If Fish Oil is So Unhealthy, How Did It Pull Brain Damaged Victims Out of Comas?
by PAUL FASSA
There are a lot of health writers who recommend staying away from using fish oil as a supplement for omega-3, and there are mainstream reports of studies that “prove” supplementing omega-3 does nothing for heart health.
But rarely is anything mentioned about brain health. Omega-3s are the building blocks for the cell walls and neuron structures of the brain, myelin sheath, and nervous system.
“We have strong data that suggest omega-3 will activate good proteins to cope with brain damage and turn off proteins that cause neuroinflammation,” said Dr. Nicolas Bazan, director of the Neuroscience Center of Excellence at LSU Health in New Orleans and author of one of the studies that determined this.
Dramatic Episodes of Brain Damaged Victims Recovering With Fish Oil
Every once in a very great while, mainstream doctors look away from their “standard of care” medical bags and dare to use unusual approaches with non-pharmaceutical substances that deliver surprisingly effective results.
In 2010, high school student Bobby Ghassemi was taken out of his crashed vehicle and airlifted to a nearby Virginia hospital more dead than alive with severe brain trauma.
He was so much more dead than alive that the physician who eventually advised the Ghassemi family on using fish oil, Dr. Michael Lewis observed, “For all intents and purposes, he was dead on the scene. I’m looking at the reports, and they report a Glasgow Coma Score of three. A brick or piece of wood has a Glascow Coma Score of three. It’s dead.”
Bobby was placed in intensive care in a coma with all the apparatus possible to keep him a breath away from death. The hospital’s physicians commented that his brain injury was so bad, it was a wonder that he was alive enough to be in a coma!
They told Bobby’s father and mother it was doubtful he’d be more than a vegetable if he came out of the coma, and he’d be unable to speak or recognize his family.
A Good Time to Gamble with an Unusual Intervention
After 10 days, Bobby was still comatose but stable. His dad, Peter Ghassemi, felt more should be done than maintaining stability in a coma. So he started asking around to old Army buddies and was led to Army colonel Dr. Micheal Lewis.
“It really gets down to what I would call my brick wall analogy,” Dr. Lewis said. “If you have a brick wall and it gets damaged, wouldn’t you want to use bricks to repair the wall? And omega-3 fatty acids are literally the bricks of the cell wall in the brain.” (Emphasis added)
Dr. Lewis recommended fish oil based on an earlier episode of a West Virginia coal miner who barely survived a mining accident with severe brain damage. Except for extreme myelin sheath damage (nervous system’s fatty protective coats) from breathing toxic fumes, Randall’s condition resembled Bobby’s current state.
The 26-year-old miner, Randall McCloy, was “on death’s doorstep,” according to Randall’s hospital neurosurgeon, Dr. Julian Bailes. He and the other doctors then decided to forgo the normal wait and see after Randall was stabilized in intensive care.
Even as some recovery is noticed after a brain injury, the brain cells continue dying from progressive inflammation.
Dr. Bailes knew that the brain needs to feed on omega-3 fatty acids to heal inflammation as well as stimulate brain and nervous system cell growth. Unlike plant based omega-3s, fish oils do not require the body to convert ALA into the more efficacious aspects of omega-3 fatty acid, DHA and EPA.
After discussing Randall’s condition with fish oil omega-3 experts, Dr. Bailes determined that 20 grams of fish oil, several times the standard supplement dose of one to three grams, should be fed through Randall’s feeding tube daily might bring him around.
This successful intervention was explained to Bobby’s dad, Peter. In order to overcome authoritative medical “standard of care” resistance, Peter persistently urged the hospital staff to try the fish oil. Eventually the hospital yielded.
At his high school graduation, Bobby took off his cap and waved it to the cheering students. His dramatic three month recovery had left him with some weakness on his left side and walking difficulty, for which he had just begun therapy. But he was back.
More recently, in 2014, a repeat performance of a fish oil miracle. Grant Virgin was the pedestrian victim of a hit and run accident while walking near his family’s home. At first thought dead, he was rushed to a hospital. Doctors told his parents he would never recover from his coma and to “let him go”.
But the parents refused that and searched for solutions. They got an email from someone telling them about fish oil, and had to urge the hospital to perform “medical disobedience”, as reported from a medical source.
Here’s that story:
Instead of simply using the same treatment that saved these three trauma brain damaged victims when there is nothing Big Pharma can provide that effectively treats the 1.7 million people who suffer a traumatic brain injury each year in the United States, state Attorney Generals are waging wars against supplements.
from: http://www.realfarmacy.com/fish-oil-unhealthy-pull-brain-damaged-victims-comas/