Japanese youth who eat fish once or twice per week or more may be more likely to have asthma than their peers who consume fish less often.
To investigate, the researchers surveyed the parents over 1500 asthmatic Japanese elementary and junior high school students about how often their child ate fish. For comparison, the study also included more than 22,000 youths who did not have asthma.
After taking age, gender and parental history of asthma into consideration the researchers found that asthmatics were significantly more likely than non-asthmatics to eat fish at least one to two times per week. This finding remained true when fruit and vegetable intake was also taken into consideration.
What's more, asthma prevalence gradually increased with increasing frequency of fish intake.
Preventive Medicine February 2002;34:221-225
There are miles of studies showing that fish is healthy for you. Why would a study start to show that eating more fish may cause asthma?
Well, the obvious could be true. Higher levels of EPA and DHA, for whatever reason, could worsen asthma.
I doubt that this is true as one would expect the exact opposite reaction from the inclusion of omega three fats into a population that has developed increasing deficiencies of this essential nutrient.
Fish oil has been shown to be helpful in a cystic fibrosis, which further confuses the issue.
So, if you put your Sherlock Holmes cap on and do some thinking you can come up with a possible reason.
To me it seems obvious.
The central issue is mercury. We have terribly contaminated the world's waterways with mercury from burning coal for electricity generation. In the US, well over half of the electricity comes from burning coal.
Even the conservative US government does not advise pregnant women to eat fish due to the mercury issue, as over 60,000 babies are born with brain injury in the US from this problem.
I also perform hair analysis for most of my patients and routinely and able to tell them how many times a month they are eating fish based on the amount of mercury that is present in their hair analysis.
I personally have stopped eating fish for some time now and advise most people to replace it with cod liver oil, which is less expensive and has all of the benefits.
Many people cringe when they think of consuming cod liver oil and that is related to previous experiences with inferior brands that were spoiled and had rancid fats that tasted horrible.
My experience is that Carlson's cod liver oil is one of the best on the market.
Most of us would benefit from taking doses that approach one teaspoon for every 25 pounds of body weight. However, one will need to use caution at the higher doses, especially if you have access to the best source of vitamin D, natural sunshine.
This is where you will want to consider actually having your vitamin D levels checked with a blood test.
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