How to easily (and cheaply) capture dietary mercury

Mercury is the most easily-captured heavy metal of all. In any laboratory environment, mercury is well known to be a “sticky” element because it sticks to instrument tubing and vials. If I place a known quantity of mercury in a vial of nitric acid and water, for example, a measurement of the vial shows less mercury than should be present because some of that mercury sticks to the walls of the very instrument used to carry out the testing.

Interestingly, it turns out that mercury is also “sticks” to certain dietary fibers. In particular, my research has found that insoluble fruit fibers are extremely effective at capturing mercury during digestion. Mercury is unique in this way, as such fibers are very poor at binding with lead, cadmium, arsenic and other metals. But they stick to mercury like glue.

As part of my research into this phenomenon, I tested many dietary fibers, including psyllium husk fiber, guar gum, vegetable fibers and fruit fibers. The most effective fruit fiber of all was — believe it or not — strawberry fibers. (See full list below for the mercury binding effectiveness of various foods.)

Until today, nobody has known this seemingly simple fact, and even I didn’t know it until I conducted this research. Now, I’m freely passing on the knowledge to you in the hopes that you will share it with others: Eat strawberries to block dietary mercury!

Captures over 95% of dietary mercury

In my tests, strawberries were able to capture over 95% of all the mercury added to the gastric acid solution in a human digestion simulator.

This effect was also confirmed for freeze-dried strawberries but not strawberry juice because pure juice lacks fibers (pulp).

Why strawberries? Because strawberries are the only common fruit with seeds on the outside. Under a microscope, you can see that each tiny strawberry seed is connected to the center of the strawberry via a bundle of plant fibers. These fibers, it turns out, are incredibly strong and are not easily digested in human digestion. They pass through you largely intact, much like psyllium husk fibers or insoluble vegetable fibers.

Isolated under a microscope, these strawberry fibers are alsotranslucent, by the way. And what’s really amazing is that they even resist digestion with nitric acid. Somehow, these fibers are amazingly strong and resilient, yet nearly invisible to the naked eye.

In the gastrointestinal tract, they function as “mercury sponges” that mop up mercury with amazing efficiency.

Even better than green grasses

In my laboratory testing, strawberries worked even better at binding to mercury than green grasses such as barley grass or wheat grass (see the full chart below).

This is great news for those who want healthy eating options which are also great-tasting. Simply eat some strawberries with your meal to mop up most of the mercury found in whatever else you ate (such as sushi, tuna, ocean fish, etc.).

If you don’t like strawberries, you can use other fruits such as citrus fruits (eaten raw and whole, of course, with all the fibers intact). The next best fruits after strawberries are citrus fruits, followed by apples and pears.