Redefining Lithium with Low Dosing

Itchy and Bitchy Podcast

KS Miller-Hnilica

Health & Fitness, Sexuality, Medicine

4.9 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Karen tackles a listener question about low-dose lithium. She reviews micro- vs. low-dose ranges, discusses forms like lithium orotate/aspartate and third-party-tested supplement options, and flags safety essentials such as toxicity symptoms, thyroid/kidney considerations, and when to loop in your clinician.

Visit our website itchyandbitchy.com to read blog posts on the many topics we have covered on the show.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/itchy-and-bitchy-podcast--4303608/support.

Itchy & Bitchy is back! ... and the medical system is officially on notice.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The content of this podcast is provided for general informational purposes only and is not intended as,
0:06.4	nor should it be considered a substitute for professional medical advice.
0:11.1	Oh, how I feel.
0:14.2	Bitchy, bitchy, bitchy, bitchy, bitchy, bitchy, itchy, bitchy, bitchy and bitchy.
0:25.4	Hello, this is Karen Nicol family nurse practitioner, and you are listening to Itchy and Bitchy, a podcast that provides answers to your many unanswered health questions.
0:30.6	I have so much fun getting to know the people who have enrolled in my course, the perimenopause
0:37.1	answer, and they have so many
0:39.8	good questions for me. This week, one of the women in the course asked me about using low dose
0:45.7	lithium to help with mood. Again, I figured that if she had this question, many of you out there
0:53.2	may also have this question. So guess what?
0:56.5	We're talking about lithium today. There has been a stigma that hangs over the medication lithium.
1:04.1	This happened for a variety of reasons. It is a medication that many people believe is only for severely ill patients. And also the
1:14.3	high doses used to treat patients from the 1960s to the 1980s led to severe side effects and the
1:22.5	mistaken belief that it causes kidney damage. Lithium is used as needed to treat mania that is part of bipolar disorder.
1:31.5	Mania is a condition in which someone with bipolar disorder displays an over-the-top level of
1:38.5	activity or energy or mood or behavior. Dosing of oral lithium that is used for episodic mania is up to 1,500 milligrams a day.
1:50.3	This medication can also be used on a daily basis versus as needed to reduce the frequency and severity of manic episodes.
2:00.4	The dosing of the med taken orally for this use is up to
2:03.4	1,200 milligrams a day. I want you to remember those numbers, 1,200 milligrams and 1,500 milligrams
2:11.5	per day of oral lithium. You may be asking at this point, Karen, why are you talking to us about lithium?
2:19.2	I don't have bipolar disorder. Well, for the last few decades, there have been studies to support
2:26.3	the use of very low doses of lithium for improved mood and cognitive function. We also have
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from KS Miller-Hnilica, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of KS Miller-Hnilica and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.