[NYC Journal]
[Health]

You don’t have to have soda.
It isn’t good for you.
You could just take like a little sparkling water (from a bottle of glass — so you don’t stick more plastic in your veins) and squeeze in half a lemon and half a lime.
Maybe a touch of magnesium citrate to mellow out the edges.

But what about the lithium part?
In the beginning 7 Up was called “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Sodas”
From its 1929 beginnings until the US government outlawed lithium in soft drinks in 1948, 7 Up contained lithium. That was I guess the “Up”.

How much lithium was in it?
Secret formula!
But a food chemist gave the question a lot of thought. And came up with like maybe 60 milligrams of lithium.

They used lithium citrate, which is the same kind used clinically to treat manic depression (sometimes that’s used; sometimes lithium carbonate).
For acute mania, grownups get like 600 milligrams; for long-term treatment between 300 and 600 milligrams.

You can buy lithium orotate over the counter.
There’s been some studies that indicate that even relatively low doses of lithium lower suicide and Alzheimer rates.
This doctor is suggesting 120 mg of lithium orotate (= 5mg of lithium) a day for people who want a little better mood and less likelihood of Alzheimers. But, he (Jim Phelps) says, they need to have good kidneys. Lithium can be hard on the liver; and lithium orotate was found to be very hard on rat kidneys — albeit at levels roughly correlating to 1500 mg of lithium orotate in a grownup human.

So maybe you could get away with, and maybe it could even be helpful, to have a lithium orotate lemon lime spritzer each night. Or with lunch, maybe?

Or you could use a little elderberry juice, a half teaspoon of magnesium citrate, a little vitamin C powder, and the contents of a capsule of lithium oratate. Maybe just sometimes.

What about 12 capsules of lithium orotate, so you could get the dose the food chemist guesstimated?

Mmm, I don’t know. Jim Phelps said that high doses of lithium orotate seemed harder on your kidneys than equally high doses of lithium carbonate. But you can’t buy lithium citrate or carbonate without a prescription, so you’re stuck with lithium orotate, which has this slightly unsettling finding plus comparatively little research.

What about just once, to see what it’s like?
The bottle I have says “Use only as directed. Take 1 Veg cap daily. Store in a cool, dry place.” With 12 capsules, you’re at 1440 mg of lithium orotate, which is about the amount they were giving the rats that didn’t do so well. Of course they did it on the regular.

But then a woman had to seek medical attention after taking 18 tablets of 120 mg lithium oratate. That’s 50% more than 12 tablets, but it still gives you pause to think.

The Amen Clinic says that sometimes people will be prescribed up to 20 mg of lithium via lithium orotate. So that would be four of the 120 mg capsules. But I don’t know.

At any rate, old fashioned Coke is out.

Author: Floyd
Editor: Bob
(Loose) Oversight Committee: BW & AW
copyright: AMW

[NYC Journal]
[Health]