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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

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.

adamgordonbell 1y ago
People use it in much smaller dosages then it's usually prescribed to apparently beneficial effect. I believe its also in the water supply in certain places, so if it works for dementia there are natural experiments already running on this. https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/low-dose-lithium-a-new-frontier-in-mental-health-treatment https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/low-dose-lithium-a-new...
- cypherpunks01 1y ago
  Yes, it's already thought that there's an association between naturally occurring lithium in drinking water and decreased suicide rates: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/association-between-naturally-occurring-lithium-in-drinking-water-and-suicide-rates-systematic-review-and-metaanalysis-of-ecological-studies/B7DDAF6E2A818C45EA64F3424E12D67A https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-... 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?
  - Mistletoe 1y ago
    This is fascinating, thank you.
  - valianteffort 1y ago
    The addition of flouride to tap water supply likely affects brain development. Let's not go adding lithium too. These things are simple enough to advise the populace to use on their own. The government should never play nanny, ever.
    - ikr678 1y ago
      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.
      - valianteffort 1y ago
        The government should not be bearing that cost. It is idiotic to ever put the state in charge of people's health.
        zius 1y ago
        Clearly, the best system is the one where you spend the most to get less /s
  - victorbjorklund 1y ago
    And crime in general. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7576670/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7576670/
  - twojacobtwo 1y ago
    (for others like myself) Results 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.
cubefox 1y ago
> 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.
- wonderwonder 1y ago
  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.
  - Angostura 1y ago
    > I don't really understand this mindset. 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".
    - wonderwonder 1y ago
      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.
jsbisviewtiful 1y ago
> I reject this kind of blind safetyism. 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.
- rogerrogerr 1y ago
  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.
  - CoastalCoder 1y ago
    > The former just fades into the modern world’s background noise of unchecked ass-covering. The missing piece of this argument is just what the probability of different legal risks is here. Wether or not their ass-covering is reasonable hinges on that and on their risk tolerance.
    - rogerrogerr 1y ago
      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.
wonderwonder 1y ago
I ordered 5mg tablets of Lithium Orate 5 minutes after reading this article on X. I take EGCG as well due to a similar article.
alphazard 1y ago
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.
lawlessone 1y ago
I've heard of suggestions that it should be added to water(in low doses of course) to see it reduces suicide rates. I like the idea but can only imagine the anti-flouride crowd would freak out.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  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.
  - ianmcgowan 1y ago
    That's exactly what the Lizard overlords are doing! /s - wouldn't be surprised there's a few conspiracy theorists who believe this...
  - burnt-resistor 1y ago
    > apathy and reduced motivation 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.
    - justinclift 1y ago
      Vitamin D? :)
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  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)
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  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.
zingababba 1y ago
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/ 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.
connicpu 1y ago
My spouse was prescribed lithium by doctors and it messed up her thyroid, it's not a drug to be taken lightly.
- vczf 1y ago
  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.
renecito 1y ago
yup, because this could not be a scam. You are free to try it, it's over the counter, no one is oppressing you here, Darwin is your friend.
nyeah 1y ago
"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.
UncleOxidant 1y ago
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).
Aurornis 1y ago
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.
- leoh 1y ago
  Not for you, then, right? Pretty normal for many medicines, supplements, etc. I think it’s cool we can try things (even if they don’t always work).
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    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.
Nifty3929 1y ago
Indeed! Sure, maybe lithium orotate can be bad in high doses. You know what's super-bad for sure? Alzheimer's! If I have Alzheimer's, please let me try whatever long-shot you have. I'll be your gunnie pig.
hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
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.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Next, on Chubbyemu ...

adamgordonbell 1y ago

People use it in much smaller dosages then it's usually prescribed to apparently beneficial effect. I believe its also in the water supply in certain places, so if it works for dementia there are natural experiments already running on this. https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/low-dose-lithium-a-new-frontier-in-mental-health-treatment https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/low-dose-lithium-a-new...

cypherpunks01 1y ago
Yes, it's already thought that there's an association between naturally occurring lithium in drinking water and decreased suicide rates: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/association-between-naturally-occurring-lithium-in-drinking-water-and-suicide-rates-systematic-review-and-metaanalysis-of-ecological-studies/B7DDAF6E2A818C45EA64F3424E12D67A https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-... 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?
- Mistletoe 1y ago
  This is fascinating, thank you.
- valianteffort 1y ago
  The addition of flouride to tap water supply likely affects brain development. Let's not go adding lithium too. These things are simple enough to advise the populace to use on their own. The government should never play nanny, ever.
  - ikr678 1y ago
    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.
    - valianteffort 1y ago
      The government should not be bearing that cost. It is idiotic to ever put the state in charge of people's health.
      - zius 1y ago
        Clearly, the best system is the one where you spend the most to get less /s
- victorbjorklund 1y ago
  And crime in general. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7576670/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7576670/
- twojacobtwo 1y ago
  (for others like myself) Results 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.

cubefox 1y ago

> 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.

wonderwonder 1y ago
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.
- Angostura 1y ago
  > I don't really understand this mindset. 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".
  - wonderwonder 1y ago
    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.

jsbisviewtiful 1y ago

> I reject this kind of blind safetyism. 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.

rogerrogerr 1y ago
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.
- CoastalCoder 1y ago
  > The former just fades into the modern world’s background noise of unchecked ass-covering. The missing piece of this argument is just what the probability of different legal risks is here. Wether or not their ass-covering is reasonable hinges on that and on their risk tolerance.
  - rogerrogerr 1y ago
    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.

wonderwonder 1y ago

I ordered 5mg tablets of Lithium Orate 5 minutes after reading this article on X. I take EGCG as well due to a similar article.

alphazard 1y ago

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.

lawlessone 1y ago

I've heard of suggestions that it should be added to water(in low doses of course) to see it reduces suicide rates. I like the idea but can only imagine the anti-flouride crowd would freak out.

Aurornis 1y ago
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.
- ianmcgowan 1y ago
  That's exactly what the Lizard overlords are doing! /s - wouldn't be surprised there's a few conspiracy theorists who believe this...
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  > apathy and reduced motivation 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.
  - justinclift 1y ago
    Vitamin D? :)
amanaplanacanal 1y ago
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)
burnt-resistor 1y ago
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.

zingababba 1y ago

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/ 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.

connicpu 1y ago

My spouse was prescribed lithium by doctors and it messed up her thyroid, it's not a drug to be taken lightly.

vczf 1y ago
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.

renecito 1y ago

yup, because this could not be a scam. You are free to try it, it's over the counter, no one is oppressing you here, Darwin is your friend.

nyeah 1y ago

"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.

UncleOxidant 1y ago

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).

Aurornis 1y ago

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.

leoh 1y ago
Not for you, then, right? Pretty normal for many medicines, supplements, etc. I think it’s cool we can try things (even if they don’t always work).
- Aurornis 1y ago
  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.

Nifty3929 1y ago

Indeed! Sure, maybe lithium orotate can be bad in high doses. You know what's super-bad for sure? Alzheimer's! If I have Alzheimer's, please let me try whatever long-shot you have. I'll be your gunnie pig.

hn_throwaway_99 1y ago

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.

burnt-resistor 1y ago

Next, on Chubbyemu ...