by Elizabeth Renter

A recent story offers some great insight into the use of fish oil in the treatment of traumatic brain injuries, where the substance was able to save a young boy’s life after a tragic car accident. These injuries can happen anywhere, when someone is hit by a car or falls and knocks their head on the ground. Often injuries like these are the most difficult to overcome, resulting in paralysis, loss of speech, damaged motor function, or even death. But there is hope.

Sixteen year old Grant Virgin was hit by a car as he walked in his neighborhood. He suffered skull fractures, spinal fractures, and severe brain bleeding. He was airlifted to the hospital and his parents were told he likely wouldn’t make it. Not only were hospital staff pessimistic, they seemed to want the Virgin family to give up hope too. But they didn’t.

Unbeknownst to doctors in the hospital and after doing their own research into the use of fish oil in brain injuries, the family had been adding the contents of fish oil capsules into Grant’s feeding tube. When the hospital transported Grant to a rehabilitation unit, the family told the new staff that he had been receiving 20 grams each day (a white lie that the family says saved their son).

The rehab unit began mass doses of fish oil and only two days later, Grant made a phone call. Up until that point, Grant struggled to say a few words and certainly couldn’t hold a conversation. But his mother awoke in the middle of the night to answer the phone and have a complete conversation with her son.

“I get this call like midnight, and I’m asleep, and I wake up the next morning and go, ‘Did Grant call me and did we have this whole conversation?’” she said. “I just remember waking up the next morning going, ‘I must have dreamed that, that couldn’t have possibly happened.”

Read: Fish Oil Reverses Liver Disease in Children

It wasn’t a dream and he has continued to improve. His parents don’t only expect him to be as good as he was before the accident, but better.

Other case studies like that of Grant Virgin have similarly demonstrated the effects of omega-3 fats found in fish oil in dramatic improvements following brain injuries.In March 2010, high school student Bobby Ghassemi was taken out of his crashed vehicle and airlifted to a nearby Virginia hospital more dead than alive withsevere brain trauma. But you’d soon find out how fish oil helped him to recovery.

It’s believed the effects have something to do with the brain’s cell walls being made up in part of omega-3 fatty acids themselves. Also, the anti-inflammatory effects of the fats likely play a role.

While hospitals aren’t likely to prescribe omega-3 fats for a traumatic brain injury, the story of Grant Virgin and others like him indicate that maybe they should.

While relating a story about how a particular food remedy healed a person who was otherwise deemed incurable can be inspiring and offer hope for natural healing possibilities of the future, it doesn’t hold the same weight in the scientific community as a solid, well-crafted scientific study. Still, when you can amass several of these stories, or case studies, it lays the groundwork for future scientific trials and rigors and certainly provides some evidence that natural treatments can work, often even better than conventional medicine.

For some people, the use of fish oil has made all the difference in the world.

Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/case-study-fish-oils-profound-effects-traumatic-brain-injuries/#ixzz35qEGrF6s
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