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Will Eating Fish with Mercury Raise Heart Disease Risk?
 

People have long been urged to eat fish for heart disease prevention. Being a good source of protein, fish also contains omega-3 fatty acids, which can benefit the heart of healthy people, those who are at high risk of and those who already have cardiovascular disease.

The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends eating fish (particularly fatty fish) at least 2 times (2 servings) a week. Each serving is 3.5 ounce cooked, or about 3-quarter cup of flaked fish. Such fatty fish as salmon, mackerel, herring, sardines and tuna are high in omega-3 fatty acids.

Nevertheless, some health experts worry about the mercury in certain kinds of fish like shark and swordfish that might offset the health benefits of eating fish.

Mercury gets into the air from coal-fired power plants and other sources, and dissolves into water. Mercury goes into small fish when they are fed on plankton and bigger fish in turn eat them. Large predator fish like shark, swordfish and king mackerel tend to accumulate the highest mercury levels.

The metal, when in large quantities, can damage the developing brain and nervous system of young children and can be a great concern for pregnant women because of potential harm to the fetus.

Some studies conducted earlier on the effect of mercury and heart disease risk in adults have reported contradictory results. But in a government-funded health study, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health found that mercury from eating fish did not raise the risk of heart disease or stroke, after they analyzed toxin levels in toenail.

Toenails are preferred than blood samples because they grow slowly and at different rates, they are easy to collect and can be stored cheaply. More importantly, measuring mercury in a person’s toenails is a good gauge of long-term exposure to mercury from fish consumption.

Their findings, which were published on March 24, 2011 in ‘New England Journal of Medicine’, indicated no differences in the rates of heart disease and stroke among those with the highest concentrations of mercury comparing with those with the lowest.

Using information from 2 studies of 174,000 health professionals, researches collected and analyzed toenail clippings that some participants sent when the work started decades ago. After an average of 11 years, 3,427 participants who had given nail samples had heart disease or stroke. By comparing with an equal number of participants who did not develop these problems, researchers found that there was no link between mercury exposure and risks for heart disease or stroke, even after adjusting for factors like age, gender and smoking.

Benefits and risks of eating fish vary and depend on a person’s stage of life. An average person should eat fish as part of a healthy diet and not worry about ill heart effects. But children and pregnant women, as advised by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), should avoid eating fish that have the highest level of mercury contamination, for instance shark, swordfish, king mackerel or tilefish.

For middle-aged and older men and postmenopausal women, the benefits of eating fish outweigh the potential risks as long as they eat the amount of fish as recommended by the FDA and Environment Protection Agency.

Despite of the new findings, people should stick to fish that are low in mercury, for instance, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock, and catfish. In order to enjoy the benefit of eating fish, people should have their fish baked or grilled but not fried, and should choose low-sodium and low-fat seasoning such as spices, herbs, lemon juice.

Besides fish, people should also include whole grains, fruits and vegetables in their daily meal so as to achieve a balance diet, and meanwhile do not forget to exercise or perform physical activities on a regular basis.

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