Featured Image Credit: Kennedy News and Media
Topics: Food And Drink, Health, US News
Brenna Cooper
We're all well aware the benefits of adding healthier choices into our diets, with the virtues of eating your five-a-day and items from all of the categories being drilled into us since our schooldays.
However, it would appear the phrase 'too much of a good thing' not only applies to sweet treats and takeaways but also healthier foods, as one unfortunate woman in the US discovered.
A few years ago Nasha Montgomery decided to introduce tuna as her everyday option for protein, and was soon consuming the fish with all of her meals.
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It wasn't long before the 29-year-old was consuming tuna with nearly all of her meals, batch making bowls of tuna salad to use in sandwiches and to eat with crackers for her breakfast.
"I was eating tuna almost every day for about four months," she explained.
"I would batch make tuna salad and eat it throughout the day for breakfast, snacks, lunch and even for dinner sometimes if I had leftovers."
Nasha's tuna obsession became a staple in her day-to-day life, with the Alabama native consuming six tins every week – which equals around a kilo of the fish.
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"It became a theme [at work], that because I was eating so often, my colleagues would call it 'tuna time' instead of lunch time," she added.
Unfortunately Nasha's habit for decreasing the globe's tuna population wouldn't last for long, as she would begin to experience the negative side effects of eating so much fish.
After around four and a half months of the strict tuna regimen, Nasha began to suffer from 'major symptoms'.
"I started to feel sick, tired all the time, my muscles were weakening and cramping," she said.
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"My hands and feet were tingly and numb and my hair was falling out. On occasions I started to have a metallic taste in my mouth too.
"With my hair, I noticed that there were more hair follicles coming out than I would typically notice before. It wasn't large clumps but whole hair follicles were falling out."
Initially brushing the symptoms off as stress from her new job, Nasha eventually visited her doctor – where she was diagnosed with mercury poisoning.
According to Cleveland Clinic, other symptoms include: tremors, memory loss, double vision, and seizures.
Nasha then had to spend the following six to eight months detoxing from the fish, something which came as a shock to her.
"I thought I was doing a good thing and it totally flipped my world round," she said.
"Sometimes I do feel tingly or numbness in my fingers and feet but aside from that I haven't experienced any long-term effects [from my mercury poisoning]," she added.
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"Now tuna is like a special occasion and I eat it probably about once a month."
Looks like we can now add excessive tuna eating to cautionary tales such as eating dry chia seeds and living off a meat-only diet.