Currently the official RDA of lithium is zero; and it is known to be accumulative in the body meaning that intake for medical reasons like treating bipolar syndrome has to be carefully monitored. That said, lithium is sold over the counter as a supplement typically in small doses– 1 to 5 mg. Is there a known ceiling for continuing consumption that one should definitely NOT exceed?
I had no idea. I thought it was a powerful drug that had to be prescribed by a psychiatrist.
In Ashland, Oregon you can slurp it from a water fountain at the lithium-rich spring.
I recently watched this amusing video where they try “all the salts”, from lithium chloride to cesium chloride.
Lithium chloride was apparently pretty good. And as it happens, it was once used as a salt substitute, but did have toxic effects in large quantities and so this was stopped.
I suspect that a couple hundred milligrams per day would be fine. This is based on the fact that sodium at 2500 mg/day is normal, and lithium is about 1/3 the atomic mass. So when used normally as a salt substitute, one would expect about 800 mg/day. Perhaps that was already moderately toxic, but it seems doubtful that 200 mg/day would be.
Lithium bio-availability depends on the formulation. I don’t know what the suplements are, but the bio-availablity may be low. 1g per day (1000mg) is a typical ‘safe’ level, but it also depends on your body, and what other drugs you are taking (which affect how the lithium is absorbed).
People prescribed lithium are monitored, blood level is measured every couple of months, even that 1g/day isn’t ‘safe’ (in medical formulation) because sometimes, for some people, it’s too much.
People are started on something like 2g/day, then adjusted down to 1g/day, so I guess 2g/day is the amount they think should definitely not be exceeded.
wasn’t lithium in original 7-UP?
In low doses in drinking water, lithium appears to lower the suicide rate.
The dose can be less than 1mg a day.
an increase of lithium concentration in drinking water by 0.01 mg/l was associated with a decrease in the suicide rate of 1.4 per 100 000 or a 7.2% reduction in the SMR for suicide. This would correspond to one conventional lithium pill (75 mg) in 7400 l (1955 gallons) of drinking water. Despite evolving evidence, the debate on whether continuous low-level lithium intake has protective effects on mental health and suicide risk should be further pursued.
In prescription lithium carbonate, about 1/5 of the dose is lithium. So a 300mg pill of lithium carbonate is about 60mg of lithium.
Here’s an overview:
Like most nutrients, probably the best way to get it is through your diet. That said, if small differences in local water composition can have significant impact on things like suicide and crime rates, it’s not impossible that modern top soil has been depleted of lithium over the course of human history.
Looking at the health and life extension factors of omega-3 fats and the need for iodine fortification in our foods, for example, both of which traditionally would have come from marine foods, we note that medieval and classic era descriptions of rivers have them wildly more full of fish than there appears to be today. The London Thames, for example, used to be a major source of eels and eel pie used to be a common and popular item in British cuisine. Those are both no longer true. It seems likely from both the written record and the impact of diet, that we used to have more marine animals and, likely, marine plants as a more common element of our diet - like the Japanese still have today. And the most likely cause of that change is liable to be due to depletion of those food sources.
It’s a point of curiosity for me. I’m not aware of any research to compare lithium levels in human remains by era. Speculation, not fact.