There’s a rare toxin, called domoic acid, that can turn up in tuna and other seafood and cause anterograde amnesia, the loss of short-term memory popularized in the movie Memento.
Amnesic Seafood Poisoning
Doctor's Note
This video is about natural toxins that bioaccumulate up the food chain, but the same happens with industrial pollutants. See, for example, Xenoestrogens & Sperm Counts, and Fish Intake Biomarker. Some of the other unusual conditions to strike fish consumers are profiled in Sexually Transmitted Fish Toxin; New Corpse Smell; Allergenic Fish Worms; Fish Fog; and Greasy Orange Rectal Leakage. Also, check out my other videos on fish.
If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here.
12 responses to “Amnesic Seafood Poisoning”
Comment Etiquette
On NutritionFacts.org, you'll find a vibrant community of nutrition enthusiasts, health professionals, and many knowledgeable users seeking to discover the healthiest diet to eat for themselves and their families. As always, our goal is to foster conversations that are insightful, engaging, and most of all, helpful – from the nutrition beginners to the experts in our community.
To do this we need your help, so here are some basic guidelines to get you started.
The Short List
To help maintain and foster a welcoming atmosphere in our comments, please refrain from rude comments, name-calling, and responding to posts that break the rules (see our full Community Guidelines for more details). We will remove any posts in violation of our rules when we see it, which will, unfortunately, include any nicer comments that may have been made in response.
Be respectful and help out our staff and volunteer health supporters by actively not replying to comments that are breaking the rules. Instead, please flag or report them by submitting a ticket to our help desk. NutritionFacts.org is made up of an incredible staff and many dedicated volunteers that work hard to ensure that the comments section runs smoothly and we spend a great deal of time reading comments from our community members.
Have a correction or suggestion for video or blog? Please contact us to let us know. Submitting a correction this way will result in a quicker fix than commenting on a thread with a suggestion or correction.
This video is about natural toxins that bioaccumulate up the food chain, but the same happens with industrial pollutants. See, for example, Xenoestrogens & Sperm Counts and Fish Intake Biomarker. Some of the other unusual conditions to strike fish consumers are profiled in Sexually Transmitted Fish Toxin, New Corpse Smell, Allergenic Fish Worms, Fish Fog and Greasy Orange Rectal Leakage. There about 50 videos on fish and hundreds on more than a thousand other topics.
All smells a bit fishy to me. Let’s ask the keeper of Domoic Acid, Mr. Domo himself: http://www.DomoNation.com. Was it his love for Brain Freeze that he ate the Slurpee again or the Amnestic disorder from being king of Domoic acid. I don’t think there is Domoic Acid in Slurpee’s is there.
(Being serious all the time has led me astray–Enjoy the fun)
However, domoic acid only concentrates in the guts of fish and shellfish, so the muscle tissues of predator fish like tuna should be relatively (and I’ll only say relatively) safe. We don’t know a lot about the effects of low exposures of domoic acid, only acute exposure.
Diagnosed acute exposures only come from blooms, like that in the 80s in maritime Canada, where the case you highlighted occured and over a hundred people were hit from eating contaminated mussels — which are consumed with the guts and all.
It’s likely because most clinicians don’t know enough about ASP to recognize it, that many cases go undiagnosed every year. I’m speaking, not as a clinician, but as a person who probably got ASP from eating mussels in 2007, and now live with memory issues (not as bad as you describe, thank God) and epilepsy, but my intellect intact.
Another point of interest — it was a bloom resulting in gulls being stricken with domoic acid poisoning when Alfred Hitchcock was a child — disoriented and sick, they fell to the ground and attacked any human that came near — that inspired the movie “The Birds.” Just last year, a researcher went into tissue archives, and proved that samples taken from the birds sickened in that bloom were suffering from domoic acid poisoning!
Thank you very much for your dedication to educate us about nutrition. You are truly a gift to all of us, I have been following Pritikin since 1980 and now I include you and Dr. McDougall as my mentors. I appreciate all that you and your colleagues do. Sincerely, Earl Saltzman
What about this Domoic acid potentially contaminating algae DHA supplements and fish oil?
It?s nearly impossible to find knowledgeable people on this topic, however, you seem like you know what
you?re talking about! Thanks
Hello, all the time i used to check weblog posts here early in the morning,
as i enjoy to learn more and more.
You’re so awesome! I don’t think I’ve truly read through anything like
this before. So wonderful to discover someone with some unique thoughts on this topic.
Really.. thanks for starting this up. This website is
something that’s needed on the internet, someone
with a little originality!
Hi there, You’ve performed a fantastic job. I’ll certainly digg it
and for my part suggest to my friends. I’m confident they’ll be
benefited from this web site.
Hi, Focus ZX1 Review. Thanks for your kind words and support!
You got a very wonderful website, Gladiola I found it through yahoo.
Simply wanna input that you have a very nice site, I love the
layout it really stands out.