Here's a fascinating article about whether or not lithium in "natural" quantities in drinking water has a significant health benefit.
The scientific story of lithium’s role in normal development and health began unfolding in the 1970s. Studies at that time foundthat animals that consumed diets with minimal lithium had highermortality rates, as well as abnormalities of reproduction and behavior.
Researchers began to ask whether low levels of lithium might correlate with poor behavioral outcomes in humans. In 1990, a study was published looking at 27 Texas counties with a variety of lithium levels in their water. The authors discovered that people whose water had the least amount of lithium had significantly greater levels of suicide, homicide and rape than the people whose water had the higher levels of lithium. The group whose water had the highest lithium level had nearly 40 percent fewer suicides than that with the lowest lithium level.
Almost 20 years later, a Japanese study that looked at 18 municipalities with more than a million inhabitants over a five-year period confirmed the earlier study’s finding: Suicide rates were inversely correlated with the lithium content in the local water supply.
More recently, there have been corroborating studies in Greece and Austria.
Even allowing for that last sentence, why haven't I heard about this before?Not all the research has come to the same conclusion.
Or maybe I have, but just don't have enough lithium in my diet. (The article suggests it may help prevent dementia.)
3 comments:
You and Homer Paxton need a mine's production to help you stop being morons, stepford.
Hey record Arctic ice now being blamed on wind. LOL..
wrong hemisphere old son!
Reagan was using lithium, it does have neuroprotective effects and he needed it. Too dangerous generally, toxicity a real issue. John McCade, an Aussie psychiatrist, discovered it's potential for treating bipolar way back in 1949, though I think there is even a precursor to that finding.
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