Lithium Orotate Usage and Alzheimer’s

@randomatom
I have been taking Lithium Orotate (LiO) for 11 months, slowly increasing dosage from a start at 2mg to 12 where I intend to park until more definitive data is available.

I have symptoms that are much lighter than might be expected with my lab results such as abnormal ATN and PTau of 217 and my recent PET scan with a centiloid score of 74, all reflecting well established amyloid related pathology. There may be explanations associated with years of collegiate level and comparable professional learning - not so much what i learned but how long i spent learning when my brain function was intact - a cognitive reserve to draw on if you will. It is an established theory.

My most prevalent symptoms are sustaining attention span and gaps in word retrieval.

Word retrieval was the first noticeable symptom and the most pervasive now.

Where I believe I notice at least a lack of progression is in lapses in attention span when - as an example - I pick up my phone to look something up and when I get the phone screen in front of me, I forget what I intended to lookup. I have consistently been able to recreate conditions to walk back toward the action - what was I doing, what was I looking at, etc. But lately I find if I just relax for a couple of seconds my brain slips back into gear 🙂 So no dramatic difference, and could be my imagination. But certainly in 11 months time no worsening. For now I will take that.

I will see a new neurologist at a university medical center in a month and will review this with her. I know she will want me in one of the current medication trials but I can’t land on a logic that says it makes sense for me. I stress - for me -.

I am anxious for Yanker et al to find the philanthropic funding they now need for a human trial. I am 76, so likely wont’t live to see a conclusion but I can see their choice of dosage. But even that is on the shelf now, because grants to the medical universities that help fund research have been withheld.

So I continue with this readily available nutritional supplement to support naturally occurring lithium found in the brain and prevent it being sequestered under an amyloid blanket and therefore unavailable to the brain.

And I continue to hope a billionaire will fund the trial Yankner has on deck.

In the meantime read the Nature Magazine review of the harvard study again, focusing on the microglial function, the associated glymphatic function, and the requisite sleep stage necessary for those important functions to work properly.

Here is how I have built an image for myself of the process: this presupposes that the amyloid is treated with LiO…

I think of microglial action as a yard man who goes around the brain during the day chewing up amyloid with his weed eater. At night when you reach non-REM slow wave (deep) sleep, the glymphatic cleaning crew comes in and vacuums up that chewed up debris and turns on the hose to let cerebral spinal wash over the brain (as it does every night) and flush everything back down with it as it drains away.

So that is what I believe happens and my practices of supplemental lithium orotate. Hope that is helpful!

@pb50 thank you for additional details about you and Lithium orotate. Carol, my LO, and I are now taking 20 mg a day after increasing it from a year of 10 mg a few weeks ago. Neither of us have encountered any side-effects from the increased dosage. Just to be clear, Carol was diagnosed with Alz almost two years ago and had symptoms for a time before that. She is one of the 80% that do not know or acknowledge they have Alz. There's a long medical term to describe that.

I also have been taking LiO but do not have Alz. She has also been taking memantine and donepezil for nearly two years, as prescribed by her neurologist. The neuro is not aware that Carol is taking LiO. We'll inform her at her appt next month. In January of this year she was deemed too far along for the injections. I cannot say that LiO has improved Carol's condition but maintain hope. If anything, both her short and long term memory have declined somewhat over the last year.