Monday Open Mic – ask a Question

Question :

What’s your personal belief that species and mental disorders are linked??? Eg Neanderthal, Denisovan etc.

Answer:

TL:DR We know some DNA is a direct marker, while other DNA is just a warning/ caution.

There is some good correlative evidence that having certain DNA segments increases the risk of various mental disorders. Some of those DNA segments are unique to Denisovan, Neanderthal and other sub species of human.
* We are going to use “sub species” to refer to other kinds of humans DNA such as Denisovan, Neanderthal etc.

Correlation is not causation.

There are more DNA segments that are not sub species specific that are correlated more strongly with increased risk of mental illness when compared to the correlations linked to sub species.

For DNA that has a strong correlation to mental ill health, the next important question needs to focus on mechanism for why this impacts your mental health and are there compensatory genes that offset a “bad” gene. For example, if you have a gene that interferes with zinc absorption, that could be bad for your health, however you might have another gene that increases zinc absorption, mitigating or protecting you from that first DNA sequence.

This is interaction of multiple genes affecting the absorption, production, or resistance to certain things is why a single gene is indicative of risk only, not a 100% certainty.

We know that for people who need mental health medication (SSRI, SNRI, antipsychotics, ADHD meds etc) the ability to metabolise the medicine is directly connected to the p450 gene cluster. This controls the production of a list of about 30 enzymes, where 6 enzymes are responsible for the metabolism of about 90% of medications. Fort most mental health meds. The enzymes CYP-2D6 and CYP-2C19 are REALLY important. Most white people (90%) have good expression of these enzymes, so medication generally works as expected. As many as 61% of Algerians [LINK] have “non-normal” (!) presentations of CYP-2D6 and thus likely won’t absorb medications as expected. You can have no enzyme (can’t metabolise), regular, extra (fast metaboliser) or over supply (hyper metaboliser). This sequence is not related to any sub species variants of humans and is far more likely to affect your mental health.

! – It is important to recognise that Western Medicine is “normalised” for mostly Northern European genes. Normal for Algeria is going to be quite different from that medical default of “normal”.