Mercury in Seafood; Something's "Fishy" ... My body show's I'm part thermometer!

I love ahi tuna.  I love seafood, and believe it's a very natural thing for humans to eat, as it's been part of our diets since, well, "forever".  I was raised in the mountains of Colorado in the 1960s and 70s, before it was common to have good fish in this 'land locked state'.  The second integrative medicine specialist MD I went to, in Denver in 1997, who went on to write a marvelous series of books on fibromyalgia, diabetes, and PCOS (Milton Hammerly) suggested I eat salmon 3x a week; I didn't like fish aside from tuna fish salad or casserole every now and then, but I started eating the blackened salmon at Outback and in sushi, both of which were located near my home in west Denver; I had a very busy schedule of 12 hour days and long commutes so was eating at those places or Chipotle virtually every night. 

Like anything, I then had to 'finesse' my education about seafood since I really knew nothing about it. I was joking recently about a young girlfriend of my stepdaughter's who went to the dump with us one day and remarked that she was glad HER trash just went into a trash truck!  Today, after having years of health challenges with it's ups and downs and making a great deal of headway (and sharing it here at Lumigrate to help others),  I shop and eat differently than I did in the past.  

Initially, I learned of mercury being in some fish and so naturally thought farm raised was the way to go, then found out the details about that being handled equal to feedlots for cows, pigs, and poultry, and I don't endorse those practices by voting with my dollars out of respect for the Earth and it's animals equal to my concerns for my personal health.  Because, after all, we're all intricately connected; what I put into my body has to do with what has been put into the Earth by all other beings.  Keep in mind, there are people deep in the forests who never have been around other humans yet have traces of rocket fuel in their blood, when sampled! 

I have a 'keen respect' and a little bit of unfortunate personal knowledge about mercury.  I'll share my story here AND then set you up for resources to learn more about it at the bottom.  (And Lumigrate is always adding on and changing so remember to come back, we might have NEW/more/improved on this soon!)

I'm particularly concerned about mercury in seafood for this reason, and I want YOU to be at LEAST AWARE becauses I believe mercury and other heavy metals have had a drastic impact on my brain/nervous system/body since before I was born. I am fortunate to have had in inquisitive mind with some abilities for science that were higher than average, and found out about "heavy metal challenge testing" at a time when a family member wanted to do something for me as my health was creating problems and needing to be sorted out.  So, rather than a 'weekend away' gift certificate, I did a 24 hour urine collection after an IV of chemicals that will pull the metals out of your tissues (they get stored in a way that keeps them from coming out of your body normally). 

I look at my health as an 'investment' in me. If you ask people I grew up with and went to college with, I was notoriously 'cheap' and, as my roommate said a couple years ago when I saw her, "You were certainly good with money." I supported my husband and myself for years on jobs that at most made $15k/year! I find myself in an ongoing 'conversation' with people about how to look at their budgets, and food quality is one of the key topics.  People who will pay money for recreational toys and time/experiences and have significant health histories and concerns will stick to the cheapest food.  

I'll use seafood as an example: Rather than thinking "I'll pay more for a really good quality fish and prepare it in a way that is delicious and we eat less of it and pair it with something very inexpensive, or give up my $5 coffee for a couple of days to offset this increased price", they think of this higher priced item as IN ADDITION to their usual expenditures.  Typically I can find something in someone's routine that isn't so healthy that can be shifted away from in order to offset the money to be spent on higher quality meats and seafood.  Particularly when you're eating something that comes from another animal, which has already been consuming things (including toxins), you're going to want to put your 'happy money' (organics, free range, free ocean), in these areas as much as possible.  

Specifically about mercury for me, I became ill in my early 20s and by my late 20s things got VERY BAD, so for over twenty years, I have been looking for problems and solutions.  I was getting better then it would go back down the drain again.  Dr. Lepisto, who you see on the Videos tab here at Lumigrate or in the forums a bit also, convinced me to have my amalgam fillings out a few years back because he saw me going up and down like another patient of his who just took off for the better health-wise after having his few replaced; I only had a few so was thinking it was 'no big deal', as did the other patient.  My colds, flu, allergies that go into infections of the sinus and lungs (which are 'connected' essentially, as the brain and intestines are in 'our' way of thinking that Lumigrate presents and promotes) have drastically improved.  

For a while my health really shot up overall; I had a particular stress load 1-3 years ago and that finally burdened me and now I'm working more on my relationship with psychological stressors and toxic people and eliminating them from my life as I did in the past related to mercury!  But after you get something out, you need to not let it back in much, so that's why I scrutinize my seafood now!  

I did the 'heavy metals challenge test' about five years ago, when I was in my mid 40s. Some progressive MDs and most NDs offer this type of testing; you put chemicals into your bloodstream (by IV or oral products) that pull metals out of your tissues, then you simply collect your urine for a day and send a small amount off mixed with something they give you to add into it, I presume it was a preservative (sorry, it's been a few years back, but the metals get absorbed in fat and don't come out on their own without a chemical 'nudge', to put it as simplistically as I can interpret it).  I did this in Grand Junction and had one of the highest mercury results seen by an MD who had about ten years of doing this type of testing; Dr Lepisto thought I was the highest he had seen at that time, but he was only a few years into his career as an ND.  Knowing that there was a clear 'cause/effect' after an immunization in 1981, which was later proven to have been at fault for causing 5% of adults who received it to have an onset of autoimmune disorders, it was clearly necessary to 'get the lead (and mercury and cadmium) out!'  Which I did for a while - a story for another place, but my health overall is better as a result. 

Then I had a consultation in 2010 with Wm Marc Spurlock, MD (see "Fibromyalgia" section of Forums for a forum with his name as part of the forum title).  He's an EXTREMELY efficient physician.  I've had doctors over the years that know a lot and when you have an appointment they kinda get somewhere, aren't really sure, yada, yada, yada.  In this phase of his professional life, he's one of the nation's top experts on fibromyalgia and chronic diseases AND environmental medicine has been his specialty for many years.  If you look at his biography here at Lumigrate (Forum titled 'About Lumigrate's Experts, up at the top of the list of forums), you'll see that he's done all the typical stuff of GOOD doctors -- primary care, nursing home medical directing, and then he has gone on the last many years to do a lot of very interesting, unique advising of patients and teaching other providers who specialize in chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.  

Dr Spurlock covers a LOT of ground in an hour appointment, and he charged half what the local fibromyalgia specialist I formely went to charges! I took a whole bunch of records with me but the three I most wanted him to see were the heavy metals results, my most recent MRI of my neck disks, half of which are awry, and my most recent blood labs of hormones ordered by my previous doctor, and what had been prescribed based on it.  

He glanced at my results from my heavy metals challenge test of a handfull of years ago, and said 'immunizations, and smoking -- did you used to smoke?'  "Not first hand, but much second and third hand as my mother and grandmother did", I responded.  Since I really think 'integratively' about body/mind/spirit collaborating to allow the natural state of being in wellness OR things adding up to dragging you into illness, and in order to pain the picture of my 'life' in a snapshot story, I added 'I was expected to be home every afternoon helping her cook dinner starting at 5 pm and we'd have to do it very slowly so that she could have five martinis before we ate.'  

His response was GRATE for a person who seeks out a provider who 'get's' the mind/body/spirit connection:  "What was SHE dealing with?"  You see, right there, we covered the foundation of body (mercury, lead and cadmium in my tissues), mind (which is made up of a lot of tissues in the BRAIN, but 'mind' has to do with adverse childhood experiences and the proven connection to chronic illness in adulthood), and spirit -- what was HER spirit dealing with by having that much alcohol, and what did that do to MY spirit?  You see, a person who hasn't had these types of toxins might be able to get a lot of mercury exposure and be fine -- but it is a neurotoxin so then learning how to detoxify and clean your body just as you would your car or your house is something people can do to change their health in the present and future.   

Lead and cadmium are found in the papers that cigarettes (or 'joints') are rolled in, he said, and since it's in the packaging and not in the tobacco itself the industry gets away with not having to disclose that to the public in the warnings about cigarette smoking, etc.  Mercury, for me, didn't likely come much from fish, as we just didn't eat much tuna when I was growing up, and I probably made a tuna casserole when I was a young adult, married and in college, about once a week.   But in order to get married in 1981 in Colorado, you had to take a blood test to prove immunity to German Measles, since it's bad for babies if the mother gets it while pregnant.  I had to have the vaccine/immunization! Within two months I was at the Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) specialist for a strange and new development having to do with my hearing.  

Within a year or so I'd gone from my 'always' 125# all the girls were envyous of (effortlessly, I never 'dieted'), to 150# and was so exhausted I couldn't stay awake during a Sunday football game; I'd wake up when my husband and his friend would get to screaming at the TV and go back to sleep. I had NO idea how precarious my health was, and it took eight years of up and down symptoms and other strange things happening (like my ears reacting to earrings if it wasn't high Karat gold content) before one day I just "couldn't" function! I couldn't walk a block, I couldn't go up the flight of stairs to my office after walking from the parking lot, I couldn't get my eye muscles in the morning to work well enough to even get out of bed! 

Thankfully, my regular doctor knew that something was going around Fort Collins with a lot of people with similar symptoms and there was an ENT (different one than I'd gone to several years before with the first symptoms) who was hooked in somehow with National Jewish who was studying this 'stuff', and he took one look at the puffyness under my eyes and asked if that was usual for me, which it wasn't, and ordered bloodwork to look at my Epstein-Barr titers, which were way high.  So I did what he told me and I got somewhat better.  

But on a Friday night, I wasn't up yet to going out with friends, I was home watching 20/20 as my husband had to do the yardwork, which I typically did -- he was outside doing that and tinkering in his shop/garage -- and there was a segment about the biggest class action lawsuit ever, having to do with an two brands of an immunization for German Measles which caused 5% of adults who received it to get autoimmune disease! I wrote down the two brands and on Monday called the Colorado State University Health Center, where I'd received the vaccine in 1981, and asked them what brand they were purchasing in 1981.  They looked it up for me, and sure enough it was one of those two brands.  

Thimerosol was the theorized reason for the reactions, and that is a mercury derivative.  You'd think that there would be NO MORE thimerosol in immunizations after that wouldn't you?  I was BLOWN AWAY in the last two years when hearing from the local infectious disease doctor about influenza and the vaccines that about one of the brands still has thimerosol in it!  

So that's my story! And I hope I've rolled a lot of different topics to get you thinking or further your knowledge and interest.   The links I suggest you go to if they sound interesting for YOU: 

This is how the NRDC (National Resources Defense Council) spins the EPA information (and link is: 

www.nrdc.org/health/effects/mercury/guide.asp
PROTECT YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY

The list below shows the amount of various types of fish that a woman who is pregnant or planning to become pregnant can safely eat, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. People with small children who want to use the list as a guide should reduce portion sizes. Adult men, and women who are not planning to become pregnant, are less at risk from mercury exposure but may wish to refer to the list for low-mercury choices.

Protecting yourself -- and the fish: Certain fish, even some that are low in mercury, make poor choices for other reasons, most often because they have been fished so extensively that their numbers are perilously low. These fish are marked with an asterisk (read more below).

This list applies to fish caught and sold commercially. For information about fish you catch yourself, check for  advisories in your state.

This is how the American Pregnancy Organization spins the EP information: (and if you ask me, if a pregnant woman needs to be concerned for the baby's brain we should ALL be concerned for OUR brains... the only difference is an adult is a bigger body and not 'developing' but our cells are always turning over and replacing themselves, that is the WONDERFUL thing that allows us to reverse health problems! And our brain in particular has the 'plasticiity' --- I think it's 'old thinking' to set the bar differently for babies and adults when it comes to heavy metals and the effect on the neurological system)  www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancyhealth/fishmercury.htm