“Look---up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s LITHIUM to the rescue!”
You folks out there probably don’t know this, but Lithium isn’t merely the magic trick that makes electric cars possible, staves off depression, makes pacemakers viable and keeps your skillet good and greasy all the time. Now, it turns out the L superhero is kicking some Alzheimer’s ass. Those hardworking tykes at Harvard Medical School seem to have come across a breakthrough for the ages.
Alzheimer’s is a curse that’s puzzled researchers for decades. More than 7 million Americans are living with this neurodegenerative nightmare, and it’s predicted that by 2060 the number will double. Scientists have come across intriguing clues---like the unusual buildup of certain proteins in the brains of people with The Big A---but haven’t been able to pinpoint what’s fundamentally driving the disease. It’s the famous riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But maybe not for much longer.
The Harvard team, led by Bruce Yankner, MD, Ph.D, has linked the dread disease with---you guessed it---a deficiency of lithium in the brain. The boys also discovered that the metal naturally occurs in the brain and likely plays a major role in shielding it from neurodegeneration. Yankner first zeroed in on lithium about ten years ago while studying a protein called REST which is believed to protect against Alzheimer’s and is activated by the compound. Researchers analyzed the brain tissue of cognitively healthy people and those with advanced Alzheimer’s and found that levels of the compound were high in the first group and plunged dramatically in patients with the disease.
Then, they went one step further by testing whether low lithium levels could lead mice to develop Alzheimer’s. Researchers fed the animals a low-lithium diet, which brought their levels down to what’s typically seen in people with Alzheimer’s and found that this “actually spurred the pathology of the disease and led to memory loss,” according to Yankner. The scientists were then able to reverse that memory loss and clear the brain of certain hallmarks of the disease, like inflammation and the accumulation of proteins called amyloid plaques, by giving the mice a very low dose of lithium orotate. After experimenting with several other types of lithium compounds, the team found that lithium orotate was most effective, due to its propensity to evade amyloid, while others bind to it and become inactive. Wow!
Short of having Dr. Bruce and the gang come to our house, what’s the best thing we can do to get on the lithium train, you might ask. Well, as you might expect, you can load up on the usual suspects like green leafy vegetables, nuts, legumes, lentils and chickpeas, all of which are great sources of lithium, as are some spices like turmeric and cumin. “Interestingly, these foods are all core components of the popular Mediterranean diet,” says Yankner. Lithium can also be found in mineral water.
There are also lithium orotate supplements available online, but Dr. Yankner would rather you didn’t. “As encouraging as the mouse studies are, until we see it in humans we can’t say definitively whether it would be safe or not and what is the best effective dose.” But they will soon enough, and one day in the near future lithium tests could detect early-stage Alzheimer’s and be used as a therapeutic treatment. The Harvard boys hope to initiate medical trials within the next year.
The above is yet another reason we don’t need dumb presidents fouling the waters of Science. Trumpy’s shield reads “Mentiri!” Harvard’s motto is “Veritas.” The Prez has maybe a couple years left if he’s lucky. Harvard is 388 years old and counting. We know who we’re betting on.
Just The Facts, Ma’am:
1. Lithium is the third element in the periodic table. It has three protons and its symbol is Li. Lithium has an atomic mass of 6.941. Natural lithium is a mixture of two stable isotopes, lithium-6 and lithium-7. The latter accounts for over 92% of the natural abundance of the element.
2. Lithium is an alkali metal. It’s silver-white in pure form and is so soft it can be cut with a butter knife. It has one of the lowest melting points and a high boiling point for a metal.
3. Lithium doesn’t occur free in nature. However, it is found in nearly all igneous rocks and in mineral springs. It was one of the three elements produced by the big bang, along with hydrogen and helium.
4. Pure lithium is extremely corrosive and requires special handling. Because it reacts with air and water, the metal is stored under oil or enclosed in an inert atmosphere. When lithium catches fire, it is difficult to extinguish the flames.
5. Lithium is the lightest metal. Also, the least dense solid element, with a density of about half that of water. If lithium didn’t react with water it would float.
“I Don’t Believe In God, But I Believe In Lithium.”---Jaime Lowe
Jaime Lowe: “So, I was on a manic high, which meant that I was hallucinating. I thought I could talk to Michael Jackson. I thought I knew secret tunnels to Neverland. I was like imagining Muppets. and some of it was very---you know, some parts of mental illness are kind of funny. Many parts are horrible. I had accused my dad of being physically abusive and he had never been physically abusive. At this point, I was running away from him. And all of my parents. My parents are divorced. I have like a million parents. But they all had seen this pattern of mental disarray and they had figured out the adolescent ward at UCLA was the best place for treatment, so that’s where I ended up. But I had to take a lot of antipsychotics. I had to go through a lot before Dr. DeAntonio, the head of adolescent care there, diagnosed me. He identified my problem immediately because the symptoms are so bizarre, but all similar.
I was there for about three weeks, the first three weeks of my senior year. It was terrible. And it was also, you know, fantastic, because I got better. At the beginning, I was very resistant to medications. I was still hallucinating, delusional. I thought the apocalypse was happening. I thought I was going to war in Nicaragua. Like, there were these enormous pipes outside the window, and it was just a hospital generator, but I had the idea they were going to get me with poison gas and that it was going to be like another Holocaust and we were all going to die. I was originally told I was manic depressive, but now they call it bipolar disorder. That was when I came to the realization that I needed to take the medication. And that medication was lithium.
So the lithium for me, when I took it, I didn’t feel many side effects, which is partly why it worked for me. I had been experiencing so much tumult in my life I needed to have something that kind of evened everything out and the lithium did that. I told myself, ‘okay, this is what’s going to work for me, and this is what I have to do.’ When I went to college, everything was great and I didn’t really think about it. Lithium was kind of in my back pocket and it worked. It worked so well that after college my psychiatrist decided we could like, taper down, maybe even try life without lithium. That was not a good idea. When I’m not on the medication, the highs and lows are unmanageable. There are highs that are like wearing head-to-toe glitter and 18 tutus and 30 necklaces. Don’t even ask me about the lows.”
A Peek Into The Crystal Ball
Lithium faces a mission no superhero would envy; to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. Overall, lithium’s demand is forecast to increase 12 percent annually through 2030, underpinned by EV adoption, renewable integration and digitalization. One million tons were mined in 2024 and the output must grow to 2.7 million tons by 2030, particularly in the EV sector. The disparity between raw material supply and demand is worsened by the lengthy timeline for developing lithium mines. These mines can take 5 to 25 years to become operational, while midstream and downstream facilities require less than five years. This misalignment presents a significant bottleneck for the battery industry. Benchmark analysis reveals a staggering $514 billion investment is required by 2030 to meet battery demand. General Motors and Tesla are making significant moves, with GM investing $650 million in Lithium Americas for its Nevada mine and Tesla is building a $1 billion lithium refinery in Texas. Tesla plans 20 million EVs annually by 2030, while General Motors and Mercedes-Benz aim for fully electric cars by 2035 and 2030, respectively.
With lithium in relatively short supply, it behooves the industry and owners of electric vehicles to get the most out of their current batteries. A lithium battery will need less frequent charging to stay healthy is you use the 20-80 rule; keep its state of charge between 20% and 80% rather than frequently charging to 100% or letting it fully discharge. By avoiding extreme states of charge, you reduce stress on the battery and significantly prolong its overall lifespan. When storing the car for an extended period, aim for a charge of 50-80 percent.
If you’re an old reptile like Bill, who unconscionably prefers his gas-guzzler, you’ll be out of luck in the relatively near future. Almost all cars are likely to be electric within the next 20 years, maybe sooner. The Senate blocked California’s law banning new gas-powered vehicles after 2035, but Captain Trumpy won’t be around much longer and similar laws are coming. Lithium---it’s the wave of the future. You can rock it, you can roll it, do the stomp and even stroll it, but you can’t slow it down.
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
