Seafood Danger You Probably Don’t Know

Food Health Wellness

For many years, we’ve heard warnings about drinking the local water when traveling and there is very good reason for those warnings. Many local water supplies contain bacteria, parasites or other tiny things that can make one very sick. The local people are generally immune to them, but vacation travelers aren’t and the last thing anyone wants is to get sick while on vacation.

There is another warning that you don’t hear as often and that has to do with eating the local seafood and that even applies to those who stay at home and enjoy a seafood dinner.

Have you ever watched the program Monsters Inside Me? I recently watched an episode titled The Backyard Killer which featured the danger of eating the wrong seafood.

In this episode a woman living in Hawaii, loved to paddle board and surf along with enjoying the plentiful seafood available in the islands. One day, she noticed that her lips seemed noticeably swollen. It wasn’t long afterward that her one arm got red and stayed red. Later on, her one leg swelled up and was quite painful. She said that just wearing pants was quite painful.

She saw a local doctor who had no idea what was wrong with her. After getting home, she took a shower, but the hotter the shower got, the colder she felt. When she relayed that symptom to the doctor, he knew exactly what she had.

He diagnosed her as having ciguatera fish poisoning, also known as ciguatera toxin. She was poisoned by eating certain seafood that had been contaminated with marine microalgae known as Gambierdiscus toxicus.

When the microalgae blooms, usually along a barrier reef, a variety of fish consume it and they in turn are eaten by larger predatory fish and it’s these fish that are ingested by people. The most common carriers of Gambierdiscus toxicus are barracuda, black grouper, blackfin snapper, cubera snapper, dog snapper, greater amberjack, hogfish, horse-eye jack, king mackerel, and yellowfin grouper.

The microalgae are heat resistant, meaning that even if the fish are well cooked, the heat will not kill the toxin carrying algae. Some medical sources recommend inducing vomiting within the first few hours of eating an infected fish, but other medical sources warn against inducing vomiting. The toxin is odorless and tasteless, so in many cases, you have no idea you just ate a toxin-infected fish until hours later.

The toxin attacks the connections between where nerve cells attach to muscle cells and ends up disrupting neural control of many muscles. Symptoms generally begin within 6-8 hours of eating an infected fish. Symptoms include muscle pain, numbness, abdominal pain, dizziness, vertigo and what is known as temperature role reversal (like a burning sensation when touching something cold). In more severe cases of ciguatera fish poisoning, symptoms can include rashes, itching, tearing, salivating, shortness of breath, chills and paralysis. One’s teeth can even feel loose and itchy. In some rare cases, it can lead to bradycardia, coma and hypotension. There have been some instances that have resulted in death, but they are rare.

However, there is no cure for ciguatera fish poisoning and the symptoms can be lifelong, as is the case of the woman in Hawaii, who is having to learn how to cope with her symptoms day by day.

If you enjoy seafood, especially like those mentioned above, it is recommended that, if at all possible, you pay attention to any reports of algae blooms in the areas the fish are caught. If that is not possible, the only way to avoid suffering from ciguatera fish poisoning is to stop eating those fish.

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