Lithium and Brain Health

The health field has been buzzing about a study that was recently published related to Alzheimer’s disease markers and the mineral lithium, a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Got lithium? You can use it in batteries, nuclear reactions, and many other industries; it’s also used in medications to stabilize mood.

Researchers decided to find out the relationship between markers for Alzheimer’s such as types of amyloid structures in the brain. There have been associations with reduced lithium intake and mild cognitive impairment in prior studies, so researchers decided to examine how mice on a reduced-lithium diet would respond. They measured several other minerals as well, but the only one associated with an increase in amyloid structures was lithium. It seems that when there’s not enough lithium in the diet, the brain cannot function as normal and sequesters the lithium in the amyloid bodies; brain function decreases further as lithium levels drop, including cognitive impairment.

The normal amount of lithium found in the diet suggests we get 0.6 to 3 mg per day, mostly from water and food. That amount is able to sustain the 7 mg typically found in an adult human. The next question would be how much it would take to reverse cognitive impairment. I’ll cover that on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?