A British content creator has revealed she was given the terrifying warning that she was “borderline for mercury poisoning” after eating a common everyday food far too often.
Grace Beverley, 28, said she’d noticed changes in her body that left her feeling confused and frustrated, including easier weight gain, inflammation, and the sense that her hormones were “completely f*cked up”.
After struggling to figure out what was going on, she decided to speak to doctors and arrange tests to get to the bottom of it.
Following a series of blood tests that looked at her hormone levels in winter 2025, Beverley said she received an unexpected call that raised immediate alarm: her doctor told her she was close to mercury poisoning.
The cause, she explained, was something she considered a quick and healthy staple: canned tuna.
Now pregnant, Beverley spoke about the experience in a TikTok posted on Wednesday, describing the moment she realised the call was serious.
“I thought, ‘Oh f—k, you never like that, I’m dying.”
She said the doctor asked how many tins of canned fish she ate each day—something that initially seemed like an odd question given the symptoms she was dealing with.
“I said, ‘One, maybe two things of tuna a day,’ to which she said, ‘You do know you’re meant to have two servings a week?’
“And I said, ‘No’, obviously I didn’t know that.”
Beverley, who owns Tala Gym Wear and has around 1.2 million Instagram followers, said tuna had become an easy option when she was short on time or grabbing whatever was available in the cupboard.
“[The doctor] said ‘Yeah, you’re borderline for mercury poisoning and you also have incredibly high arsenic levels and I would recommend you stop eating fish for a few months.’ So yeah… don’t do that,”
Her 469,000 TikTok followers reacted with shock, with many admitting they had similar eating habits and hadn’t realised there were recommended limits.
One posted: “TWO SERVINGS A WEEK PARDON!!! I eat it every single day wtffffff”, while another added: “Wait I’ve been eating canned tuna nearly everyday since Jan. I need the protein.”
The Cleveland Clinic explains that seafood can be a source of mercury exposure when eaten too frequently.
The Cleveland Clinic said: “Mercury poisoning usually occurs when someone eats too much seafood, which contains the elemental metal.
“Mercury is toxic and harmful to the human body.
“Mercury poisoning occurs when you expose yourself to too much mercury and your body reacts negatively to the compound.”
High or prolonged exposure—whether from inhaling vapours, consuming contaminated food, or absorbing it through the skin—can cause lasting harm. In severe cases, mercury can damage the nervous system, kidneys, and lungs, and may even be fatal.
Most people carry small amounts of methylmercury in their bodies, but higher levels have been associated with reproductive effects, problems with concentration, speech and memory issues, and kidney damage.