Neurotransmitters: The Chemical Orchestra Environmental Toxins Are Disrupting Neurotransmitters — the chemical signalling molecules that transmit information across synaptic junctions between neurons — include serotonin, dopamine, noradrenaline, GABA, glutamate, acetylcholine, and numerous neuropeptides, each mediating distinct aspects of mood, cognition, motivation, sleep, pain perception, and autonomic function. The synthesis of every major neurotransmitter depends on specific nutritional precursors and enzymatic cofactors — tryptophan for serotonin, tyrosine for dopamine and noradrenaline, choline for acetylcholine, glutamate for GABA — making nutritional deficiency and gut dysfunction (which impairs amino acid absorption and houses 95% of serotonin-producing enterochromaffin cells) direct determinants of neurotransmitter availability. Environmental neurotoxins including heavy metals, organophosphate pesticides, glyphosate (which disrupts the shikimate pathway in gut bacteria that produce aromatic amino acid precursors), and certain pharmaceutical compounds alter neurotransmitter synthesis, release, receptor sensitivity, and reuptake in ways that the current psychiatric paradigm attributes to genetic predisposition rather than environmental aetiology — a fundamental misattribution with profound consequences for treatment.
#neurotransmitters #serotonin
