AbbVie (ABBV) announced Monday that it is buying Aliada Therapeutics for $1.4 billion. The deal includes Aliada’s lead drug candidate ALIA-1758, an experimental antibody being tested for treating Alzheimer’s disease.

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A new study found a link between NovoNordisk’s blockbuster drug Ozempic and a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease. 23andMe, the company that popularized consumer genetic testing, could soon be delisted from the Nasdaq. And Novo Nordisk is asking the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to bar compounding pharmacies

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Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster drug Ozempic (NVO) is linked to yet another health benefit. This time it’s lowering the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

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A new drug that slows the pace of Alzheimer's disease is too expensive for too little benefit to be used on the NHS, the watchdog says.

Broadcaster Sally Magnusson faces the dilemma of whether to take part in research that could indicate if she is likely to develop the condition.

Of the first three elements to appear after the Big Bang, only one is available to buy as a bath soak. The Sads Smashing Anti-Stress Bath Treatment, which comes in shiny silver packaging, lists lithium as an ingredient and promises to take users “from weighed down to mellowed out.” It’s one of dozens of over-the-counter lithium supplements that claim to support a healthy mood. The metal is also an ingredient in Novos Core, a supplement marketed to “target the 12 root causes of aging,” plus in Life Extension, XtendLife, LifeLink, Youngevity, and AgeImmune. The anti-aging entrepreneur Bryan Johnson’s “Essential” multivitamin includes lithium too. “I am on a 1mg daily dose,” Johnson told me in an email.

Lithium, in other words, has become firmly entrenched in the wellness industry’s extensive library of supplements. But in crucial ways, it is unlike the other trendy products that dance across your Instagram stories. At higher doses, lithium is a powerful treatment for severe mood disorders—and preliminary evidence suggests that lower doses might improve well-being for people without mood disorders too. The problem is, American companies have little business interest in finding out how effective it really is.

If you put pure lithium into water, it will explode into crimson flames, but mixed with acids, lithium forms stable salts. Lithium compounds also dissolve uric acid, which doctors in the mid-1800s believed to be the cause of many illnesses. Physicians began using lithium to treat “a wide range of ailments, including headaches, diabetes, asthma, indigestion, obesity, skin disorders, rheumatism,” Walter Brown wrote in his book Lithium: A Doctor, a Drug, and a Breakthrough. By the end of the century, lithia water (water with a trace amount of lithium) was marketed as a patent medicine. (In that era, patent medicines—trademarked, proprietary cure-alls, many of which contained alcohol or opium—were a popular alternative to going to the doctor.) 7 Up was originally named Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda, contained lithium citrate, and was marketed as a health tonic and hangover cure. Sears sold Schieffelin’s Effervescent Lithia Tablets, which were marketed for a variety of health concerns, including gout.

Smithsonian National Museum of American History

In 1949, lithium chloride, a table-salt alternative marketed to people with heart conditions, caused an outbreak of lithium poisoning in which at least two people died. The FDA, which had already started cracking down on patent medicines, quickly banned lithium in food products; later, researchers found that high doses of lithium can cause kidney failure, thyroid damage, tremors, and nausea. In 1970, the agency approved lithium carbonate for bipolar disorder; today, it’s also used off-label mostly for major depressive disorder. Then, in 1994, the FDA created the category of “dietary supplements,” which it does not evaluate, ushering lithium—mostly in the form of lithium orotate—back into a patent-medicine-like gray zone.

For decades, scientists have debated whether the lithia-water craze had any truth to it—if low doses of lithium might benefit a larger population than people with mental-health conditions, maybe even everyone. Some researchers think it's worth investigating whether lithium is an essential micronutrient, like calcium or magnesium, with a recommended daily minimum of some yet-to-be-determined amount. Lithium carbonate is typically given at 600 to 900 milligrams a day for mood disorders. We get minuscule amounts of lithium from foods such as grains, potatoes, tomatoes, and cabbage. Depending on where you live and what mineral deposits are nearby, your tap water may also contain lithium. A 2024 review paper led by Allan Young, a psychiatrist at King’s College London, determined that most lithium orotate supplements on the market today contain a “micro” dose of 5 to 20 milligrams, and many have a “trace” dose of just 1 milligram. (The Sads Smashing Anti-Stress Bath Treatment contains 127 milligrams of lithium orotate, but it’s meant to be absorbed through the skin, not ingested.)

[From the May 1928 issue: The secret of longevity]

The effects of such low doses remain a mystery. Although a 2020 meta-analysis of studies from nine countries (including the United States) found that higher amounts of naturally occurring lithium in tap water are indeed associated with lower suicide rates, studies from places such as Switzerland and the East of England have found no association. In a 2021 study of rural Argentina, places with more lithium in their tap water had more suicides. Martin Plöderl, a co-author of the recent Switzerland study, told me that his team has found a publication bias in studies of lithium in tap water: Those with positive findings are more likely to end up in journals. Research into lithium’s effects on dementia, Alzheimer’s, and longevity has also been promising but inconclusive. A 2011 study of tap-water data from Japan found that the more lithium in the water, the longer people lived. Lithium consumption has been linked to longer life spans in flies, roundworms, and yeast, perhaps because it regulates molecules involved in metabolism and resistance to stress, Michael Ristow, a medical researcher at Charité University Medicine Berlin and co-author of the Japan study, said. A 2019 study found that bipolar-disorder patients who take lithium have longer telomeres—a proxy for lower biological age—than patients with other psychiatric disorders. And a more recent study from Japan found that people who took lithium for mood disorders had lower rates of dementia than similar patients who did not take lithium.

These data are compelling enough for Ristow, who told me he takes a low dose of lithium every day. Nassir Ghaemi, a psychiatrist at Tufts University School of Medicine, did not comment on his personal use, but told me, “I think it’s beneficial in people who are middle-aged and older, who have any risk factors for dementia.” To really be sure, randomized trials in humans are needed. Because lithium is an ancient element, however, it can’t be patented—only novel inventions are available for intellectual-property protection. In order to obtain a patent, a company would have to come up with some different delivery method or other improvement. Pharmaceutical companies, which are regulated by the FDA, therefore have little reason to fund an expensive clinical trial, especially when cheap versions are already sold over the counter. But supplement companies have incentive to sell lithium OTC without conducting rigorous research on its effects. Zero clinical trials for lithium orotate are currently registered in the U.S., despite its widening market availability.

Scientists don’t yet know whether lithium-orotate supplementation would yield different results than lithium in tap water. Only two studies on such supplementation have ever been conducted in humans—one from 1973 and one from 1986—and they have small sample sizes and no placebo groups. “Given lithium does work at least for preventing bipolar disorder, it’s a scandal that we don’t know how it works,” Young told me. If low-dose lithium remains akin to a patent medicine, Americans could miss out on understanding how and how well it works, and if taking it comes with any risks. In at least one case report from 2007, a woman took 18 tablets of a lithium supplement called Find Serenity Now at once and went to the hospital after vomiting. She was discharged with no other serious issues, but the risks of long-term use simply haven’t been assessed.

[Read: I went to a rave with the 46-year-old millionaire who claims to have the body of a teenager]

In the late 19th century, people such as Mark Twain and President Theodore Roosevelt traveled to Lithia Springs, Georgia, to drink lithium-rich water. The springs’ appeal endures: You can order water from its website, which states, “Locals have always believed Lithia Spring Water flows from the fountain of youth.” Lithium predates human life, is extracted from stone, and can have a profound impact on a person’s emotional life. No wonder it tempts our never-ending desire for some primordial cure-all, whether it be found in a groundwater spring or in our very own bathtubs.

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The 19th-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer believed that the truth about life is largely invisible to humans. What we perceive around us is mostly a set of illusions, while reality—the inner essence of the world, or will (Wille, in German), as he conceived it—is generally out of our grasp. Yet he believed in one oracle that could reveal the secret verities: listening to music.

Schopenhauer’s theory was that the will is so ineffable that the nonverbal language of music alone could grant access to this apprehension of reality. Music, for Schopenhauer, thus opened up a unique channel of higher consciousness.

Although Schopenhauer was an atheist, his conception bears a strong resemblance to the idea held by many thinkers who find in music the language of the Divine. For example, the American Catholic scholar Peter Kreeft wrote in his 1989 book, Three Philosophies of Life, that “God is love, and music is the language of love; therefore, music is the language of God.”

I am not an expert in the academic debate about the metaphysics of music, but I do find this notion very suggestive—and it captures for me experiences I can’t access in any other way. I learned to read music at the age of five and spent all of my 20s as a professional classical musician. Like many musicians, I am synesthetic: Different pitches and chords evoke in my brain colors and even smells. These sensory effects make listening to, or playing, a great composition into an experience beyond the greatest fireworks show on Earth. To take in a Bach cantata or a Bruckner symphony is, for me, to glimpse for fleeting moments the majesty of creation and grasp why I exist in the universe.

Your experience of music may be a bit more, well, grounded than mine, and you’re thinking, frankly, that I should go get checked out by a neurologist for this issue. Fair enough. But Schopenhauer was onto something: We have plenty of evidence that music truly is one of the greatest ways to understand life more deeply.

[Arthur C. Brooks: Schopenhauer’s advice on how to achieve great things]

Music has appeared in every human society for which ethnographic evidence exists, according to research by a top scholar at Harvard’s Music Lab. Music is enmeshed with all of the important areas of our experience, from sweet lullabies to sappy love songs to hymns of religious praise. Although styles of music vary greatly around the world, the making and appreciation of music are such ubiquitous parts of human life that it can seem as much a phenomenon of our nature as a product of our culture.

Indeed, our brains are built to enjoy music, as scientists showed in a 2018 study conducted through the Berklee Music and Health Institute (part of the Berklee College of Music in Boston). We’re even hardwired to use music to help us heal. For example, when the brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease are stimulated by hearing a rhythmic piece such as a march, their symptoms may diminish and they are able to walk more naturally. Alzheimer’s patients who can’t remember family members typically are nonetheless able to recognize familiar songs. And people suffering from epilepsy can experience a dramatic decrease in seizures when listening to certain kinds of classical music—the so-called Mozart effect.

Over the past two decades, neuroscientists have also conducted experiments on the effects of music upon human emotions. For example, one 2006 experiment exposed people to chords that varied in degree of dissonance while scanning the limbic systems of the subjects’ brains, which is where emotions are produced. The paper found that positive emotions generally had an inverse correlation with dissonance. So we might practically deduce that a good way to raise your mood could be to block out the racket of street sounds (sirens, traffic, construction) in Manhattan with headphones delivering your favorite music.

The research findings on which genres of music bring the most happiness are inconclusive. One study found—based on characteristics of harmony, structure, and rhythm—that the world’s happiest song is the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” Another study found that grunge rock—known for its distorted electric guitar and nihilistic lyrics—is especially bad for happiness. Grunge not only raised hostility, sadness, tension, and fatigue for its listening participants, but also lowered caring, relaxation, mental clarity, and vigor. As a native of Seattle, where this genre was born, I found that this explained a thing or two about my misbegotten youth.

You might ask why someone would want to listen to miserable music, but obviously we do. You have very likely listened to sad songs after a bad breakup at some point. The function of sad music is not only to soothe you. Scholars also find that when people suffering from negative emotions consume disconsolate music, it helps them understand their feelings and find meaning in them. A sad song can help you feel less alone in your sadness and make sense of it.

In general, music amplifies positive and negative emotions most under two circumstances. First, when it’s performed live. British researchers asked participants to listen to classical music in three ways: live, prerecorded, and in an MTV-style video. Using sensors attached to the subjects’ scalps, the scholars detected significantly more brain activity for the in-person performance, indicating that this elicited the most engagement and focus in the listeners. Second, when one listens by oneself. In a 2018 experiment, researchers showed that happy music seems happier and sad music seems sadder when you listen to it alone, as opposed to listening with others.

[Read: Finding happiness in angry music]

If you want to use music more strategically to heighten your emotional experiences and gain a deeper sense of meaning and self-understanding, here are a few ideas to consider.

1. Decide what you want from your music.
The research indicates that a trade-off takes place between using music to bond socially and using it to intensify emotions. If you want the former result, listen with friends; if you want the latter outcome, listen by yourself. If you want a mixture of both, try going to a live concert with friends. If you want the richest emotional experience, go to a concert by yourself.

2. Follow a recipe.
The effects of music depend to a large extent on its underlying ingredients. For example, the music that typically elicits the most positive emotion has a fast tempo (between 140 and 150 beats per minute), features chords that include the seventh tone to create a sense of expectation, or is familiar to you. You could go study at the local conservatory to learn more about these elements, but the shortcut is just to create a catalog of songs you like. Pay attention to how each one makes you feel and write down its characteristics, in your own words; then look for patterns. You can build a personal music library this way based on emotional effect rather than style or artist.

3. Learn and grow.
Thinking about your music in terms of its effects on you will probably increase your appetite for new genres and help your tastes become more sophisticated. Once you start getting interested in increasing the emotional and cognitive effects of love songs, say, you might want to cultivate an interest in Italian opera. (I’d suggest starting with Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca or La Bohème.) If you like how an electric guitar shredding sick riffs stimulates your limbic system, try taking that experience to the next level with a flamenco virtuoso such as Paco de Lucía.

4. Play it yourself.
Among professional and amateur musicians, opinions differ about whether emotional experiences and life understanding are deeper when playing music as opposed to merely listening to it. Personally, I find listening better, but this may be influenced by having played in symphony orchestras under some of the world’s most tyrannical conductors. In fact, many musicians (including amateurs) find a kind of ecstasy in playing. One 2020 study looked at the well-being effects of playing music and found them to be significant and positive. Take a few lessons on your favorite instrument and see for yourself. I should note, however, that the researchers on that study included a comparison group of knitters—and they derived even more happiness than the musicians. Perhaps the ideal formula for bliss is to listen to music while knitting.

[Arthur C. Brooks: Here’s 10,000 hours. Don’t spend it all in one place.]

Living long before the era of recorded music, Schopenhauer had to get his transcendent musical experiences by going to concerts in Frankfurt, as well as playing his flute in his apartment, which he did for an hour a day. By the end of his life, he dedicated his attention almost entirely to just one composer, the Italian Gioachino Rossini, who was a contemporary (they were born four years apart). When he spoke of Rossini’s music, Schopenhauer is said to have rolled his eyes up toward heaven.

If you do the work, you too can make music a part of your life that goes beyond a pleasant background and becomes a lifelong journey into higher levels of consciousness and self-awareness. In short: Find your Rossini.