Lithium
Updated January 31, 2023
Elements & Minerals
Lithium is an essential element which has no RDA and has not made it on the radar screen of nutrition. The growing data on lithium suggests that it is a necessary nutrient in managing stress, including both physiological stress (virus, toxin) and psycho-spiritual stress.
Most people have only heard of lithium as a drug for psychiatric diseases such as bipolar or manic-depression. However, at the pharmaceutical doses used, it damages the thyroid, kidneys and brain. Most patients can not take it for long-term use due to these complications. The dose used in psychiaty is 10-300 times the nutritional dose. It’s equivalent to drinking 20-600 quarts of water per day, rather than 2. That much water is toxic, as is lithium at the doses used.
Lithium is excluded from most multi-vitamin and mineral products because of its bad rap. However, it is helpful, and possibly essential, to help defend against and even reverse neurological damage after head trauma and in several neuro-degenerative conditions including dementia.
As you can see in the links below (start from the top articles), lithium is intimately involved in brain health. It not only can protect the brain, it can even help reverse Alzheimers and other neurodegenerative diseases due to its ability to induce autophagy.
lithium new york times, 9/2014
lithium and alzheimers Greenblat Townsend 2018
lithium_Greenblat Townsend 2015
! Effects of Lithium on Inflammation.2014.mic
A toxicological evaluation of lithium orotate.2021
Challenging the Negative Perception of Lithium and Optimizing Its Long-Term Administration.2018
!!A new avenue for lithium–intervention in traumatic brain injury
Lithium protects dopaminergic cells from rotenone toxicity via autophagy enhancement
Lithium trumps valproate for bipolar disorder
Effects of lithium and myoinositol
!!Perturbations of Iodine Metabolism by Lithium.nih.1984_p
!!Lithium modifies brain arachidonic and docosahexaenoic metabolism in rat neuroinflammation.mic.2010.nih!
Mayo Clinic Prescribing Guidelines!
Lithium (Oral Route) Proper Use – Mayo Clinic