Lithium orotate is available over the counter. People could try it today.
> Since lithium has not yet been shown to be safe or effective in protecting against neurodegeneration in humans, Yankner emphasizes that people should not take lithium compounds on their own
I reject this kind of blind safetyism. A cursory search suggests that lithium orotate has been used for decades, and the article suggests that "profound effects" were seen at an "exquisitely low dose" which should be safe. They're going to need a much better explanation of why people shouldn't try it.
You said you searched to learn more about lithium, but somehow missed that it's highly recommended to be administered by doctors due to side effects after long term use. Anything that damages your kidneys or thyroids can kill you, so calling it "blind safetyism" is silly.
Exactly. An "exquisitely low dose" should be safe. And Alzheimer's also kills you, after making life no longer worth living. For people who already have it, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't try an appropriate dose.
The problem is that a subset of self-experimenters have the mindset "the more, the better" -- I still remember the Covid-era vitamin D discussions, with people openly reporting taking stupendous daily doses. (Lithium and vit. D are not in the same category, but you'll recognize the approach.)
So someone goes overboard, maybe damages their health, and traces it back to an article without the caveat. Lawsuit time! We're talking about fractions of a percent here, but with a wide enough potential readership you have a non-trivial chance of a hit. Common sense doesn't work at scale. Hence the CYA rhetoric.
It’s blind safetyism when an article writes “don’t do this because no one has proven it is safe”. Most people will read that as “you can probably do this but in the off chance something bad happens, I wrote these words so you have a harder time suing me”.
It would be more useful and effective for the article to say “don’t do this to yourself because it can damage your guts, see these links, there’s tradeoffs here”
The former just fades into the modern world’s background noise of unchecked ass-covering.
Oh, it’s rational for them! That’s the problem - it’s always rational to treat anything you write as the highest level of liability. No one loses money by adding more disclaimers. Observe:
Drinking water is a good idea.
*check with your doctor if you are allergic to water, have a history of drowning, or are unable to distinguish water from ethanol. Do not consume water while intubated. People with rabies may have adverse reactions to water. Use caution when drinking water if you cannot swallow or are currently vomiting. Water from some sources may be contaminated. Salt water may contain jellyfish.
—-
My legal exposure from the initial statement went down with every little stupid disclaimer I added there, and there’s no penalty for each one. But you probably didn’t even read the full thing. We’ve created a culture of everyone feeling like they need to cover their ass, and the real important things get drowned out.
When I started giving injections to a family member, I learned many things can cause problems that I didn't know about, such as that very tiny bits can break loose from the bottle top and cause issues. "Blind safetyism" is a point of view that can be more popular with certain personality types, but I think it's often a good starting point for research.
>it's highly recommended to be administered by doctors due to side effects after long term use
This is at a clinical dose which is somewhat high. It is the dosage fund reliable as treatment for bipolar type 1. As long as you get your kidney numbers checked twice a year, at that dose, its mostly unproblematic as issues show themselves in the numbers before major damage.
Lithium orotate has been available as a supplement for decades and hasn't shown adverse effects. Here is a study from a few years ago that also showed no harmful effects from lithium orotate: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027323002...
Especially since mice are not really perfect models for humans. For starters: these mice were "12 to 24 months of age", whereas your typical Alzheimer patient is well over 30 times that. The article also links it to amyloid plaques, which is a contested hypothesis that may well have held back Alzheimer research for decades. To be fair, the article seems to look at more mechanisms, but that's well beyond my expertise.
12 to 24 months is old in mouse years. And the article offers a plausible explanation for both why plaques could cause the disease and why clearing them alone might not fix it without lithium supplementation.
To add to what the parent comment said - Lithium is also prescribed for some mood disorders. So if you are thinking of self-medicating with it please be aware that it can mess with your brain chemistry too.
The error in "safteyism" isn't that the conventional wisdom will incorrectly identify safe things as dangerous. It's that risk and reward always exists on a spectrum, and the people best incentivized to get that tradeoff right are patients and caretakers, not concerned 3rd parties.
The error of the concerned 3rd party is particularly egregious with a disease like Alzheimer's, which presents a significant risk of ruin in the form of information death. It is totally rational to use an intervention that will cause you significant harm if it preserves your mind another few years.
I would think naturally occurring lithium in some people's water would give pretty good control conditions to do a wide study of this effect on Alzheimers as well?
The literature search identified 415 articles; of these, 15 ecological studies were included in the synthesis. The random-effects meta-analysis showed a consistent protective (or inverse) association between lithium levels/concentration in publicly available drinking water and total (pooled β = −0.27, 95% CI −0.47 to −0.08; P = 0.006, I2 = 83.3%), male (pooled β = −0.26, 95% CI −0.56 to 0.03; P = 0.08, I2 = 91.9%) and female (pooled β = −0.13, 95% CI −0.24 to −0.02; P = 0.03, I2 = 28.5%) suicide mortality rates. A similar protective association was observed in the six studies included in the narrative synthesis, and subgroup meta-analyses based on the higher/lower suicide mortality rates and lithium levels/concentration.
Is advising people to wear sunscreen and not speed also nannying? If the government ultimately bears the costs of poor health of citizens, why shouldnt they embark on public health interventions to lower those costs.
Completely agree. The other thing that was very encouraging about the study is that it actually reversed memory decline - it's not like you needed to take it for years/decades in advance to prevent that decline in the first place, so you can make the choice when the risk/reward tradeoff is much clearer.
Having seen a few family members succumb to dementia, it's not a path I want to take. Fuck up my kidneys and give me an early death, fine, but if I start showing the signs of that type of mental decline, I'm taking the lithium orotate.
My related biggest concern about this is that since it's a cheap supplement that can't be patented, it won't be a priority for the drug industry to study. Another reason to not necessarily trust the "Just slowly die by Alzheimers until we find the perfectly safe (patentable) antidote" crowd.
I tried Lithium Orotate at the typical supplement dose. After the first week it left me feeling rather blah. Discontinuing it reversed the feeling after a few days.
I repeated this a couple more times with a repeatable outcome.
It’s very hyped in supplement communities with claims that it’s perfectly safe and side effect free. I didn’t get any kidney damage or anything, but I also didn’t get a positive benefit from it. Only subtle negatives that built up over a week.
This is typical of a lot of supplements: The benefits are touted as near magic and the negatives are completely dismissed. Then people try it and discover either no effect or end up with side effects.
I've played with it on and off for years from 1mg up to 10mg a day. It's a drug I definitely 'feel' when I'm not saturated. I initially became interested in it due to this -> "Since vitamin B12 and folate also affect mood-associated parameters, the stimulation of the transport of these vitamins into brain cells by lithium may be cited as yet another mechanism of the anti-depressive, mood-elevating and anti-aggressive actions of lithium at nutritional dosage levels.” (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11838882/)
It does reach a point of diminishing returns for me and I become too sedated. I now take it irregularly.
"They" are just some people who did an experiment on mice. They don't know the effects on humans. It sounds like you think you know more than they do. Ok.
A paper is not like a religious commandment or something. It's, best case, some mortals honestly trying to learn something. Scolding them for admitting the limits of their knowledge is not reasonable.
The comment I see right above yours says "there is no reliable Mouse Model for Alzheimer's." So it's certainly not a slam dunk that taking OTC lithium orotate is going to prevent Alzheimer's. Maybe it'll work? (but you won't know for decades) And maybe it's safe as long as you don't exceed the recommended dose, but there can be interactions with other meds you might be taking (some diuretics will cause you to concentrate lithium, for example).
I tried the low-dose lithium orotate supplements and the net effect was apathy and reduced motivation. Not everyone experiences this but from searching I’m not alone.
Definitely not something to start pouring into the water supply.
Shit, that's my baseline. I'd pay for supplements that produced the opposite effect, even by placebo. In the meantime, I'll continue trying to Jedi mindtricking myself into caring, motivation, and productivity.
Pulling this out of my ass, but lithium is associated with weight gain, and has been suggested to be a possible causative agent on the obesity epidemic. (Extremely low confidence on this one)
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
Sure, but the amount and form of the lithium matters. 5mg of lithium orotate (as a supplement) versus 600mg lithium carbonate (as a mood stabilizer) will have vastly different acute and chronic health effects.
> They're going to need a much better explanation of why people shouldn't try it.
Clinical trials need many participants and take a long time, and they require a control group which doesn't take lithium orotate. Finding these people might be hard if everyone is taking it anyway.
So if after a long time its proven that it does prevent Alzheimer's, was the deaths of everyone that would have been taking lithium to prevent it due to this anecdotal article worth it?
Would you be willing to die of Alzheimer's in order to serve as a placebo for the control group? What about your parents?
I don't really understand this mindset.
I already ordered 5mg tablets of lithium orate as soon as I read this. I'll just add them to the handfuls of other supplements I take each day just in case they may protect against common degenerative ailments.
I very much adhere to the better safe than sorry or yolo approach to supplementation.
> So if after a long time its proven that it does prevent Alzheimer's, was the deaths of everyone that would have been taking lithium to prevent it due to this anecdotal article worth it?
And if it actually makes Alzheimer's worse?
We are talking about a mouse model of a disease that very famously doesn't work the same way in mice and humans. The most likely scenario is it does nothing. With this level of evidence you might as well just eat random garbage off the ground in the off chance it helps.
"Conclusion: Individuals with BD [Bi Polar Disorder] are at higher risk of dementia than both the general population or those with MDD. Lithium appears to reduce the risk of developing dementia in BD."
It's called evidence-based medicine and it's useful for answering questions such such as 'with taking Lithium prevent Alzheimer's by ensuring you die of kidney disease first.
Taking a bunch of unnecessary supplements isn't inherently "safe".
Low dose lithium is not going to cause kidney failure.
I was also responding specifically to OP advocating for people to intentionally not to take it so there is a ready supply of people to test it on who are not already on it for a long period of time (decades). They are advocating for self sacrifice.
This by default means there must be a large supply of people not on it for a long period of time who will suffer and die from Alzheimer's instead of just taking the supplement. That was my issue. It seemed to call for the self sacrifice of many in order to allow for a long term study. But I think you already know that if you read my response and just chose to focus on a single sentence.
The alternative to a clinical trial would be that there continues to be much less certainty whether lithium orotate actually works and is safe. Which would result in less or more usage than optimal.
Well I was the OP. It might be a tragedy of the commons situation. For each individual it may be better to ignore trials and just self medicate, but on the whole this could lead to an overall worse outcome in the long run.
Although that means you avoided answering my question directly multiple times although I think you strongly alluded that the answer would be no in your last response.
I look at my life and those of my family as precious and more valuable than all other lives (their lives over mine). I expect others to operate in a similar manner and that is why I am always taken aback at posts that seem to advocate for the sacrifice of one's self for the benefit of strangers. This is different of course from in the moment actions such as running into a burning building to save someone or stepping up to protect a woman you have never met from an aggressive man.
Your response while vague appears to indicate that you would not sacrifice yourself for this experiment either. Which is what I would expect from everyone.
I understand your general advocation for the clinical study and I agree with the need overall but not at the cost of intentionally sacrificing oneself.
So I'll pop a low dose lithium tablet along with a baby aspirin each night and hope you do the same. Wishing you a long life my friend.
5mg may be an order of magnitude more than needed.
I started my father [0] on ≈200ug and he was more animated and looked at photos around the house much more. Bumped him up to ≈500ug [1] the last two days, and he’s shown a nearly unbelievable improvement in lucidity and recognition.
He’s still nonverbal but babbling a lot more, and in a non-agitated way. He’ll make eye contact with us more and wiggle his eyebrows. He has not been running away from me during morning yogurt and other meals we sometimes have standing up. More responsive to music, photos, eye contact.
He actually kissed my mom today and then got teary-eyed. He hasn’t done anything like that in at least a year.
Tonight when he was tired, he wasn't unstoppably wandering. He was tired but still “there” and lucid. I was able to calmly walk him to his bedroom.
Lithium orotate might be the magic bullet. Lithium deficiency could very well be the cause of age-related neurodegeneration. It’s too early in my personal case study to draw firm conclusions, but this is looking absolutely incredible from my perspective as a caregiver. Subjectively, he seems no longer “lost” in the darkness.
If he is still stable and/or improving in a month, I will be making as much noise about this treatment as I can online and in meatspace. [2]
[0] Early onset posterior cortical atrophy and corticobasal degeneration. It presents initially as visual disturbances, hallucinations, and coordination problems rather than memory loss. Sometimes memory and speech can persist until the end.
[1] I opened up some 5mg Nutricost capsules, weighed the contents, and calculated how much of the mixture is needed for a given amount of active ingredient. Then I measure out each dose on a calibrated milligram scale. This is definitely out of reach for many people, so ideally companies can just add a small dose to multivitamins and call it a day. I’ve been taking the same dose I give my dad, and have not noticed much of anything.
[2] There are some ethical considerations in halting the disease process for those with late stage dementia. It would be inhumane to “cure” advanced AD if one has no hope of a life worth living, given one’s current capabilities and options. (For example, bed-bound in nursing homes with severe memory loss.) I’m very optimistic about lithium orotate, but I doubt it can do more than halt the neurodegeneration—which would mean rapidly hitting a low ceiling for cognitive improvements after beginning the therapy. That also means a practically life-long caregiving requirement. I didn’t want to be a caregiver for my father for the next 30+ years, but frankly I did not expect such a dramatic and immediate improvement in his condition. I expected nothing at all to happen.
> Since lithium has not yet been shown to be safe or effective in protecting against neurodegeneration in humans, Yankner emphasizes that people should not take lithium compounds on their own
I reject this kind of blind safetyism. A cursory search suggests that lithium orotate has been used for decades, and the article suggests that "profound effects" were seen at an "exquisitely low dose" which should be safe. They're going to need a much better explanation of why people shouldn't try it.