For years, we’ve known that correcting underlying deficiencies in magnesium and lithium can increase cognitive function, elevate mood and promote healing processes in the brain and nervous system.

  As companion nutrients, magnesium and lithium have a synergistic relationship—enhancing the beneficial effects of the other—and are necessary for optimal brain function and a healthy nervous system.

Magnesium supplementation alone has been shown to rapidly reverse major depression, while both magnesium and lithium have been shown to promote peripheral nerve regeneration. Inflammation of the sciatic nerve (sciatica) can be healed by a simple regimen of the two minerals. Adding other neuro-supportive, anti-inflammatory nutrients (e.g. zinc, selenium, vitamin D) offers further benefit.

Small, nutritional doses of lithium from 5 to 20 mg per day have been used since the 1970s to treat depression, anxiety, headaches, migraines, chronic pain, alcoholism, drug addiction, stroke, autism, as an “anti-aging brain nutrient” and to halt or slow Alzheimer’s progression, as well as being an important factor in suicide prevention. Nutritional doses correct underlying nutrient deficiencies caused by poor diet, caffeine, alcohol, stress and fluoride, which reacts with lithium to form an insoluble precipitate of lithium fluoride (LiF), thus rendering the lithium biologically unavailable.

For over 40 years, outstanding members of the integrative medicine community such as Jonathan Wright, MD, James Greenblatt, MD, and William Shaw, Ph.D., have been utilizing organic magnesium and low doses of nutritional lithium for their mood-elevating, balancing, healing and protective effects on the brain and nervous system.

In his talk, “The Top 5 Minerals for Cognition, Memory and Mood”, Dr. James Greenblatt discusses the wide-ranging nutritional benefits of lithium, and states that lithium can alleviate “existing damage by stimulating new neuronal growth”. Something he’s bringing to the world’s attention, but once again, something that we’ve known for quite some time.

For anyone who has suffered any form of brain or nervous system injury, nutritional doses of magnesium and lithium coupled with a broad-spectrum multi-nutrient regimen (and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, a phenomenal healing tool that deserves a full article devoted solely to it)—together promote fundamental healing processes that can greatly aid in recovery.

Dr. Timothy M. Marshall is a biochemist, holistic neurospecialist and the founder/creator of MagLith+ and BrainFood-7—a revolutionary line of multivitamins for the brain featuring the cognitive boosting, deep healing benefits of organic magnesium with low-dose, nutritional lithium, in a proprietary base of antioxidant nutrients—available this fall. See ad, page 22.

References

1. Hoane MR. Magnesium therapy and recovery of function in experimental models of brain injury and neurodegenerative disease. Clin Calcium. 2004 Aug;14(8):65-70.

2. van den Heuvel C, Vink R. The role of magnesium in traumatic brain injury. Clin Calcium. 2004 Aug;14(8):9-14.

3. Pan HC, et al. Magnesium supplement promotes sciatic nerve regeneration and down-regulates inflammatory response. Magnes Res. 2011 Jun;24(2):54-70.

4. Nouri M, et al. Lithium improves regeneration after sciatic nerve traumatic injury in rat. J Reconstr Microsurg. 2009 Feb;25(2):151.

5. Marshall, T. Lithium as a Nutrient. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. Winter 2015; Volume 20, Number 4.