Can Lithium Benefit Brain Health?

What does your doctor have to say about the neuroprotective and neurogenesis benefits? Is this proven enough to create a stroke protocol? References are at the bottom of the article.
http://www.life-enhancement.com/magazine/article/952-can-lithium-benefit-brain-health
A couple of intriguing paragraphs:

Lithium Protects Against Neuronal Death
In a third study, researchers examined the effects of lithium on glutamate-induced excitotoxicity, which is neuronal death caused by excessive amounts of glutamate, the brain’s most prevalent neurotransmitter.⁴ This phenomenon has been strongly implicated in the origin of a variety of neurodegenerative diseases, including dementia. The researchers found that lithium in the therapeutic range largely prevented glutamate-induced excitotoxicity in rodent cortical neurons. It apparently did so by stimulating the production of a protective protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which is vital for the development and maintenance of healthy neurons (neurotrophic means pertaining to neural nutrition). Evidence for this mechanism came from the observation that when an antibody that neutralizes BDNF was added to the culture, lithium’s neuroprotective effect was blocked.
Lithium Stimulates New Neuronal Growth
Protecting neurons from destruction is one thing; it’s quite another to stimulate the growth of new neurons—a process called neurogenesis.* Numerous factors can affect neurogenesis, and lithium is apparently one of them. Researchers treated mice with lithium in dosages that produced plasma concentrations equivalent to those in the human therapeutic range; then they killed the mice and examined their brains.⁵ They found a 25% increase in the number of dividing cells in a structure of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus—a clear indication of neurogenesis. This fit with the fact that lithium is known to stimulate production of a brain protein called B-cell lymphoma protein-2 (bcl-2) in certain areas of rodent brains; bcl-2 not only actively protects neurons from a variety of threats, including apoptosis (programmed cell suicide), but also promotes new cell growth. (Hippocampal neurogenesis has also been observed with a variety of antidepressants, so lithium’s action in this regard is not unique.)

Lithium Increases Gray Matter

MRI of human brain: actual (left) and artificially colored (right) to illustrate different neuroanatomical features.

Finally, researchers at the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit studied ten human patients (average age 33) with bipolar disorder.⁶ For 4 weeks they gave the patients a daily therapeutic dosage of lithium (they didn’t specify the actual dosage, but rather the plasma lithium-ion concentration that resulted from it—about 0.8 millimoles per liter, which would have required roughly 1000 mg per day of lithium carbonate). They then did magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the patients’ brain and compared the scans with those taken at the outset of the study. In eight of the ten patients’ brains, the lithium treatment significantly increased the total volume of gray matter: the average increase was 3%, corresponding to a volume of about 24 cm³ (1.5 in.³). The authors attributed the effect to lithium’s neurotrophic properties and its ability to stimulate the growth of such non-neuronal objects as glial cells, but they did not describe it as neurogenesis. 


Will your doctor do ANYTHING AT ALL with this information? What about your stroke association or hospital? I'd be willing to bet that these lazy f*ckers will do nothing. The excuse will be that 'There are no clinically proven studies on this'. Shit, then run the goddammed studies yourself.