We all know that adding fish to our diets can help increase our bodies ability to repair itself, as well as it’s ability to burn body fat and keep our energy up, but it’s important to choose fish that’s also going to improve your health as opposed to silently poisoning you…
Being exposed to too much mercury can cause memory loss, tremors, neurological difficulties, advanced aging, decreased immune functions, and death.
But how is all this mercury getting into our body?
Well here’s the top 4 places that contribute to the levels of mercury in our body (not in any specific order):
- Vaccines (past and present)
- Dental fillings
- The environment
- And Fish
We’re going to focus on fish right now because that’s the prime source of mercury in our diets.
When coal is burned, inorganic mercury is released into the air and eventually ends up in our lakes, rivers and oceans. There, bacteria mixes with it and transforms it into methylmercury which is easily absorbed by fish (especially large or fatty fish), and is also easily absorbed by us when we eat those fish.
The good new is that our most recent studies indicate that the human body naturally rids itself of mercury over time – assuming we stop ingesting it long enough for our body to do what it was made to do, and to help the process here’s a list of fishes that naturally have a low, medium and high level of mercury:
High mercury: Mercury levels differ from one species of fish to the next. This is due to factors such as type of fish, size, location, habitat, diet and age. Fish that are predatory (eat other fish) are large and at the top of the food chain, and so tend to contain more mercury. Fish that contain higher levels of mercury include:
- Sugars and sugar-containing foods
- Shark
- Ray
- Swordfish
- Barramundi
- Gemfish
- Orange roughy
- Ling
- Canned or fresh tuna
- Mackerel
- Grouper
- Tilefish
- Chilean sea bass
Moderate mercury: Alaskan halibut, black cod, blue (Gulf Coast) crab, dungeness crab, Eastern oysters, mahimahi, blue mussels, pollack.
Low mercury: Anchovies, Arctic char, crawfish, Pacific flounder, herring, king crab, sanddabs, scallops, Pacific sole; tilapia, wild Alaska and Pacific salmon; farmed catfish, clams, striped bass, and sturgeon.