Can eating too much tuna REALLY lead to mercury poisoning?

[Yevonnael777]

Yeah, agreed, I like sardines, as well, though they aren't cheaper where I live and it's hard to find them without oil already being added in the can.

eat catfish
cheap and low mercury

[IanGeda1]

I say a can a week to be safe and then you won't have to worry about it

[ALEXH-]

I eat a can of tuna every day. Been doing so for last few months at least. Love my tuna.

[snorkelman]

Methylmercury (MeHg) is very toxic, and impacts the human nervous system when ingested. Research thus far has yielded great disparities in the amount and distribution of contaminants in different fish species. Both the benefits and dangers contained in fish appear to be dose-dependent, which has resulted in researchers in the past decade just beginning to establish a dose-response curve, based on the limited data available in this area, so that individuals can weight the benefits against the potential harns. See, Good fish/bad fish: a composite benefit-risk by dose curve. Gochfeld M, Burger J. Neurotoxicology. 2005 Aug;26(4):511-20. See also, Health benefits and potential risks related to consumption of fish or fish oil. Sidhu KS. Regul Toxicol Pharmacol. 2003 Dec;38(3):336-44.


Recently, scientists attempted for the first time to create a model that can be refined in the future as more data become available on cardiovascular and neurodevelopmental risks of methylmercury (MeHg), and the health benefits of consuming fish and fish oils. Specifically, this recent study for the first time provides an integrated analysis for methylmercury (MeHg) and omega-3 FA that uses dose–response relationships on common end points and that evaluates the net effect on a species-by-species basis.

See, Quantitative approach for incorporating methylmercury risks and omega-3 fatty acid benefits in developing species-specific fish consumption advice. Ginsberg GL, et al. Environ Health Perspect. 2009 Feb;117(2):267-75.

The study concluded that omega-3 fatty acid benefits outweigh methylmercury (MeHg) risks for some species (e.g., farmed salmon, herring, trout); however, the opposite is true for others (swordfish, shark). Other species were associated with a small net benefit (e.g., flounder, canned light tuna) or a small net risk (e.g., canned white tuna, halibut). These results were used to place fish into one of four meal frequency categories. See, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...3-ehp-117-267/ which shows that swordfish, shark are best to be avoided whereas tilapia, pollack, flounder, shrimp, trout, herring, salmon can pretty much be eaten in unlimited amounts. However, the authors were careful to note that “because of persistent organochlorine contaminants in certain species such as farmed salmon, one must consider consumption limits based on cancer risk or other end points (Foran et al. 2005). Data for such contaminants should be analyzed to make sure that unlimited consumption of these species is appropriate.” The authors stated, “We estimated sword-fish and shark to have a substantial net risk, even at one meal per month; thus, they are in the do not eat category.” The authors specifically noted, “It may be theoretically possible to obtain omega-3 FA benefits and avoid some of the contaminant issues by taking fish oil supplements…[but] omega-3 FA supplements are not regulated by the FDA, so label accuracy, quality control, and contaminant testing may be issues.”

The following chart lists the estimated omega-3 fatty acid and methylmercury (MeHg) levels in commonly eaten fish.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...2-ehp-117-267/

[EmperorRyker]

Hmm, I still don't know how to what extent these figures are actually applicable. Yeah, so we know that mercury can lead to impaired health, but it seemse that they again looked at it as if it came isolated and didn't really take into account the selenium and the whole context let's say tuna comes with. It seems that they infer certain things by looking at the mercury content of fish and the mercury accumulated in the body (hair), but overlook the important step of whether mercury is actually accumulated due to fish consumption or not. They address the fact that when such and such amount of mercury accumulate in the body that becomes detrimental and that particular fish hold such and such amounts, but then they just assume those two ends can be tied together as if it there really was no additional step between them.

[fitliftkit]

Canned salmon has no mercury. If you look hard enough, you can find smaller cans (same size as tuna) and in foil bags.

[Seany6]

does drinking green tea help with mercury?

or is this some broscience I read?

I don't believe it has any direct action.

Coriander/Cilantro apparently helps remove heavy metals from the body including mercury.

So I make a pesto from it every once in a while, even if it doesn't work.. tastes good and very healthy.

http://home.earthlink.net/~jedcline/cilantro.html

[bloodsimple1234]

Canned salmon has no mercury. If you look hard enough, you can find smaller cans (same size as tuna) and in foil bags.

I make salad with canned salmon I buy from whole foods and I get it to taste just like tuna salad!

I don't believe it has any direct action.

Coriander/Cilantro apparently helps remove heavy metals from the body including mercury.

So I make a pesto from it every once in a while, even if it doesn't work.. tastes good and very healthy.

http://home.earthlink.net/~jedcline/cilantro.html

it helps a little,there is also a product made by jarrow called heavy metal detox-pretty decent product.

this and limiting tuna intake will help.

[InclineDBPresss]

Any 2.50/Lb or less chicken is just as good as tuna price per amount of protein-wise.. I hardly ever have tuna unless I run out of grilled chicken in my fridge

[jhoov01]

Any 2.50/Lb or less chicken is just as good as tuna price per amount of protein-wise.. I hardly ever have tuna unless I run out of grilled chicken in my fridge

I ate roughly 30 cans of tuna a week (I was poor) for 7-8 years and was diagnosed with mercury poisoning. So to answer the original OP YES!!!

[MetalZav]

I ate tuna anywhere from 1-3 times a day for a few weeks. Nothing major happened, but did stumble across a lot of mercury warnings, so I only have one can maybe every other day or so. Sometimes I'll have sardines instead. Regardless of the accuracy of the mercury levels, I figure it's better to be safe than sorry. Plus, you can still get your protein/omega-3 from a myriad of other sources.

[Barn01]

I ate roughly 30 cans of tuna a week (I was poor) for 7-8 years and was diagnosed with mercury poisoning. So to answer the original OP YES!!!

How much antioxidants were you taking at the time?

Greens
Vitamin types and amounts?

If you aren't ridding your body of the heavy metals that you're consuming then yes you're going to get sick over time. It's all about balance. Consume more antiox and you can get away with eating more tuna.

Stick to Skipjack, as far as I know it has the lowest merc content.

[Sabaren]

Why not eat canned salmon instead? Sources show it is very low in mercury and Chicken of the Sea reports that their canned salmon is wild caught. It is more nutrient dense, especially Omega-3 FA having 33% more than canned tuna.

Why do people even bother with tuna?

[Barn01]

Why not eat canned salmon instead? Sources show it is very low in mercury and Chicken of the Sea reports that their canned salmon is wild caught. It is more nutrient dense, especially Omega-3 FA having 33% more than canned tuna.

Why do people even bother with tuna?

The differences are
- Some prefer the less fishy taste
- It's usually cheaper
- Less fat

[Jericho786]

Who cares. If it happens it happens. Fact is anything of too much is bad. People nowadays eat garbage constantly. Dont be paranoid, this is just my hones opinion.

[P0w3rH0us3]

Hey man,
I study Human Nutrition and we were just reading a study similar to this.
It measured the levels of fish consumption in pregnant females and also measured their blood mercury levels and then measured the cognitive function of their babies at 3 years of age to determine what had an effect.

They found that those who consumed a large quantity of fish were more likely to have higher levels of blood mercury (as you would assume) but even those who had the highest levels of blood mercury still benefited greatly, in terms of cognition, from the increased fish intake.

High intake was defined as those having more than 4 servings of fish per week and further statistics done showed that those who ate predominantly tuna compared to those who ate other fish had lower blood mercury levels.

The discussion went on to say that you don't really need to limit fish intake, but eat more of the smaller fish as they live for a shorter time period and therefore do not bioaccumulate as much mercury as larger fish do (eg, swordfish).

Sorry this is pretty long and not entirely bang on, but in terms of cognition/mental function there seems, in my opinion, to be little detrimental effect of tuna intake on blood mercury levels.

But the study was done on pregnant women and measured babies' cognitive function at 3 years. So probably not applicable to 20-30 year old bodybuilders wondering about physical implications of mercury. Hopefully it gives some insight.

[NinjaZX10R]

TS,

I think it should be noted that there is a distinction between something that would be labeled as outright mercury poisoning if you were hospitalized and all the health ramifications of consuming lots of mercury over the long term.

As for mercury poisoning I have first hand accounts of it by someone in my family (female cousin) who eat a few cans of tuna per day and also some tuna steaks for when she didn't eat canned in addition to other meals as part of a crash diet. Basically, she was trying to lose weight but wasn't really clued in on proper diet and someone at her job suggested tuna as a lean protein source meal that would help her lose weight so she integrated into her daily eating habits and lost weight (yup, she sure did lose weight).

She started experiencing all sorts of crazy health problems and spent months going to different doctors. She was having crazy short term memory loss. You'd introduce her to some friend and a few minutes later she didn't know their name. She was going to the store and forgetting why she went and coming home with random ****. She had chronic diarrhea, skin issues, weight loss, etc etc etc. She went from being a healthy but pudgy girl to somebody that looked like a concentration camp survivor and acted like she had Alzheimers. I saw her on average of ounce per month during all this and heard about the rest through her mother (my aunt). She got so sick that she ended up having to move back in with her mother to take care of her. Everyone in the family thought she had contracted some mystery disease and the way her health deteriorated I personally thought she might die within a year or two.

FINALLY, some doctor got clued in that she was eating lots of tuna. Don't know how it wasn't narrowed down sooner (obviously, I wasn't at her doctors apps with her). Long story short, the doctor told her to stop eating tuna and, literally, with a few weeks she was feeling better and after a month or so she looked underweight but healthy. ALL, literally ALL of her health issues went away within a few weeks of stopping all the tuna.

Since all that happened I have been very careful about avoiding mercury since I saw her health declining with my own eyes. I would see her on average ounce per month and it was easy to notice the negative changes in her health. As far as all the ailments she had I had to hear about those through my aunt (her mother) but it was pretty much a laundry list of very unpleasant ****.

Plain and simple: Mercury is very very very nasty stuff. It should be common sense around here to avoid it as much as possible regardless of whats been PROVEN or not. Every time I hear people say "well, it's not been PROVEN so I'm gonna do it" I have to laugh. What REALLY makes it a no brainer is that there are so many other options that don't contain high levels of mercury. Sardines are a very good example. They contain almost ZERO mercury.

So, my question is simple: Why even bother with tuna at all when sardines are available and there are other fish options that contain little to no mercury. Also, some high quality wild caught salmon has been shown to be virtually free of mercury. You just have to chose salmon carefully and make sure you know where it came from (no farmed **** for example). Another good option is catfish from certain areas that has been shown to contain no mercury and not issues with pollution runoff.

Simple: Tuna can have high levels of mercury. Tuna is not the be-all-end-all of the fish kingdom nor is it the only option. It's completely unnecessary to consume it. There are BETTER options both in terms of low mercury and in terms of nutrition so why the hell so many people on this board go crazy over tuna I don't know. You'd think tuna was the only food available or something.

As a general rule I would suggest you ignore all the people on this board who CLAIM to eat 20 eggs per day and two cans of tuna per day and 8 billion grams protein per day etc etc etc. Use the brain you have for christs sake. It's kinda like the folks who run around having unprotected sex while claiming the risk of STD's is overblown and you shouldn't stress about it. It really doesn't take much in terms of intelligence to ignore them and do the smart thing. The great thing about the tuna mercury issue is that, unlike with sex, there are lots of better options anyway!

[sully862]

The whole reason you can get mercury poisoning is that the body does NOT have any means to eliminate mercury. You will maintain in your tissues every bit of mercury you eat -- always! So I'm with you in finding some alternatives to tuna. I do love it, and I'm not sure I want to eat sardines with bones etc...yuck.

[Ericfitness86]

the only thing ive ever know to be true about this is that albacore has way more than normal tuna. why i dont know, but either way if your concerned then just cut it back a bit. i personally only eat fish a couple times a week(usually salmon).

[GeraldGarner]

I haven't read through every message, but this is a summary after research that I have done over the years.

Mercury is not good for you. It has many neurological effects, including memory loss, depression, muscular affects, mood disorders etc etc. Just googling will get you the basis of what you're dealing with.

"Mercury Poisoning": The thing about getting "mercury poisoning" is that it is not like catching a flu, where you either have it or you don't. It's a progression, much like cholesterol sticking to the arteries. That means the symptoms are a progression. It is only called mercury poisoning when mercury can be attributed to the cause. This means you could be experiencing the effects and not even comprehend that mercury can be the cause.

Why tuna? Tuna is at the top of the food chain in the ocean (much like swordfish). It eats fish, who eat smaller fish, etc etc. This means mercury is much more concentrated in the larger fish, for the most part, because they consume more smaller fish and downward.

Why so much mercury? Although there are natural levels of mercury in the ocean, industrialization, coal mining/burning, improper disposal of mercury products have caused an unnatural spike in mercury in the ocean. Starting at the basic level of plankton, it works its way up the food chain.

Social Reasons: The calories a tuna consumes compared to the calories it produces is 10 fold. In other words, simplifying, 10,000 calories of sardines equals 100 calories of tuna. Why not just eat the sardines? This is similar to cow meat vs vegetables they consume.

Tuna are also over fished. They are a wild species, and their numbers are dwindling. This is basically the American Bison in the ocean. If you want them to survive, you stop eating them.

Other: Mercury must be labeled as hazardous waste when disposing of it. Mercury fillings are banned in many western countries (why it isn't banned in the U.S. is another discussion). Check out "The cove" for some mercury (and dolphin) entertainment.

I don't really get why people eat tuna (of course many aren't aware of any of this, gotta love the gov). There's plenty of available substitutes. I don't know, I tend to ramble.

[GeraldGarner]

Who cares. If it happens it happens. Fact is anything of too much is bad. People nowadays eat garbage constantly. Dont be paranoid, this is just my hones opinion.

That's a positive outlook on life. I'm sure every scientist will agree with you. People eat ****, yet our disease rates go up. Funny how that works.

"Let's try some of this DTD, if it screws people up, then it screws people up. Facts are for pussies."

Unless you're trolling..

[NickZwayne]

i was eating up to 10 servings a day (i know it's retarded but at a meal goal of ~50g protein/meal and being a college student who doesn't always have time to cook...and there you have it...

I suffered from it pretty bad for a couple months before i finally figured out what i was doing to myself.

I literally struggled to feel "normal" on any given day, I was perpetually in a daze, could barely think straight...socially inept, literally couldn't think of responses to say to people in a conversation...hard to described. couple months later I'm all good again, eating grilled chicken like crazy.

[NegativeX]

I eat up to 3 cans of light tuna a day (6 servings) for months now (usually 5 days a week)... always wondered about this.

I 'feel' fine, but who knows. Getting some blood work done in April, will have them check my Mercury levels and reply back to this thread.

/subbed

[AgentSkyhawk]

when i have tuna in the cans i usually have green tea with it. according to muscle and fitness march 2010 issue, "black/green tea reduced mercury absorption by 92 percent when ingested with mercuty contaminated mackerel."

i figure if it does that with mackerel it will more than likely do it for tuna. they say to drink a cup but i drink two.

edit: did da math. I usually eat lite canned tuna(have some at hq) and that has 0.12 mercury content according to the bodyrecomposition link. multiplyed by 92 percent. for some reason if i did 0.12 times 0.92 it gave me something higher so i did it this way.

0.12 x .50= 0.06 x.42 =0.0252

amidoingitrite?

[Lackeos]

I wonder whether accumulated mercury in the brain that crosses the blood-brain barrier will or won't show-up in a blood test. Maybe it's possible to have normal blood mercury levels and dangerous mercury levels in the brain?

[TheBarbellTolls]

when i have tuna in the cans i usually have green tea with it. according to muscle and fitness march 2010 issue, "black/green tea reduced mercury absorption by 92 percent when ingested with mercuty contaminated mackerel."

i figure if it does that with mackerel it will more than likely do it for tuna. they say to drink a cup but i drink two.

edit: did da math. I usually eat lite canned tuna(have some at hq) and that has 0.12 mercury content according to the bodyrecomposition link. multiplyed by 92 percent. for some reason if i did 0.12 times 0.92 it gave me something higher so i did it this way.

0.12 x .50= 0.06 x.42 =0.0252

amidoingitrite?

No. Do 0.12 x 0.08 instead. Should show you the total reduced amount.

[Robb817]

The answer to your question (thread title) is yes.. It absolutely can. I know someone that got it. He ate a ton of tuna at work like everyday for a week. Obviously.. a very excessive amount.

[AllGenetix]

i eat all you can eat sushi 4x a week. my mercury levels were over 60 (ref range of 0-5).

no symptoms and doc seemed okay with it as it is organic form of mercury.

[Jordansook]

this is a intresting one

[Hellonearth01]

Also worth nothing, not sure it's been mentioned already, that tuna comes in more than one form.

Canned tuna does not have as much, or any canned fish for that matter, mercury as say...a whole, frozen fish. Frozen fish has been proven to have a lot more mercury in it