How Does Lithium Affect Mental Health And Wellness?

By Darrell Miller

Part of the widespread campaign to promote mental well being is the attention directed at understanding mood disorders. Illnesses concerning mind and behavior have evolved from moral issues into medical conditions over the course of history. Today it is generally accepted that the development of the brain as conditioned by both genetic and environmental factors governs mental disorders, hence the medical approach to mental health. With that, clinical trials play a significant role in the developments of psychoactive drugs alleged to address mental illnesses. Lithium orotate in particular has been one of the psychiatric medications in the market to gain ground on other mood stabilizers.

Mood Disorders

Approaches to manic depression have careened around nature versus nurture throughout history. The earliest descriptions of mood disorders didnt make any distinction between mania and depression, the latter being considered as a subcategory of the former. It was first noted as a separate abnormal condition of the mind by Avicenna in the 1200s. The history of the present description of manic depression as a mood disorder started in the middle 1500s when manic depression was called dual form insanity or circular insanity by Jules Baillarger and Jean-Pierre Falret. Manic depression as a terminology first came into use in 1952 in the first American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic Manual. The more recent term bipolar was proposed by German psychiatrist Karl Leonhard to refer to manic depressive conditions.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bazfd22e1E[/youtube]

Now there is a renewed interest in the role psychosocial processes play in more recent studies. The American Psychiatric Association published the latest standard criteria for determining and categorizing mental disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The two widely known mood disorders are described therein: (1) clinical depression and (2) manic depression, renamed respectively as major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD).

Mood Stabilizers

The psychiatric medications for bipolar disorder are called mood stabilizers, lithium being the classic psychoactive drug for BD. It has been over five decades since lithium was first used to treat patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder by psychiatrist John Cade in 1949. It was utilized as a tranquilizer that inhibited manic-depressive signs. In 2009 Japanese researchers at Oita University found a link between low levels of suicide rates and non-toxic levels of naturally-occurring lithium in drinking water.

How does lithium orotate affect mental health?

In our body there are highways in which the nervous system sends messages to other systems, thus allowing the brain to exert control over them. These highways are absolutely necessary to the processes responsible for thought formation among others. The nerve cells in these highways release chemicals called neurotransmitters that serve as messengers to other cells. However, at a cellular level there are other factors that influence the production and employment of neurotransmitters, resulting in neural activities that may induce mood disorders. Lithium orotate stabilizes mood in that it keeps the amount of neurotransmitters at desirable levels, which is central to researches in treatment of manic depression, clinical depression, schizoaffective disorder, ADHD, and others. Some studies have suggested that lithium can also work to help reduce memory loss.

No matter what reason you take lithium for, be it mood disorders or memory loss, look for this wonderful mineral at your local or internet vitamin store. Always choose name brands like Doctors Best to ensure quality and purity of the product you buy for better health.

About the Author: If you need a brain boost to help with memory or mood, give

lithium orotate

a try risk free at VitaNet , LLC Vitamin Store. http://vitanetonline.com/ Unique free content such as this is available to all who are interested contact me: http://vitanetonline.com/articlerequest.cfm

Source:

isnare.com

Permanent Link:

isnare.com/?aid=711881&ca=Wellness%2C+Fitness+and+Diet