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Lithium’s been elevated from taboo to wonder cure for cognitive decline. What other breakthroughs are we missing because Big Pharma focuses on the next big thing?
Forget biotech moonshots. The newest hope for Alzheimer’s disease prevention and reversal isn’t a billion-dollar drug, it’s the mineral lithium. Yep, that one. Potentially explosive in lithium-ion batteries, but calming to the manic mind, lithium is full of surprises. A 2025 Harvard lithium study just rocked the world, finding that ultra-low doses of the mineral prevented the telltale sticky amyloid plaques and tau tangles of Alzheimer’s. What’s more, it prevented neuron damage, even reversing cognitive decline.
“They are suggesting that a very, very low level of lithium orotate is enough to have a positive effect on the brain,” said Michal Beeri, director of the Alzheimer’s Research Center at Rutgers University. Caveat—the experiment used mice. “My little joke is that we have cured gazillions of mice. [Many] promising interventions have succeeded in animal models without translating to humans.”
A Groundbreaking Scientific Discovery
For an incurable disease affecting more than 50 million people worldwide—two-thirds of them women—this news can’t come soon enough. “When something like this comes out in such a high journal,” said Beeri, “you get hopeful, right?”
The Harvard scientists found lithium sticks inside the brain plaques associated with dementia, becoming less bioavailable for healthy brain functioning. Although not even considered an “essential nutrient,” this study showed that lithium is universally present in brain cells.
It begs the question: Could taking lithium supplementally, or eating lithium-rich foods for that matter, prevent dementia, or even reverse the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s disease?
But also: Why has something so natural and cheap been overlooked for so long?
The History: Lithium and Its Promiscuous Electrons
It turns out that lithium, wunderkind, was hiding in plain sight. Lithium atoms—third smallest in the universe—have three promiscuous electrons that like to leave home and join other atoms, creating a lot of energy. That’s why they’re useful both in batteries and brains.
Long before science proved it, people believed the mineral calmed aggression—from lithium hot springs to lithium-endowed 7-Up for elevated mood (hence the “up”). Thanks to a psychiatrist injecting guinea pigs with urine from manic patients in the 1940s—perhaps it’s best if you don’t ask further questions—lithium’s calming effects became scientifically validated.
The Roadblocks to Discovery
Lithium soon became a global wonder drug for bipolar mania—which involves irritability, hostility, and decreased sleep. In some cases, lithium enabled hospitalized patients to live normal lives for the first time in years. Yet in America, no drug firm produced it because “there was nothing to patent and little profit to be expected,” wrote psychiatrist Konstantinos Fountoulakis.
The U.S. FDA finally approved it in 1970; yet companies keep seeking better treatments—with limited success. Lithium carbonate remains the gold standard for bipolar even as high doses cause tremors, kidney, and thyroid issues. Today, patient concerns about safety is why doctors don’t prescribe it more.
Lithium’s lack of profit potential also meant less research. How could something so powerful still be unknown in 2025? Even the Harvard team discovered the undersung hero’s brain function on a lark. Testing 27 different metals in cadaver brains, only lithium declined steadily from early-stage dementia to advanced Alzheimer’s disease.
The Dose Makes the Poison
Astonishingly, they also found lithium carbonate (the bipolar medication) got trapped in sticky amyloid plaques whereas lithium orotate (the nutritional supplement) seemed to heal them. “The public health implications [of the study] are profound,” said James Greenblatt, psychiatrist and author of The Cinderella Story of Nutritional Lithium, who has recommended it to patients in his functional medicine practice for 30 years.
Full disclosure: I once worked for a supplement company that sold lithium orotate.
But Is Lithium Safe?
Greenblatt gets discouraged by how often other experts poo-poo lithium supplements over safety issues from high doses. “It’s a simple, safe mineral that should not be dismissed,” he said, adding that they’ll prescribe drug combinations, like Depakote, Haldol, and Prozac, despite “no research on the planet that says those three medicines work together.”
“What is mind boggling,” said Greenblatt, “is that, even after this Harvard study … traditional psychiatrists who told people lithium orotate was dangerous are now saying ‘We need further clinical studies’.”
On the other hand, Beeri rightly pointed out that “in older adults, any medication has more adverse events,” adding that studies could determine safer ways to deliver lithium directly to the brain versus other organs for those most at risk, including women. Since new delivery mechanisms can be patented, it could give pharmaceutical companies a financial incentive.
Is Greed Making Us Miss Miracle Cures?
“Once a drug is generic, there’s no incentive for a drug company to pursue a new use for that medicine,” said David Fajgenbaum, a medical doctor and associate professor at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine. Comprising 80 percent of FDA-approved drugs, these off-patent drugs with the most well-known safety profiles, “are the very drugs the system is not incentivized to study.”
“This is very personal for me,” said Fajgenbaum, “I’m alive because of a repurposed drug.” During med school, he developed Castleman’s Disease and nearly died but, incredibly, discovered his own cure, the repurposed drug rapamycin. In remission for 11 years, he co-founded the nonprofit Every Cure in 2022 to find life-saving new uses for old drugs using machine learning algorithms.
They’re just getting started, but found that the numbing agent lidocaine stops the growth of different cancer cells; it’s now in clinical trials. They also started trials on leucovorin, a form of vitamin B9 which has improved verbal communication in a subgroup of autistic children with cerebral folate deficiency.
Lithium, one of the medicines tested in Fajgenbaum’s AI project, “Is a great example of exactly why Every Cure exists—an old, inexpensive medicine that could have an incredible impact for a debilitating condition,” he added. “[We want] to make sure that these things don’t fall between the cracks.”
Editor’s Note: In the original Harvard study, Dr. Yankner said “You have to be careful about extrapolating from mouse models, and you never know until you try it in a controlled human clinical trial. But so far the results are very encouraging.” We remain hopeful for more breakthroughs with affordable outcomes.
*This article has been updated 10/15/2025
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Thanks for bringing this new scientific discovery to our awareness! It’s exciting to think that with clinical trials in humans, the theory may prove effective in treatment, reversal or even prevention of a pervasive disease that currently debilitates millions.