is insulin.
However, you'd never give insulin to someone without checking their blood sugar, but I'll get prescribed strong dopamine antagonists without undergoing a spinal tap to check my dopamine levels.
Yeah, I mean that feels like the result of a very doctrinaire approach to medicine which prioritizes the physician covering their ass so they can say "we did everything we could"—even if it's not necessarily the best thing for the patient.
Tricky thing about the "spinal tap" is that I don't even think there's evidence of a generalized dopamine excess in the brain in schizophrenia. Kynurenic acid—one of the compounds that I touched on in this post, and which is involved in (IMO) the best theories of the biochemistry of schizophrenia—alters the firing patterns of dopamine neurons in certain specific brain regions. This may be responsible for (or upstream of) some of the hallucinatory aspects of the disease.
This is something that a dopamine antagonist might help with, but it's not something that would necessarily show up as "high dopamine" on a spinal tap. It would be cool if we had a reliable biomarker-based diagnostic for this disease :|
For reducing quinolinic acid, I saw one way you can do that is by upregulating the enzymes which metabolize it through consuming proanthocyanidins https://www.reddit.com/r/Supplements/comments/xsx7vm/comment/iqnyilh/
So supplements like Pycnogenol and grape seed extracts (idk if Pycnogenol is actually superior, just more expensive) and maybe lots of these foods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proanthocyanidin#Distribution_in_plants
Yo, GREAT find!
Looking through the "distribution in plants" section makes it sound like apples and chocolate are probably the most abundant sources in your average person's diet. I'm reminded of the recurring bit in the third Harry Potter book where chocolate is the most powerful antidote to the lingering aftereffects of a dementor encounter. Something there!
I'm convinced my grandmother who is 96 owes much of her good health to her steady consumption of dark chocolate. I'm glad to see the science is catching up :)
I'm sure someone has sent this to you Stephen but reading about actual efforts to test phthalate content in food - https://x.com/natfriedman/status/1872728491290189944?t=1DKeJ11omvc6l9NakZfjKg&s=19 - reminded me of this article. You were very far ahead of the popular reporting on this topic. Love the substack and hope to read more from you.
Your writing style is so amazing. Maybe this is a tall ask for just a comment, but anyway I've been wondering more generally about order of magnitude propensities of different materials shedding and the risks on the route of exposure, I guess you don't seem concerned with aluminum foil for example. Scraping cheese seems wild to me though, I guess sharp knives exist.
Maybe cellulose alternatives to plastic will be alright? For cheese, there's these clear (!) cellulose sheets: https://www.formaticum.com/collections/plastic-free/products/biodegradable-cheese-storage-sheets
And these "primarily" calcium carbonate ones: https://saxelbycheese.com/products/saxelby-cheese-paper
As I said in the post, I'm a little skeptical of any attempt to engineer around the problem. Phrases like "derived from wood-based cellulose" and "primarily" CaCO3 makes me want to see the rest of the ingredients & process, but such things are often very hard to find.