What do you think of when you first hear the word lithium? To be perfectly honest, before I read this article on lithium, the most that popped into my head was batteries (you know, the lithium ion kind), and maybe if I dug real deep I could remember hearing about lithium in relationship to psychology at one point in time. Well, this article has really opened my eyes to how involved lithium really is in our own bodies. As a simple monovalent cation that is the lightest of all metals, it sure can make a difference.
Usually people associate the use of lithium with the treatment of bipolar disease. What I found interesting about this is how little is know about its action. Basically lithium is used as a shot in the dark. It is difficult to know if it will work for someone so a doctor will just try it and see how it works on its own or with a combination of other drugs commonly used. If it works, great, but if is doesn’t then on to the next drug. It can also help the manic phase as well as the depressive phase of bipolar disease, but again, you just have to try it and see.
Another observed effect of lithium is its neuroprotective properties. One way it does this is through inositol which is used by G protein-coupled receptors. Lithium prevents inositol from being recycled and this depletion induces autophagy which is the degradation of unnecessary or dysfunctional parts of the cell. Another cool way that lithium protects the brain is by directly helping prevent cell death and by inhibiting proteins which cause cell death. It does the first by inhibiting glutamate-induced, NMDA receptor-mediated apoptotic death. This is done my long term treatment with lithium. It does the second by downregulating pro-apoptotic proteins p53 and Bax. These are just a couple of the things it is found to do. It also is seen to promote survival pathways and molecules, and induce neurogenesis, which is when the brain repairs itself.
These actions are quite interesting and exciting to think about. When you ingest a simple little ion, so many good things could be happening inside of you. When our class was discussing this topic, the question arose, why isn’t everyone taking lithium? The fact is, lithium has to be monitored carefully when ingested. It can have some nasty side effect like vomiting, diarrhea, poor concentration, hair loss, and muscle weakness just to name of few. When taken by someone, they need to get regular blood tests to make sure that they are not getting too much lithium. Regardless, I still find its benefits to be interesting, and hopefully, you can now share more about lithium than you ever could before.
