How much lithium do you need each day?
There is no official daily recommendation for lithium; scientists cite 1 mg per day as a cautious guideline, but evidence for benefits in healthy people is largely absent, so supplementation is not yet substantiated.
Lithium is not an officially recognised essential nutrient for humans. Yet a provisional guideline does appear in the scientific literature: roughly 1 mg per day for an adult weighing 70 kg, or approximately 14 micrograms per kilogram of body weight. That figure is explicitly provisional and carries no official status comparable to the recommended daily allowance for vitamins or minerals.
In practice, many people do not reach that 1 mg through ordinary food. Researchers are therefore looking at ways to enrich vegetables and mushrooms with lithium, but that approach is not yet well established. Drinking water naturally contains small amounts of lithium; a large Japanese study found an association between higher lithium levels in drinking water and lower mortality rates. That is an interesting indication, but not proof that lithium is the cause of that lower mortality.
There is very little mention in the medical literature of demonstrated health benefits from lithium supplementation in healthy people. The term researchers use is 'intake at which benefits have been suggested', not 'proven benefit'. If you are considering supplements, it is worth knowing where the boundary with danger lies: in therapeutic psychiatric use, doses run from 600 to 1200 mg per day, a thousand times more than the nutritional guideline. Signs of toxicity appear at relatively low blood levels at those high doses, and higher levels are life-threatening. Such doses are completely out of the question for non-psychiatric use, but it does illustrate that lithium has a narrow safety window.
For everyday life it is enough to know this: officially there is nothing you need to meet, because a genuine recommendation does not exist. The scientific consensus leans towards an intake of around 1 mg per day as a cautious guideline, but benefits of that intake in healthy people have not yet been convincingly demonstrated.
This answer is based on several scientific review articles. The provisional guideline of 1 mg per day is mentioned in two independent sources. The association with mortality comes from one large Japanese observational study; no cause and effect can be inferred from it. The toxicity data at high doses are well documented from psychiatry. The researchers themselves emphasise that no officially recognised daily recommendation exists and that evidence for benefits in healthy people is largely absent.
Does a lithium deficiency increase the risk of dementia?
People in areas with higher lithium levels in drinking water develop dementia less often, but whether a deficiency actually causes dementia has not been proven. If you are concerned about your dementia risk, discuss it with your doctor rather than taking lithium on your own initiative.
Does eating low-carb make a difference for belly fat?
Eating low-carb probably helps with belly fat, but the effect depends strongly on how strictly you follow it and whether you are also eating fewer calories at the same time. If you specifically want to target belly fat, a meal time window or a combination of strategies appears more effective than reducing carbohydrates alone.