Micheal had a good snippet on lithium:
I am reposting here for those folks that have wondered:
(Initial Formulation Is) Missing lithium: good evidence that this is an essential nutrient, with an RDA of ~1 mg
Lithium orotate: I just do my best to spread the contents of a 5 mg cap evenly over 5 days. No, this is not the pharmacological dose shown to be neuroprotective in rodents subjected to horrible pharmacological or genetic assault, nor in human disease victims, neither of which are reasonable justification for use (let alone for dosages) in normal, healthy humans. See instead (24), which presents animal studies and a surprisingly large am't of (unfortunately, but of necessity, 'ecological' rather than truly prospective) epidemiology suggesting that Li is an essential nutrient, with an 'RDA' of ~ 1 mg, whose presence in the water is linked to having a much happier (less violent, criminal, suicidal, and generally "crazy") population; see also (25), quite recently, in Japan. The source I used to use (guess who ?) has unfortunately quit the market, and most of the alternatives are fly-by-night operations; I would probably recommend VRP. Whatever the merits of the orotate salt specifically (and I'm skeptical, esp at this dose), there's a good chance that even these guys don't have real Li orotate: most of the material out there is just the chloride or carbonate in a blend with orotic acid in the suitable proportions; unfortunately, there's no positive test for the compound per se, and so you have to do a series of negative tests to exclude chloride and carbonate, and almost no one does this. In my former career I went looking for the real deal, and couldn't find it ANY materials suppliers that had it, despite their claims, and it had to be contract manufactured by a company that specializes in true chelates (and then, they dropped it).
24. Schrauzer GN.
Lithium: occurrence, dietary intakes, nutritional essentiality. J Am Coll Nutr. 2002 Feb ;21 (1):14-21. PMID 11838882
25. Ohgami H, Terao T, Shiotsuki I, Ishii N, Iwata N.
Lithium levels in drinking water and risk of suicide. Br J Psychiatry. 2009 May ;194 (5):464-5; discussion 446. PMID 19407280
Edited by Anthony_Loera, 14 October 2010 - 04:56 AM.