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Comment by cesnja | Hacker News Reader

The article doesn't mention meat and dairy as a source of surprisingly high levels pesticides and their byproducts.

[1] https://medium.com/center-for-biological-diversity/does-meat...

That's what happens when you're effectively an apex predator - you eat the things that eat the things with contamination and much of it gets concentrated into you, particularly the things that bioaccumulate over time.

Outside of pesticides but similar, that's why it's important to limit things like tuna consumption particularly from larger species that can build to high mercury levels.

IIRC, there has never been a case of mercury toxicity from normal consumption of commercial seafood recorded in any American medical journal. These larger species you mention could exist outside of that sphere.

Define "normal consumption". Some bodybuilders and strength athletes eat large quantities of tuna as a low-fat source of protein; a non-trivial proportion of dieters rely on fish as their main source of protein. These may be unusually high levels of consumption, but they aren't edge cases and aren't prima facie stupid if you're unaware of the risk of mercury toxicity.

A lot of smart, health-conscious people end up with dangerously high levels of mercury precisely because they believe that seafood is a healthy option and aren't aware of the risk of mercury exposure.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12676623/

Literally on the first page of google results for "mercury toxicity from normal consumption of commercial seafood": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4721310/ Cites dozens of studies of cases of adverse effects from mercury from seafood.

This is pretty worthless study. They are doing multiple comparisons without doing Bonferroni correction. Once you do that, there's no significant finding. On top of that, they have stupidly large 95% confidence intervals, their test metrics are pretty weak, and they only have blood levels of Hg of only a fraction of study participants. They seem to attempt to control for confounds, which is commendable, but with their sample being rather small, there's little hope of obtaining significant finding after controlling and correcting for multiple comparisons.

Controling for confounds here is the most important part really. It's like all the studies finding that people drinking wine have better health outcomes -- it turns out that wealthy people both are more likely to drink more wine, and have better health outcomes for reasons other than drinking wine. If you don't control for that, you'll find spurious associations.

I would bet that mercury toxicity is incredibly underdiagnosed, especially if it's not acute.

Fatigue, insomnia, and a host of other symptoms are fairly common and not easy to spot as a part of a bigger problem.

Anecdata: when I went to a large hospital they laughed off my idea that I have heavy metal poisoning and didn't even have the facilities to test for it. Only months later after visiting a naturopath and getting tested did my suspicions get confirmed. This case will never be on any official health records.

What was the treatment?

>heavy metal poisoning

Only treatment I'm aware of is some light jazz or R&B.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal_detoxification

Dialysis and depending on the metal Chelation. Both suck and neither were likely prescribed by a naturopath.

It's actually common in startup founders who sell their startups and then start eating expensive sushi all the time. My understanding is that several billionaires in silicon valley have mild Parkinson's-like tremors because of this.

High end omakase meals generally come with 1 or 2 .5 oz pieces of tuna. Even at 3x a day it would be comparable to one can of tuna. Of course mercury varies heavily from fish to fish but unless they were living on tuna/swordfish this sounds like an urban legend or could be something else in raw fish like liver parasites or bacteria.

> Even at 3x a day it would be comparable to one can of tuna.

The amount of mercury in the type of fatty tuna used for sushi is several times more mercury than in light canned tuna, which is normally what you'd use for a tuna melt or whatever.

Sushi grade tuna (unlike eel) isn't one of the types of fish you should never eat, but I definitely wouldn't eat it more than once a month.

Sushi-grade tuna and I suspect tuna steaks are much more likely to be from the larger tuna species. At the very high end you get the special cases where truly massive fish are sold at auction for absurd prices - the same fish that got to that size by eating a huge number of smaller fish and thus concentrating mercury. Canned "solid" albacore or "white" tuna has the same issue, though I wouldn't be surprised if it was still lower than fish sold for sushi or steaks.

Chunk "light" tuna on the other hand tends to come from smaller species and pretty much as a direct consequence has lower mercury levels.

Based on the numbers in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish, canned light tuna and skipjack have 1/3 to 1/2 the mercury found in albacore and yellowfin tuna and 1/4 the levels found in bigeye. Notably, those 3 all run 2-10x the size of the smaller species used in "chunk light."

> Naturopathy or naturopathic medicine is a form of alternative medicine that employs an array of pseudoscientific practices branded as "natural", "non-invasive", and as promoting "self-healing". The ideology and methods of naturopathy are based on vitalism and folk medicine, rather than evidence-based medicine.

This wasn't my experience. Where my family doctor and other practitioners ignored my thoughts and refused to get me tested out of personal skepticism, my ND listened to me and provided appropriate means of testing.

At no point was I suggested sketchy ancient 'healing' methods.

There are all kinds of branches to alternative medicine. One niche is the "ancient" style treatments you describe. Another is homeopathy. Another is various electrical and medical devices. And still another is an industry trying to sell chelation therapy to people who don't need it. Obviously I'm not a doctor and not familiar with your case, but that might be what others are responding to (e.g. https://www.acsh.org/news/2017/08/08/chelation-therapy-fad-t...)

It's not surprising that they listened to you and provided treatment, the entire brand of naturopathy/alternative medicine is based on making the patient feel heard and then telling the patient what they want to hear, which is "I can help you", whether or not it's actually true.

https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Tests/hea...

Naturopathy (like most pseudo sciences) thrives on taking things undiagnosed and giving concrete answers. There likely isn't a person out there that wouldn't test positive for heavy metal poisoning. Go retest with a different naturopath. I'm almost certain you'll still test positive (even though they likely gave you a bunch of vitamins and herbs to cure your poisoning).

> Fatigue, insomnia, and a host of other symptoms are fairly common and not easy to spot as a part of a bigger problem.

Fatigue and insomnia are depression symptoms. I'm not a doctor, but have you considered talking to a therapist?

I'm not sure what you're basing your opinion on, but I wasn't directly tested by a naturopath. You get a urine sample that's later shipped to an accredited lab and they provide you a detailed report with reference ranges, recommendations, and caveats.

I don't know what other NDs are like, though I'm sure many make a living by overselling supplements.

> accredited lab

Accredited by who?

> detailed report with reference ranges, recommendations, and caveats.

I can generate detailed reports. With references and ranges.

My point still stands, if you think what they are perscribing works, go get tested again with a different lab. More than likely you'll have just as negative a report come back with exactly the same recommendations.

Naturopathy is pseudoscience.

Seems like you got an axe to grind, but I'll bite. This is the lab in my case: http://rmalab.com/about-us/accreditation

> Naturopathy is pseudoscience

Agreed. However, many NDs are not exactly "naturopathic", but more like alternative doctors that can fill in the gaps if your conventional MD is not very helpful.

The lab is accredited, and from my limited googling looks like a legitimate accreditation.

However, I question the accreditation standards. This lab offers

Hair element analysis http://rmalab.com/medical-laboratory-tests/environmental/hai...

Which is bunk https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/19343...

and

Nutrigenomix http://rmalab.com/Nutrigenomix

also bunk (or at very least, extremely overselling benefits) https://www.nature.com/articles/ejcn2012145

NDs are snake oil sales men peddling placebos. The axe I have to grind is against people offering fake solutions to real problems. Pseudo science medicines, including naturopathy, gets people killed.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stephan-meningitis-deat...

It is worth noting that the FDA recommends limiting fish consumption to 12 oz a week for mercury-related reasons: https://www.fda.gov/food/foodborneillnesscontaminants/metals...

My doctor claims to have treated several fishermen in the past for mercury toxicity. This doctor has been practicing in what was historically a “fishermen’s neighborhood” for some 30 years (Ballard area of Seattle) so it seemed plausible.

I have nothing but this weak anecdote to contribute to the discussion. But I’ll ask the doc for details next time I’m in and report back when the topic comes up again.

What does that matter? If we get it from directly from plants we eat or indirectly through meat, you are still getting pesticides.

Wouldn't it be interesting if we didn't get the same level of pesticides through meat & dairy? I think it's worthwhile information to point out.

What if we go to regulate pesticides, and through lobbying and special interest groups, animal feed gets less regulation. It'd be good to know that the pesticides can affect people even if their grains and vegetables don't get sprayed.

>What does that matter?

It's actionable information. If you're worried about ingesting pesticides, you might believe that eating fewer vegetables and more meat would be a safer option. The simple fact of bioaccumulation means that this would be the wrong approach.

The amount of plants a cow eats vs a human is a big difference. You'll be exposed to less pesticides if you just eat plants instead of eating the cow and plants.

I'm talking about factory farming where the cow is fed large amounts of corn and soy.

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