As part of his continuing plan to sap etc etc., Aleks pointed me to an article by Max Miller reporting on a recommendation from Jacob Appel:
Adding trace amounts of lithium to the drinking water could limit suicides. . . . Communities with higher than average amounts of lithium in their drinking water had significantly lower suicide rates than communities with lower levels. Regions of Texas with lower lithium concentrations had an average suicide rate of 14.2 per 100,000 people, whereas those areas with naturally higher lithium levels had a dramatically lower suicide rate of 8.7 per 100,000. The highest levels in Texas (150 micrograms of lithium per liter of water) are only a thousandth of the minimum pharmaceutical dose, and have no known deleterious effects.
I don’t know anything about this and am offering no judgment on it; I’m just passing it on. The research studies are here and here. I am skeptical, though, about this part of the argument:
We are not talking about adding therapeutic levels of lithium to the drinking water . . . If you wanted to get a therapeutic level from the trace amounts that currently exist in the areas where there is already lithium, you would have to drink several Olympic size swimming pools. So the reality is, these are very low levels, and there’s no reason to think they are not safe in the areas they already exist, so why not give everybody that benefit?
How much water is in “several Olympic size swimming pool,” anyway? I looked it up and it says that each pool is at least 50m x 25m x 2m; that’s 2500 m^3 or 2.5 million liters. If you drink a liter of water every day, it would take you tens of thousands of years to drink up the water in several such pools. And, during that time, the water in the pools would surely either evaporate or be replenished. Either way, you’re not gonna be drinking it all.
More seriously, though, how sure can this dude be that there’s no reason to think that these low levels are not safe? If it can have an effect on mood, how can you be so sure it doesn’t have other effects that could show up at rates of 6 per 100,000 or more in large populations?
P.S. The second item in the list at the above-linked website is a recommendation to “sell your kidneys.” I’m not gonna do that, that’s for sure! But maybe it’s a good idea for some people out there who don’t have well-paying jobs like mine. The recommended payment is “long-term health care and one year of life insurance.” I guess this wouldn’t work so well in industrialized countries outside the U.S., where you get long-term health care without even needing to surrender an organ.
P.P.S. MIller’s article referred to Jacob Appel, the proponent of the lithium idea, as a bioethicist. I don’t really know what that means, so I followed the link. Appel seems to have enjoyed going to college: he’s collected a B.A. and M.A. from Brown University, an M.A., M..Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University, an M.F.A. from New York University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He also has won some creative writing awards.
I had a stack overflow error on "how sure can this dude be that there's no reason to think that these low levels are not safe?".
Ken: Amusing. And I probably could've fit in a couple more double negatives had I been actually trying!
The P.P.S. is the (appropriately) cruelest thing I have seen or read today, and I have already had my Jon Stewart ration.
I mean that as a compliment.
I once heard a friend admonish his son, whom he was leaving with a babysitter: "You'd better not misbehave, because if you do I can't guarantee that there might not be consequences." No wonder the kid is a brat.
I agree with your main point, that if lithium has a substantial effect on mood it might have a substantial effect on other things, too. And even the mood effect…I dunno, what if I don't _want_ to be more cheerful or more relaxed or whatever it does? Maybe a better solution is that people with suicidal thoughts, mood problems, etc., could get a bit o' lithium. Oh, wait, they can do that now. But perhaps Appel has a point that we could make it easier. They could sell "lithium water" in stores or something.
I think some people have got real confused. Lithium is a psychotropic drug. It's also a metal. These are different things.
I'm not sure who made the mistake – I suspect Miller. But if you Google , the first link is an abstract that says "may be associated with the functions of lithium as a nutritionally-essential trace element." Psychotropic drugs aren't trace elements.
The second says: "Lithium is a naturally occurring metal found in variable amounts in food and water."
So it seems pretty clear that they're talking about the metal, not the drug.
That's not necessarily a good thing, although it has precedents, such as fluoride in water, and (in countries where soil levels are low) selenium is added to fields to increase the amount in plants and help to ensure that people get enough.
Either it has an effect or it doesn't. Crazy talk.
Jeremy, the element lithium is the drug lithium.
Phil: Gosh, yes. I always thought they were different. Thanks.
another public argument using the olde 'it's in such trace amounts as to not be harmful or therapeutic'…..
as applied to:
*airport scanner x-ray radiation
*cell phone radiation
*pollution by hydraulic fracking
*recently, lithium (why not suck on your laptop battery Dr. Appel? it's legal.)
*oil in the gulf of mexico
*carcinogens in exhaust, food
*porn on the net
we are a country of saints! all things evil are in such trace amounts, carefully monitored but always below limits set by our respected elders. doctors are going the way of maytag repairmen!