Can Fish Oil Heal the Brain?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, HOST: Hey there, and thanks for being with us. Today, an extreme step to stop breast cancer. One woman is going to explain why she did what she did. Also, food for life. I like this one. A new reason why you may want to think about eating more tomatoes. But first, an incredible use for fish oil, the extent to which even surprised me. You know, every year, about 1.7 million people in the United States suffer traumatic brain injuries. I see it every day in my line of work. And in severe cases, there is no drug, there is no pill, there's really no intervention that can truly help once the damage sets in. But I'm about to tell you a story about two dramatic cases of crippling brain damage that may have, in fact, been reversed by a change in nutrition, something so simple again and it's hard to believe -- fish oil.</s>GUPTA (voice-over): Bobby Ghassemi story begins almost three years ago, with a phone call.</s>PETER GHASSEMI, BOBBY'S FATHER: Toughest call that any parents can get.</s>GUPTA: It's about your son, there has been an accident. Come quick.</s>P. GHASSEMI: I told my younger brother, to hold his hand until I get there.</s>GUPTA: Bobby's car had careened off a dark and winding road. Paramedics assess the wreckage and Bobby.</s>DR. MICHAEL LEWIS, BRAIN HEALTH EDUCATION & RESEARCH INSTITUTE: When I'm looking at the reports, they report a Glasgow Coma score of three. A brick or a piece of wood has a Glasgow Coma score of three. It's dead. And somehow, the paramedics miraculously managed to revive this kid.</s>GUPTA: This was the scene when his parents finally arrived to Bobby's bedside.</s>P. GHASSEMI: You realize that he could be going any time.</s>GUPTA: There had been so much bleeding within the brain, his skull could not contain the swelling. Every part of his brain was affected. But Peter and Marjan Ghassemi shrugged off the horror of the situation to fight.</s>GUPTA: Little did they know that that fight would link them to the sole survivor of an infamous mining disaster.</s>WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight, 13 coal miners trapped nearly two miles inside a West Virginia mine.</s>GUPTA: A few years before Bobby's car barreled off that road, 13 miners huddled together after an explosion, as deadly carbon monoxide crept into the airspace around them. Forty-one hours later --</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The only confirmed survivor is Randal L. McCloy, Jr.</s>GUPTA: Dr. Julian Bailes was Randy McCloy's surgeon.</s>DR. JULIAN BAILES, CO-DIRECTOR, NORTHSHORE NEUROLOGICAL INSTITUTE: He'd had a massive heart attack from carbon monoxide and methane poisoning. He was in liver failure, kidney failure, had a collapsed lung.</s>GUPTA: McCloy's body somehow recovered. The question was, would his brain do the same? (on camera): Can you quantify the likelihood that someone like a Randal McCloy would recover, that he would have a meaningful neurological recovery?</s>BAILES: We felt, and I think everything since then supports the fact that he was truly a long shot.</s>GUPTA (voice-over): But Bailes was concocting an unorthodox plan to try and save Randy McCloy's brain. High doses of omega 3 fatty acids, fish oil.</s>BAILES: So the concept was then to try to rebuild his brain from what he was made from when he was an embryo in his mother's womb.</s>GUPTA (on camera): Rebuild his brain?</s>BAILES: Yes. We gave him a very high, unprecedented dose, to make sure we saturated and got high levels in the brain.</s>GUPTA: Had that even been done before, to your knowledge?</s>BAILES: No, it had not.</s>GUPTA (voice-over): Bailes was going out in a limb, but he had a hunch. In other studies, omega 3 seemed to restore balance in the brain, helping some patients with depression or suicidal thoughts. Could an injured brain be similarly restored? And if so, how?</s>LEWIS: If you have a brick wall and it gets damaged, would 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.</s>GUPTA: During a traumatic brain injury, the brain swells and nerve cells stop communicating and die. Omega 3 fatty acid, theory goes, can rebuild damaged nerve cells, reduce inflammation, keep those brain cells from dying. The problem? Few human studies had proven this theory. Ten days after his accident, Bobby Ghassemi was still in a coma.</s>M. GHASSEMI: If he ever comes out of the coma, we don't know what kind of shape he is going to be in. And it was really hard to hear that, OK, he lived. He survived. And then now, what?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So they saved his life, but we don't have anything that helps from that point forward.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I would love to have you on the show.</s>GUPTA: Dr. Michael Lewis, a former Army colonel and Omega 3 researcher, believes fish oil could be the missing link.</s>LEWIS: Ultimately, we need to get it in the scientific literature by doing the good science in the studies to prove it.</s>GUPTA: After Bobby's accident, he got a desperate call from Peter Ghassemi, and after some explaining, asked him.</s>LEWIS: What do you think about the idea of using high dose fish oil like Julian Bailes used with Randy McCloy?</s>RANDAL MCCLOY, MINE DISASTER SURVIVOR: The carbon monoxide level was really high I had no explanation of how I escaped it.</s>GUPTA: But McCloy, whose recovery is well-known, was just one case, and it remains unclear whether omega 3 was really the key. The next hurdle for Ghassemi? Convincing Bobby's doctors.</s>P. GHASSEMI: It was a fight, they didn't believe. And they said, fine, West Virginia miner was one case. I need a thousand cases to be proven for me before I can give this to your son.</s>LEWIS: He literally had to lay down in the middle of the floor and throw a tantrum until they started to put it down -- his child's feeding tube.</s>GUPTA: The tantrum worked. And two weeks after starting his fish oil regimen, Bobby Ghassemi, case study number two, began to emerge from his coma. About two months after that, he attended his high school graduation.</s>BOBBY GHASSEMI, RECOVERING FROM TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY: They all stood up, screaming and cheering my name. I took my graduation cap off, and waved it around.</s>GUPTA: The common numbers for Ghassemi and McCloy, devastating brain injuries, and then omega 3 fish oil. But did the omega 3 hasten their recovery? For now, we do not know.</s>LEWIS: I absolutely believe that it made a huge difference in Bobby's recovery. And this is pure speculation. He never would have come out of a coma if it had not been for the use of the omega 3's to allow that natural healing process to occur.</s>GUPTA: Bailes and Lewis became paid consultants to fish oil companies after treating McCloy and Ghassemi. Since then, they have seen omega 3 worked in similar cases. And they believe, taken daily, it could form a lubricant, as they call it, against future brain injury. (on camera): Is this a big deal to you?</s>BAILES: It is a big deal, there is no known solution. There is no known drug. There is nothing that we have really to offer these sorts of patients.</s>GUPTA: It's a really fascinating stuff. But it is still very early, as well. Dr. Lewis says the next step is a large clinical scale trial to see if they can reproduce those benefits. It's also worth nothing this, you really can't overdose. There are virtually no side effects from taking fish oil. We've got lots more to come, including this scenario -- you're at risk for cancer. So what do you do? Next up, the story of a healthy woman who didn't like her odds of developing breast cancer.