Too embarrassed to ask your doctor about sex, body quirks, or the latest celeb health fad? In a regular feature and a new book, "What the Yuck?!," Health magazine medical editor Dr. Roshini Raj tackles your most personal and provocative questions. Q: Can you really get mercury poisoning from eating too much sushi? Believe it or not, you can. Mercury - a toxic heavy metal that can cause neurological problems - exists in high levels in such sushi staples as tuna (bluefin is one of the worst), mackerel, yellowtail, swordfish, and sea bass. (Other fish can contain a lot of mercury if they swim in polluted waters.) So if you're eating sushi, particularly these bad-news varieties of it, more than six times a week, you could be getting too much mercury, as actor Jeremy Piven claimed he was. I had a patient who came to me after surviving a heart attack. His doctor had told him to eat a high-fish diet, so he dutifully grilled tuna every day for a year. Then, he started noticing weird neurological symptoms.

We tested his mercury level and it was through the roof. So how can you detox your sushi platter? ordinare sushi online bolognaFirst, don't eat fish every day. free online games youda sushi chefIf you're going to have seafood that often, at least cut back on the most mercury-filled varieties. where to buy sashimi grade salmon in singaporeSkip these types of fish entirely while you're pregnant and nursing, because mercury exposure can very seriously harm the development of a fetus or young child.sushi garden menu melville sk And don't serve it to your little ones, who can be affected by much lower levels of the metal than adults would. play sushi no suki online

(In fact, very young kids shouldn't eat raw fish period because of the risk of food poisoning, which can be devastating.)cheap sushi platters adelaide And if you start to experience symptoms such as tremors, vision problems, and irritability, or if you just want to know you're in the clear, ask your doctor for a blood-mercury check. sushi conveyor belt mdIf it's high, he may advise you to cut back.The devil is in the details, and the details to this little devil's story keep getting piled on. Piven told David Letterman last night that he not only had mercury poisoning, but a host of other ailments as well.Last night on the Late Show, Piven said "20 years of eating only fish" also lead to Epstein-Barr, heart arrhythmia, and back spasms. It's amazing this man gets around without a Rascal. Mercury poisoning does cause high blood pressure and elevated heart rate, but usually not arrhthmia or spasms.

It also causes itching and pain, skin discoloration, swelling, hair loss, and skin peeling off in layers. Don't you think any stories involving these would be much more colorful? And how did it lead to him contracting a virus like Epstein-Barr? Maybe that was something he caught at, we don't know, a party or something?Piven also says that he got the best tests in the world at Quest Diagnostics, which can be found on just about any street corner in Manhattan. Earlier this year the company acknowledged it may have given thousands of people false results on Vitamin D tests. Piven also again name checked his fishy celebrity doctor Carlon Colker.He's sticking by his story why he couldn't continue doing eight shows a week of Speed the Plow, and a arbitrator recently cleared him of any wrong-doing in leaving the Broadway show two months early. Because every celebrity becomes a crusader for the disease he suffers from, Piven is now fighting the injustice of fetid fish across the globe.Dave was very sympathetic to his condition, and the interview couldn't be classified as anything but softball.

Piven even got in a few good laughs. We're not only impressed that he's kept up his story for so long, but now it's even compounding itself. Give it a year, and his sushi habit will have lead to acute zombieism, where he marched around with his arms extended trying to satisfy an unquenchable hunger for brains. Soon after he turned thirty, professional BASE jumper Jeb Corliss stood on the edge of a cliff, ready to jump, and sensed nothing. He jumped anyway: "I had a nasty malfunction and almost got killed and my heart rate never changed," he says. "I remember landing and thinking, 'How can I almost die and not even be scared at all? The lack of adrenaline was one thing. For the past year, Corliss also felt fatigued and slept more than usual. He went to see a doctor and was diagnosed with mercury poisoning. This was unsurprising considering he worked out roughly four hours a day and ate packaged tuna for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was the only low-fat, muscle-building protein he never got tired of eating, even though it was loaded with mercury.

"I deserved to be poisoned," he says. Evidence suggests that as many as 90,000 people live with mercury poisoning without knowing it. Long-term exposure to mercury, which almost exclusively comes from eating fish, wears down cells and can contribute to chronic health conditions such as heart disease. Symptoms can be vague and hard to pin down — like Corliss' lack of adrenaline. They also include weight loss, hair loss, and muscular weakness; sufferers can feel tired, weak, and dizzy, imparied vision, hearing, speech, increased sensitivity to light, and clumsiness. If you have a number of these symptoms, doctors can order a simple test that measures concentrations in the bloodstream. The treatment is equally straightforward: Stop eating fish. Once diagnosed, it will take your body about two months to rid itself of the toxin. Jeremy Pivens might be the most famous recent case of mercury poisoning — when he found himself in the hospital during his Broadway run of David Mamet's "Speed-the-Plow," and was maligned by the press for it (calling it the "sushi defense.")

Hospitalization is fairly rare from mercury poisoning. More common, as Rich Gelfond, the founder of the IMAX cinema technology, found is having difficulties diagnosing the disease. When he began to feel off-kilter and had trouble walking across the street, he went for repeat neurological tests until, months later, one neurologist asked about his diet and tested him for mercury. His levels were extremely high. Gelfond was so frustrated by the lack of treatment options that he's since started a fund at the State University of New York-Stony Brook dedicated to mercury research. Awareness of the problem is rising. This past October, the issue came to the international stage when the U.N. signed a treaty to curb widespread release of mercury into the atmosphere, primarily from coal- and oil-fired power plants and its use in gold mining — the first treaty ever to recognize a single chemical's detrimental effects on human health. The debate about the safe limit for mercury, however, remains wrapped up in controversy. 

On Tuesday, for instance, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an industry challenge to Environmental Protection Agency's limits on the emission of mercury. Few nutritionists say to do away with fish altogether if you don't have mercury poisoning. The fatty acids in fish lower risks for chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and arthritis. You should, however, try to eat smaller, younger fish, like anchovies, sardines, and mackerel, which tend to accumulate less mercury because they've spent less time in the sea and don't prey on smaller fish, further concentrating the mercury in their fat. "It might sound counterintuitive, but the most affordable fish have the least amount of mercury," says Andy Sharpless, CEO of Oceana and coauthor of The Perfect Protein. The vast majority of men who eat fish once or twice a week will primarily benefit, but, as Michael Gochfeld at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School point out, the upside usually does not continue beyond two fishmeals a week.

"People who eat fish every day are at risk," he says. If you're eating sushior swordfish steaks three times a week, even if you're asymptomatic, ask your doctor for a blood test. How to Avoid Mercury in Seafood1. Choose your canned fish wisely: Albacore ("white") tuna typically has more mercury than canned light tuna. Troll-caught tuna, like the kind you find in a can from Wild Planet, will have more consistently low mercury levels because the fishing method tends to have smaller catch than long-line fishing. An even safer bet: Canned sardines. 2. Don't eat predators. Shark, swordfish, king mackerel, or tilefish are all near the top of the food chain. They also contain some of the highest levels of mercury of fish we eat.These short-lived fish are all but devoid of mercury. They also happen to be one of the most omega- and calcium-rich species on the planet 4. Choose smaller fish. Avoid the temptation to pick the biggest fish at the market — smaller is likely younger, had less time to accumulate mercury, and is healthier.