First reported by CNN — It was mild curiosity that drew John Virgin and his son Bryce to the flashing lights and commotion of an accident scene near their home.
In the back of John’s mind was his older son, Grant, who had gone for a walk nearby minutes earlier. John looked down at the area that had been cordoned-off — the pavement covered with blood — and his heart sank.
“At that point you realize your worst fear,” he said. “I knew it was grave.”
Minutes earlier, the 16-year-old had been airlifted to a nearby trauma center after being struck by a hit-and-run driver. He had a long list of injuries: a torn aorta, a traumatic brain injury — including skull fractures and bleeding throughout his brain — compound bone fractures and spinal fractures. Seemingly endless bits of broken glass and gravel were embedded in his skin
When they arrived, they were met by grim-faced doctors who offered the slimmest odds that Grant Virgin would live through the night.
From that moment forward — time and time again — they would go against doctor’s orders. That included trying unconventional, untested therapies — anything that might help Grant. One in particular involved giving him high doses of omega-3 fatty acids (found in phytoplankton).
Fish oil is what the Virgin family believes ultimately — dramatically — altered his life course, and healed his brain.
Weeks before fish oil was even considered, Grant Virgin underwent multiple surgeries, and spent considerable time on a ventilator.
Eventually, his body was stable, but his brain was still riddled with damage. He was in a coma, and his doctors urged his family to “wait and see” while his brain healed.
“The doctor told me, ‘OK, now we wait.’ and I go, ‘We wait?’ ‘Yes, we wait,'” said JJ Virgin, who questioned that course of action — “‘Surely there’s something we can do?'”
The doctor’s response, according to her: “‘Nope, there’s nothing we can do. We just wait. The brain’s got its own time schedule.'”
Around the same time, she was receiving a flurry of advice from friends. One suggested trying progesterone to heal her son’s brain.
In early studies, progesterone has been associated with reduced inflammation in the brain and improved neurological outcomes after traumatic brain injury. But the data in this area, although promising, are very early.
Despite that, beginning about two weeks after the accident, his mother and father began intermittently rubbing a cream containing progesterone on him. (A leading expert questioned the efficacy of administering progesterone in this way, noting that in studies, it is administered intravenously.)
JJ Virgin got more advice, this time from friends who had seen a CNN report about high-dose fish oil used in cases of severe traumatic brain injury.
Fish oil, they thought, might heal Grant Virgin’s brain.
“If someone said to me, you know what, you can give him fish oil, you can give him better nutrition, you’ll get maybe 5% (improvement), I’ll take that,” she said.
She got in touch with one of the foremost omega-3 experts, Dr. Barry Sears, who had consulted on the first-ever case of high-dose fish oil for traumatic brain injury in 2006.
It involved a miner, Randal McCloy, who was involved in a deadly explosion in West Virginia. His brain had been badly damaged by carbon monoxide, and his team of doctors was trying desperately to keep him alive.
McCloy’s neurosurgeon at the time, Dr. Julian Bailes, describes considering high-dose fish oil in this case, as akin to “throw(ing) the kitchen sink at him.”
“There is no known solution, there’s no known drug, there’s nothing that we have really to offer these sorts of patients,” said Bailes, co-director of NorthShore Neurological Institute in Evanston, Illinois, during a previous interview with CNN.
The theory behind fish oil as a therapeutic intervention for traumatic brain injury is at once simple and complex.
Simply stated, the brain’s cell wall is, in part, composed of omega-3 fatty acids.
“If you have a brick wall and it gets damaged, wouldn’t you want to use bricks to repair it?” said Dr. Michael Lewis, founder of the Brain Health Education and Research Institute. “By supplementing using (omega-3 fatty acids) in substantial doses, you provide the foundation for the brain to repair itself.”
More complicated is how omega-3 fatty acids might control inflammation — or damage — in the brain. Sears likens it to quelling a metaphorical fire in the brain.
That “fire” begins when the brain is traumatized — as with a profound injury like Grant Virgin’s, or milder insults like concussions suffered on a soccer field. Neurons snap, setting off a wave of inflammation in the brain that can smolder for long periods of time — sometimes weeks or months after the injury has occurred.
“That (inflammation) will continue over and over unless there’s a second response that turns it off,” said Sears, president of the Inflammation Research Foundation.
The fatty acid that Sears says can effectively “turn off” that inflammatory fire is a metabolite (what remains after the body breaks something down) of eicosapentaenoic acid, or EPA, called resolvin.
EPA is found in high concentrations of phytoplankton, which is eaten by fish that absorb its nutrients.
“What we think is happening is, high levels of EPA coursing in the brain metabolize into resolvins, turning down and turning off inflammatory process,” said Sears.
Considering that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1.7 million traumatic brain injuries occur in the United States each year, any intervention — especially a cheap one like fish oil — is an exciting prospect.
But Omega-3 as a viable and well-studied intervention is still a ways off; for now it dwells in the realm of the anecdote or case study.
And a case similar to Grant Virgin’s: a teenager named Bobby Ghassemi who nearly died in a car accident before getting a large infusion of fish oil. A few months later, he attended his high school graduation.
There was the case of an 8-year-old girl who nearly drowned after her stroller rolled into a canal. Her head and face were under water for more than five minutes.
Eighty-two days after her accident, according to a case study published last year in the journal PharmaNutrition, she was given high doses of omega-3 fatty acids, after which, “…the patient exhibited very gradual but steady progress in terms of her tolerance for stimulation and activity.”
Jordan Markuson is the Founder of Aqua Health Labs. He has been a nutritionist and entrepreneur for over 10 years. He is an activist supporting consumption of raw vegetables and eating only renewable, natural and organic foods. Jordan believes that based on all available scientific evidence, once food is cooked it loses the majority its important nutrients. He is very interested in marine based food because of the essential fatty acids they produce nowhere else on earth.
Jordan is a frequent content contributor to healthy living websites and publications, and is available for speaking engagements. Email [email protected] to learn more.
