Okat a team. It's it's the project. Doctor.
Bill has been away. He's been surfing. He's been No, he hasn't. I don't know where he's been, but he's been trying to avoid me, let's be honest, and somehow I secured him back on the show for.
You, and he's doing it for you, not me. So welcome back, man. Where you been?
Hey, it's great to be back. I'm glad that you didn't get to you know, bored without me. Well, you have just been trying to absorb some family time this summer and I had a few conferences doing some traveling, so it was a little tough to get our schedules to aligne. But it's fantastic to be welcomed back, and I hope to do a couple more shows before the end of the year.
Yeah, let's do that.
What's your favorite thing to do when you're not being productive, when you're being unproductive, when you don't care about crossing the t's, dotting the eyes or ticking the boxes, what's your favorite thing to do in terms of just chilling out for you?
I guess I would have to say something like just going to the beach where there is a bar right next to the shore, just grab a cold one and stare out into the sea.
And think about what is Are you on any level philosophical or like we all know you very logical, rational, scientific, But is there a part of you that's just like, what's it all about?
Well, it depends how many beers I have.
As a correlation, as one goes up, the other goes up.
That's exactly right. But yeah, for the sake of argument, yeah, you do start to think about some of those things. But basically what I try to do when I'm in that environment is keep my mind clear. Yeah, you know, like most people, my default brain just runs in all sorts of different directions all the time, and that gets
a little exhausting. So it's nice just to be able to make yourself aware of the present moment, the beauty of your surroundings, you know, the piece, and and just kind of be in the present as they say, be here now kind of thing.
I love that there's a difference between busy, chaos and busy okay, because sometimes busy is stressful, anxiety producing, unenjoyable, and sometimes busy is like creative and fun, right sure.
Sure, And I think John Lennon had a great quote like, you know, life is what happens, you know, while you're making all these plans. Yeah, so it's really nice to step back from all of the I got to do this, I got to do that, I'm worrying about this, and just actually experience your existence.
Yes, so true.
It's like life happens despite me, Like life was here before me. Life's going to be here. It depends how we're defining life, I guess. But the human experience of life, it's like it ain't going anywhere.
You know, we'll come and go.
But do you get with your and I know we're going to have a particular chat this is not it, but we'll get there.
Do you with your workload.
And your responsibilities, do you get particularly stressed or are you not really that personality top.
Well, I think, as most of your audience knows, I'm a scientist, so that can be a very stressful job because you always need to acquire funding to support your science and the team that is doing the work in the lab. But I can't imagine doing anything else, Craig. I mean, it's like being an explorer. It's like being paid to solve mysteries. And puzzles, and it's a job
where no two days are the same. And you know, monotony does not exist in my line of work because we are at the edge of human knowledge and we're trying to push that frontier forward. And there's no greater task I can think of to do on a daily basis, except maybe being a podcast aster like you that would
have such rewards. You know, because even though I'm getting a kick out of, you know, exploring the unknown, I work in biomedicine, so the things that we discover could potentially down the road sometime lead to some very significant and clinically relevant therapeutic that's going to help people. And you know, if that doesn't get you out of bed every morning, yes, I don't know what will.
Has there been anything significant over your research journey, your creative investigating, your curiosity, or your curious career that you've done a total one ID on something that you went, No, this is true, this is this is how it works, and then maybe a decade later, you went, doesn't really work like that.
I just thought it did. Oh.
I think that's kind of the that's science in a nutshell. I mean, it's like all these great things we do discover you. With continued research, we find either nuances to it, or sometimes we totally turn the idea on its head. In my own field as a parasitologist working on this brain parasite toxoplasma GANDHII, the overriding themes when I was a young graduate student was that this was a fairly
benign parasite. Yeah, it gets in the brain, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything as long as you're healthy. It becomes a significant problem only when you're immune compromised, and in that case it can potentially kill you. So that was the dogma when I was in graduate school. But as of maybe ten fifteen years ago, new studies are coming out suggesting that even in healthy people, this brain parasite is maybe not benign, and it could be
causing predisposition to schizophrenia or other neuropsychoses. And that was something we really didn't appreciate when I was learning about
this parasite in the beginning. So all sorts of I mean, that's not like turning something on its head, per se, but it's learning something brand new that no one really gave a second thought to, and that's really exciting for me and my laboratory got engaged in some of those studies to show that the neuroinflammatory component of the disease is probably the root cause of some of these behavioral changes that we see in infected animals and humans, and
that was one of the most rewarding findings that has come out of my laboratory.
What I mean, I'm sure it's far and wide, but in a nutshell, what is the most effective treatment for that inflammation in the Brian Is it just an antibiotic, is it a string of things?
Or am I off the mark?
No, You're not off the mark. Neuroinflammation is linked to a variety of different diseases. So there are some therapeutics that are trying to be developed where they can do like a targeted you know, quelling of that neuroinflammation, because it's always a catch twenty two. If that neuroinflammation is caused by an infectious agent and you get rid of it, there's a risk that the infection could roar back, maybe in a very dangerous way, or some unrelated infection. You know,
you could be susceptible to that. It's to catch twenty two. It's some of these immunotherapies that try to dampen the immune system, and people who have allergies or autoimmune disease. You can do that and alleviate those symptoms, but you make those individuals more vulnerable to infection because their immune system is modestly depressed.
Yes, yes, I didn't plan to tell you this, but I'm going to tell you this because it's vaguely in the ballpark. But the last month or so, I've felt rubbish, right, And I try to not let people know that because I don't think not because I don't want people to know, but because I don't want to turn up and do my job and say, by the way, I feel trash. So you're going to get a three out of ten podcast, right, or whatever it is, whatever it is the thing that
I'm doing. But I've had this, just this, you know, onslaught of weird and different symptoms. And I thought I had diabetes because I was thirsty all the time, and which I don't eat rubbish. I eate two meals a day. I don't drink beer, I don't drink soft drink. You know, like that, from a behavioral point of view, the chance of me and from a physiological point of view, fit I'm strong, I'm healthy, I'm lean.
It doesn't make sense.
But my dad had diabetes and I went, well, mate, or has diabetes. So I'm like, well, maybe this is genetic and this is me now so, and then a whole bunch of other things like weeing a bunch and I'm like, oh, maybe I've got prostate issues and all these old man things.
I'm like, really, I don't know. Anyway, went had all of these tests done and all of that.
Good, like, you're not a diabetic, you're not even nearly a diabetic, you don't have prostate issues, your PSA is low, don't have like your cholesterol's low, your blood pressure is low. And then they said but and then I had to have a CT scan on my head and they went, well, you've got.
Basically the whole right side of your face.
The sinuses are blocked and I was getting constant blocked years right and you've got an infection in your head that you probably had for months.
And I'm like, could that explain all this?
And they go yes, I go because I feel like dog shit, and they went, well, that could be it.
And then so I have for the last six months. Doc had.
Every day of every day, not one day without it where my ears would block, and sometimes it be one ear, sometimes it'd be two. And I did a speaking gigla not last week, the week before. Yeah, so about nine days ago, ten days ago, and both of my ears blocked. Before the presentation, I had to talk for two and a half hours with two totally blocked years.
And you can't. I can't hear anyone. I can't. My voice is reverberating in my head. It is so loud that if I say, go to the toilet.
Where I'm in a quiet room, I can hear my heartbeat in my head. I can just stand still and I could tell you what my current heart rate is just by looking at my watch and you know, doing fifteen seconds counting the beats, multiplying before I can go my heart rate sixty at the moment or whatever, right, And it just makes communication and interaction and focusing almost impossible.
So I've had that forever.
Yeah, so I'm sorry you went through that ordeal. But did you get legs amuntombiotics?
Yeah, so, I've got doxy cycling. I think that's what it's called. Is that anyway? And so I started on that I'm currently I think today was my fourth or fifth and for the first time in six months, I've had touchwood. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but for about forty eight hours, I haven't had a blocked year, which.
Is like a miracle.
And it's just like and it's this sounds weird and it's but talking to you now is so awesome because I can hear you clearly, my ear is not blocked.
And then it's me.
But just because you can hear.
No, you're definitely therapeutic, so with Jesus for doctor Bill. But here's the thing though, when all this shit happens, right, so, there's this physiological stuff that's gone on but also impacts your brain because you've got inflammation, you know, right up there,
and then it then it affects your psychology. And then I would start to get nervous ten fifteen minutes before a gig, thinking please don't block, please don't block, please don't block, and invariably they would block, and it's like.
I almost talk myself into it.
So anyway, yeah, that's that's where I'm at, and it's it seems to be it seems to be on the end, which is so good. It's so funny when one little thing and it's well, seems little, but it can just make such a big difference to everything from psychology to emotion, to sociology, to physiology to energy to you know, function, Like it's like your body is so finely tuned.
Yeah, it's almost it's hard to believe that. You know, before nineteen thirties, antibiotics didn't exist. You know, people literally died from a lot of these infections. And yeah, we really take that group of drugs for granted, and they really are small miracles, so imagine but continues working for you and you make a full recovery soon.
Thanks sir.
Yeah, I yeah, it's like literally I thought about that. I thought about somebody with this two hundred years ago, what happened to them because they hadn't taken anything that was going to kill the infection, or they didn't have access to that, or they didn't know what killed And you know, I'm like, maybe someone would have died probably, you know.
So now, well there's a reason why life expectancy was like forty years of age prior to the discovery of the germ theory of disease.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, amazing.
Now speaking of research and speaking of breakthroughs and speaking of potential treatments for something which is very common unfortunately in our population, Alzheimer's is being or they're looking at treating Alzheimer's with lithium, or they are doing that or I didn't do a deep dive because I wanted you to tell me. I just know that there's something interesting happening in that space.
Yeah, there's been a very exciting study that came out back in August, and I thought it would be really wonderful to talk about it because Alzheimer's has touched so many lives, either people developing it themselves or they have a friend or a loved one who's suffering from it. That and there's no cure, which makes the terror even
more amplified. But like you said, Alzheimer's it's one of the most common forms of dementia and it's terrifying if you've ever witnessed someone's succumbing to these symptoms of you know, gradually losing their memory, gradually losing their cognitive abilities, their capacity for reason and good decision making, developing paranoia, and all sorts of horrible things as this disease progresses and
slowly erodes the brain. But we're talking about fifty seven million people worldwide, which is a substantial number of people, and as more people we were just talking about, like the average life expectancy age, it's much higher these days, and old age is a significant factor Alzheimer's. So as our population continues to live into these advanced ages, Alzheimer's
is probably going to become even more common. So a lot of researchers are doubling down on investing into trying to find a new treatment for this terrible and poorly understood disease. So in addition to the human toll that it takes, there's a significant economic toll associated with Alzheimer's
disease too. So as I was researching this particular study that came out in August because I want to do a popular science article about it, I was struck to find that in twenty nineteen and an estimate was made on what the global cost of Alzheimer's is and it's one point three trillion dollars in US money. Wow, So it's just staggering. You can think about what that kind of money could be going towards if it wasn't dealing with the aftermath of Alzheimer's and what it does to people.
So just really underscores the urgency to come up with new treatments. And that's why this study which came out of Harvard Medical School led by a geneticist and neuroscientist named Bruce Yank Nurse. So he and his team have come up with this connection that hasn't been seen before with lithium in the brain and the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's. And the study was important for well several major reasons.
The first of which is no one really appreciated that the element lithium had a major role in the function of the brain. Yes, and this study kind of showed that, and we can walk through some of the details why. The second major feature is that it could lead to new treatments. This is a not discovery, first time it was ever seen, and if it does hold up, it could lead to a very rapid progression of new treatments
for Alzheimer's there's very few at the moment. And it can also lead to a new diagnostic tool because now we know that you know, with lithium being connected to Alzheimer's.
You can measure that element in the blood and maybe come up with a new screening tool to identify Alzheimer's in people before the more dramatic symptoms kick in, and that would give you the advantage of treating early and maybe slowing progression of disease, because once it gets going, there's really not much we can do about it.
Yeah, So so to have almost like a preemptive stroke or a preventative measure before it kind of accelerates, so tykes called.
Yeah, Yeah, there's drugs that kind of like put obstacles in the in the way of the disease progression. And it's not eliminated. It's not going to stop it, but it will slow it down and maybe give it'll certainly extend the quality of life and maybe even give these individuals some extra extra years.
What's what's the mechanism? Like, do you know how it works? Like what they did they come up with? Obviously it's doing something good, or it's mitigating something or slowing something or what did they find?
Then?
What is it that causes it?
Right? So I'll tell you a little bit about Alzheimer's first, you can so you can understand the study a little better. So this was a disease that was first described in the early nineteen hundreds, but the trademark feature was that in these people who were suffering from dementia, memory loss, and basically, you know, even not being able to remember their name or their loved ones or where they lived, you know, very significant things. When these individuals, you know,
pass on, investigations of their brain started to commence. So in the autopsies, you don't need to be a scientist or doctor to identify which brain had Alzheimer's and which brain did not. These brains look dramatically different. They're usually shrunken, and they they're lacking some gray matter. But under the microscope, what you will also see are these things called amyloid plaques, and these are made of a protein called amyloid that
is not being processed correctly. They form these aggregates that get in between the brain cells and kind of mess up their communicating with one another. So it really disrupts brain thought patterns, and that explains a lot of the cognitive defects that we see in Alzheimer's patients. So knowing that these plaques form is a big step forward. But We've known that for almost I guess one hundred years now, and we still haven't come up with really, you know,
decent treatments for them. We don't really have a way to get rid of them. One of the older treatments for Alzheimer's was cholinesterase inhibitors, and that modulates neurotransmitters in the brain to try to preserve memory a little bit, preserve learning ability and motor skills as well. But the newer therapies are monoclonal antibodies, and these are directed to the amyloid proteins themselves, so patients can be given these antibodies.
They will bind up the plaques and then sometimes the immune system will help even you degrade the plaque to a degree. And whether these are really effective on a large scale is a little The data is a little mixed. They do seem to respond better in some people than others.
But the bottom line, the upshot of at all is that we really don't have excellent treatments for Alzheimer's and these patients are really in need of a breakthrough discovery, and this study linking lithium to it could be that answer.
How is it used like that I don't know. Do they get in as a tablets, do they get injected? How is lithium used as a treatment.
Oh well, that's I'm glad you brought that up, because the study did not look at how lithium works in human patients just yet. So this study was it did involve looking at human brains and what was going on with lithium, and I'll explain that in a minute. But the actual proof of concept for the utility that lithium might have as an Alzheimer's treatment was limited to mice so far. You know, scientists have genetically engineered a mouse to lack a certain gene that predisposes it to Alzheimer's.
So we got this wonderful mouse model of Alzheimer's. And as these mice age, because they have this genetic mutation, they start to develop the same amyloid plaques and the same deficiencies in memory learning and so on. Right, right, So let's let's get into this lithium part.
Sure, sure, sure, So it.
Was known through other research that these amyloid plaques they're kind of sticky, and you know, I would hope that your audience knows that metals are part of our diet, you know, like calcium, iron, copper, you know, even like sodium potassium. These these are metals, and a lot of people, you know, they look at you funny if you say, like, you know, you're eating metal in your diet, and that's
perfectly fine. You know, you have trace metals, trace elements in your food that actually play a role in your biology. A lot of enzymes in your cells require some of these metals in order to function. And it turns out that previous research was finding that these amyloid plaques could bind some of the metals that are supposed to be
operating in your brain. So these scientists that Harvard wondered, well, why don't we look at all the metals that people would possibly ingest and see if there's a difference between an Alzheimer's brain and a normal brain. OK. So they tested like twenty seven different metals and there pretty much wasn't any difference between a diseased brain and a normal brain,
with the exception of lithium. So it turns out that people with Alzheimer's their brain had very little and possibly no detectable lithium in it, whereas a normal brain did have lithium, and that was a little surprising because it's been underappreciated what exactly lithium does in our brain, despite the fact that we've known for some time, and in fact it's a clinically, it's a prescribed treatment. There's a
certain form of lithium that's given for bipolar disorder. You know, you may be aware of this in your psychological studies and your own research, but bipolar disorder can be mitigated
to a degree with high doses of lithium. And when they saw that Alzheimer's brains were lacking lithium, I guess the light bulb went off in their head and they're like, wait, we could really be onto something here, because we know, for example, these dietary metals play important roles in our biology, including the cells that make up the brain, and if they are suddenly without lithium, and it's important for something in the brain, that could explain a lot of the
symptoms that these people are that these Alzheimer's patients are experiencing.
Okay, So for those of us who aren't scientists and do research and understand the methodology and the protocol and the steps. So when you make a I know this
is super fundamental for you. But when you make a discovery like that, you go, oh, there seems to be some kind of correlation between lithium, or more accurately, lack of lithium and this cognitive decline through this thing called Alzheimer's Right, So initially it must just be well, let's try this, because you don't Let's try x amount of whatever into this rat or mouse or whatever, and just then see what that response is, because it must be.
High level guessing.
Really, and then you do something, you create an outcome, and you go, all right, let's try this.
Is that essentially the process?
It can be, It can be. I mean there was some precedent before this study. Metals were found in amyloid plaques. Okay, so this group just said I guess they were sitting around, maybe in lab meeting one day or at happy hour at the pub, and just said, you know, maybe we should look at all the metals that should be in the brain and see if there's a difference. No one's done that before, and this is one of the joys of science that I was talking about earlier. Craig, You
just get this interesting question. No one's apparently done it before, even though it seems kind of you know, simplistic in hindsight. So let's go check it out. And that's part of the fun of being in science. And lo and behold what I said. They tested like twenty seven metals or something. Twenty six of them were a bust. They didn't see any difference. So you can imagine like testing metal after
metal and getting discouraged. But then bam, they find the magic one, the magic one, and that just changes everything and say, hey, we could really be onto something here.
The fact that.
Sorry, go ahead, you you got another question, Go ahead, no, no.
No, I was just gonna sign in the fact that twenty six showed nothing is actually great news that only one did, because that makes it abundantly clear which is the thing that's having some kind of impact.
Yeah, exactly, or else they could have been you know, this study could have been delayed for years as they tried to dissect which metal was the most important or are they working together? You're right, it could have gotten a lot more complicated than what it currently seems to be. So when they when they found this observation, and this was in human brains, so this obviously has disease relevance
to humans themselves. But they took advantage of that mouse model that I was describing earlier to see if it also happened in mice. So people can, you know, mostly get lithium from their diet. Okay, it's present in a lot of fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, So our brains do have a low level of lithium that is doing something. You know, scientists aren't exactly sure what it's doing. Is probably doing many things, but one thing's for sure.
If it's depleted, it looks like you're susceptible to Alzheimer's. And that's exactly what happened in mice. So they took these mouse model for Alzheimer's disease and they controlled their diet so that they were ingesting little to know lithium at all. And in those mice that were deprived of lithium in their diet, they started having defects and learning and long term memory, and lo and behold, when you
dissect their brain, they got these amyloid plaques. So just by depriving those mice of lithium, they basically gave them the symptoms of Alzheimer's.
Now, this is digressing, but I'm just interested. So when we use mice, rats, whatever, we obviously there I guess, much more easy to access than other types of brains. Does it usually correlate quite strongly? Like what will happen in the you know, the brain of a mouse or a rat. Is it typically somewhat you know, closely associated with similar responses in human brains?
Like is that why we use them? Because it's quite indicative.
Yeah, that's an excellent question. And you really do got to answer that kind of question on a case by case basis, because there are some models where they're really good, the parallels are really strong, and then there's other ones that are not. And there are there's no shortage of drugs that have looked great in mouse models, but then for some reason do not work in humans. And that's probably due to different metabolism or different bioavailability or things
like that. And you do have to be particularly careful when you're dealing with a disease like Alzheimer's because that's affecting the brain. Yeah, lo and behold structurally, on a more fundamental level, the rodent brain does have a lot of similarities to the human brain. All mammalian brains do have these similarities, but obviously we are far more cognitively advanced than a rodent, so you do have to be very careful when you're like drawing some comparisons between rodent
models and humans. But we can't ignore the power that these model systems have, because we can't do a study like lithium deprivation in humans without being deeply unethical. So that's the advantage of these, you know, these mouse models, and they're also very useful for the next question, which which is, well, what if we give lithium back to these mighty that are developing Alzheimer's and don't we don't see a lot of lithium in their brain. What if
we give it back? What happens then? So I imagine that was a really exciting question for that laboratory. And again, you can't do that kind of stuff. You can't just jump right into a human study and do that. You've got to look and see what happens in the mouse model.
Old diseases are you know, or I think old disease, you can correct me. But there's a can be a genetic component, that can be a lifestyle component, you know, like with heart disease, and with diabetes and with you know, a myriad of diseases. What do we know about Alzheimer's Is that purely genetic? Is it ninety percent genetic? Tempcent lifestyle and behavior and nutrition?
Is it? What is it? Do you know?
It's it's It's unclear, and it's probably different for different people.
Yeah.
The motive, the current school of thought is that it's a mixture between genetic and environmental influences. So there is one particular gene that runs in families that seems to
when it's mutated in a certain way. It's called the apoe four gene, and it's a strong risk factor because when that gene has a certain variant, you are highly predisposed to developing Alzheimer's, and in fact, you'll probably get it at an earlier age than most people do, maybe as early as in your forties, whereas most people develop Alzheimer's in their sixties or later. So are there certainly
can be genetic susceptibilities, and then there's also environment. It's well known that if you are a female, you're more likely to get Alzheimer's. Age increases your risk in pre existing conditions, including like diabetes and obesity can also increase risk. So there's clearly some environmental aspects to it. And what this new study just did, Craig, was suggest that there
might be a dietary aspect to it. People who don't get enough lithium in their natural diet could perhaps be predisposed to Alzheimer's, assuming the study turns out to be true.
And of course the exercise scientist wants to know people who played or do play sports, you know, whether or not it's soccer, or it's boxing, or it's MMA or it's full contact whatever Australian rules gridiron who get a lot of brain trauma and even traumatic brain injuries. I would imagine, but perhaps incorrectly, that that predisposes them to be more likely to get Alzheimer's.
Head trauma is another environmental risk factor. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, So.
Just to explain to us who don't really understand this, well, I'm sure some of my listeners understand it better than me. But let's say, all right, we figured this out with We've got this clarity around the research that's come out with mice, and this seems to be a clear indicator of such and such. What would the timeline be if everything went pretty well before this would be you know, is it two years? Is it twenty years where this would be potentially being used as a treatment in humans?
Like how long does this take? And I know it's how long it's a bit of string, I get it. But COVID only took ten minutes, So I mean, how long does something like this come to you know, fruition and be a recognized treatment.
Well, it could be something that advanswers quite quickly because and the answer to that question actually might become a little more clear as I talk about this second part of this study, which was how do we possibly fix this in the mice. What they were discovering was that Alzheimer's brains didn't seem to have any lithium. But when they looked more closely, what they found is that the lithium was there, but it was trapped in these amyloid plaques,
these protein aggregations that were disrupting neuronal communication. They seemed to sequester or gobble up the lithium that was in the brain and kind of trap it into this entity where it could no longer do its thing. So that's where the lithium was going, so that creates a little bit of a problem. If you were to give a patient lithium, it would probably just get sucked into these
plaques and it would be useless. So these investigators had to get really clever and they identified a different form of lithium. It's actually a salt form which is a slight chemical modification to the lithium. For the chemically inclined people in your audience, it's called lithium or orotate, and it's actually been suggested that it could be a better alternative for the bipolar disorder condition that we talked about earlier, because lithium, a form of lithium, is used to treat
that as well. The magical property about this salt form of lithium, this lithium rotate, is that it appears to do the things that lithium needs to do in the brain, but it is immune from being sucked into those amyloid plaques. It doesn't seem to get absorbed by the plaques. At least that's what is seen in mice. And this is great because it allows you to use it at a
very low dose. You don't have to overwhelm the body with forms of lithium because that can get toxic, and that's one of the major problems with treating bipolar disorder with lithium is that the side effects can be really nasty. But with this lithium rotate version, you can use a
very low dose. And the real proof in the putting was that in these Alzheimer's mice that are genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer's as they age, if they give this lithium ooritate to the mice before they exhibit Alzheimer's symptoms, they don't develop the disease, which is pretty striking as it is, but they want one step further and said, Okay,
that's really cool, you know, really promising. But what I think a lot of people would like to see is what if you give lithium ooritate to mice that already started developing symptoms of Alzheimer's. So this is why the paper got so much publicity. This lithium ooritate in mice that we're exhibiting Alzheimer's symptoms not only got rid of the plaques, but it reversed the memory loss. And wow, that is something that anyone who has had the misfortune
of witnessing a loved one suffer from Alzheimer's. That's their dream come true. You could potentially restore the memory and cognitive abilities in these patients with Alzheimer's, assuming this lithium oriitate works the same way in people as it does in this very promising mouse models. To me, that was just like a home run story. Oh yeah, and that's why I thought it would be worthwhile talking about today.
But by the same token, we certainly don't want anyone in your audience running out and buying like a lithium supplement, which are commercially available, but they're not regulated very well. You can't be sure what you're getting. This is not a treatment that is approved by the US FDA for any medical condition. And like I said before, lithium can be toxic. I mean it has caused death in some people. So you've got to be extremely careful with any supplement
you ingest. So this study, as promising as it is, you have to keep in mind it is limited to mouse models so far, and like you said, there must be a robust clinical trial conducted in people before we get too excited, and safety profiles as well, because even though it looks safe in the mice, this lithium oritate could have some adverse effect in humans, We simply don't know. So, circling back to your question, Craig, how long might we see something? Well, it depends on how many hurdles we jump.
Is this lithium oritate safe in people?
Great?
And passes the first phase of clinical trials? Can it actually help with Alzheimer's would be the next best question. Maybe it does. How much do we use? You know, are there adverse effects? These are all important questions that
have to be addressed. You know, is it more effective than the monoclonal antibodies that are currently used to treat Alzheimer's Because you don't want to deprive someone of taking that medication which might help them, and risking taking a medication which might do nothing or even make it worse. You know, that's a possibility too. We've seen some really weird things happen in mice that don't hold up in humans.
Yeah, And also I guess over the long term, like it might be great for a month or three months, but maybe over two or three years we find out something that's has a long term negative impact that we didn't realize upfront.
That's it.
That's always a possibility too, and even if clinical trials look good, as you start to introduce it into larger patient populations, additional side effects may show themselves. But I think, you know, anyone who has experienced with Alzheimer's is going to tell you this is a devastating disease and we really need some new treatments fast. So I think, given the you know, the promise of this study, this type of work is going to be fast tracked and we
should be hopefully getting answers sooner rather than later. But I would I would fathom to guess that we're still years away from this proof of concept to a bona fide treatment. What may happen sooner, like we alluded to earlier, is a new diagnostic tool to catch Alzheimer's sooner, maybe even before symptoms develop, just by taking a blood sample and seeing you're lithium levels lowering. If so, that could
be a sign that Alzheimer's is developing. We can put you on one of these monoclonal antibodies and slow the progression of that disease, buy you some valuable time until maybe a new treatment like this comes along.
So good, so good, so exciting. The stuff that you do. And I know this ain't your research, but your research
is exciting as well. But to be able to share this kind of information with the world, that you can make it accessible and understandable for us, and also especially when it's something that is like, everybody knows somebody who's affected by Alzheimer's, and of course it's even if it's one member of a family, it's still affecting twenty people, not one, because everybody's affected and everybody loves and cares about and worries about and needs to care for that person.
And you know, so it's like many diseases, it's something that even if it's only an individual within the group, the group is affected, then everyone needs to you know, be involved to it an extent. So I guess it'll be fascinating to see how it unfolds and how it develops.
And you know, yeah, it will take a little while, but you think, well, we've never had anything, so we're closer, like we've had nothing that really really effective deals with it, perhaps reverses it, perhaps make somebody from really cognitively, you know, down the rabbit hole back to somewhere in the ballpark of normal, Like what what an absolute scientific miracle that would be for millions of.
People who are die thosed every year. And yeah, it's exciting.
You're literally giving someone their life back, and then you know there's nothing you can't put a price on that. So, while I wouldn't encourage anyone to go pursue lithium supplements of any kind, eating a proper diet will ensure that your brain is getting the lithium it needs. So good sources of lithium include nuts, seeds, and beans, but honestly, most grains, fruits, and vegetables are going to have trace amounts of lithium and your body doesn't need much of it.
So if you're eating a healthy, you know, sensible diet, you have no reason to believe that you need a supplement.
You're the guy. It's always good to chat with you.
We love you, and you deliver every time. So yeah, thanks so much, as always, thanks so much, You're great.
We appreciate you.
Thank you. It's great to be back.
Tell people where they can find you, follow you, connect with you. And for those people who need an amazing corporate speaker, just contact me because I'm now his agent, and.
Will we negotiate ten percent here zero percent.
I'm going to manage you for free. Yeah.
If you want doctor Bill to come and do some work with your team, email me and I will make it happen. Other than that, how do they find you, follow you and connect with you?
Yeah? People can. Like I said, I'm in the process of writing up this story for Psychology Today. Hopefully you'll come out in next week or two and you'll be able to find that link at author Bill sullivan doc com, along with all the other writing that I've done all of my previous podcasts, including with Craig here and I do book talks. I wrote, Please to meet me jeans, germs and the curious forces that make us who we are.
If you're interested in human behavior, be more than happy to come talk to your corporation or group about it.
One hundred percent so bypassed me. You don't know, make I strike to his website.
I'm sorry, go talk.
No, definitely don't.
Definitely don't go to you, Michael Sagobie affair.
But it's always great to catch up with you. Thanks so much.
Yeah, until next time,