has never been stronger. [ male announcer ] unisom helps you fall asleep faster and stay asleep. so i wake up rested. [ male announcer ] unisom. fall asleep faster. sleep longer. i'm randi kaye. i'll be back at the top of the hour. "sanjay gupta md" starts right now. hey, there, and thanks for being with us. today an extreme step to prevent breast cancer. one woman's going to explain why she did what she did. also, food for life. i like this one. a new reason why you might want to think about eating more

tomatoes. but first an incredible use for fish oil, the extoechbt which even surprised me. every year about 1.7 million people in the united states suffer a traumatic brain injury. i see it every day in my line of work. in severe cases there's no drug, no pill, no intervention that can help once the damage sets in. but i'm going to tell you about two dramatic cases of crippling brain damage that may have, in fact, been reversed by nutrition. something so simple it's hard to believe. fish oil. bobby get simi's story begins almost three years ago. a phone call. >> toughest call you can get. >> it's about your son. there's been an accident. come quick. >> i told my younger brother to

hold his hand until i get there. >> his car careened off a winding road. paramedics assess the damage and bobby. >> they report glasgow coma score of three. a brick or a piece of wood has a glasgow score of three. it's dead. and somehow the paramedics miraculously managed to revive this kid. >> this was the scene. when his parents finally arrived to bobby's bedside. >> you realize that he could be going any time. >> 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 marjon ghassemi shrugged it off. our motto was fight your way and come back to us. >> little did they know that

fight would link them to the sole survivor of an infamous mining disaster. tonight, 13 coal miners trapped nearly two miles inside a west virginia mine. >> a few hours before his car barreled off that road 13rks miners huddled together. as deadly monoxide crept into the dead space around them. 41 hours later -- >> the only confirmed survivor is randall l. mccloy jr. >> he was the surgeon. >> he had a massive heart attack. he was in liver failure, kidney failure, had a collapsed lung. >> mccloy's body somehow recovered. the question was could his brain do the same. >> can you quantify the likelihood that someone like a randal mccloy would recover, he would have a meaningful

recovery? >> we felt everything supports the fact that he was truly a long shot. >> but bales was concocting an orthodox plan of saving mccloy's brain. high dosages of fish oil. >> so the concept was to try to rebuild his brain from what it was when he was in his mother's womb. >> rebuild. >> yes. we gave an unprecedented dose to make sure there were high saturations in brain. >> had it been going on ever before? >> no, it had not. >> he was going out on a limb but he had a hunch. could an injured brain be similarly restored and if so, how? >> if you have a brick wall and it gets damaged, wouldn't you want to use bricks to repair a wall? and omega-3 fatty acids are

literally the bricks of the cell wall in the brain. during a traumatic brain injury the brain swells and nerve cells stop communicating and die. omega-3 fatty acids, thee goes, can rebuild damaged nerve cells, reduce inflammation, keep the 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. >> if he ever comes out of a coma, we don't know what kind of shape he's going to be in. it was really hard to hear, okay, he lived, he's all right, and then now what. >> so they saved his life but we don't have anything that helps from that point forward. >> i would love to have you on the show. >> dr. michael lewis, a former army colonel and omega-3 researcher believes omega-3 is

the link. >> we need to get it in the literature. >> after bobby's accident he got a desperate call from peter ghassemi and after some explaining he got it. >> what do you think of using high dosage fish oil like was used with randy mccloy. >> the carbon monoxide level was quite hot. i have no explanation of how i escaped it. >> it was just one case and it remains unclear if it was truly the key. the next hurdle is convincing the doctors. >> it was a fight. they said, fine. the west virginia miner was one case. i need a thousand before i can g give this to your son. >> he literally had to lie down in the middle of the floor and throw a tantrum until they

started to put the -- put it down his child's feeding tube. >> the tantrum worked and two weeks after starting hiss fish oil regimen, bobby ghassemi began to emerge from his coma. about two months after that, he attended his high school graduation. >> they all stood up and were screaming and cheering my name. i took my graduation cap off and waved it around. >> the common denominators 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. >> 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 hadn't been the use for omega-3s to allow that natural heal progress says to occur. >> bales and lewis became paid consultants to fish oil companies after treating ghassemi. since then they've seen it work in similar cases and they believe taken daily it could form a lubricant against future brain injury. >> is this a big deal to you? >> it is a big deal. there is no known solution. there is no noerch drug, nothing that we have really to offer these sorts of patients. >> it's really fascinating stuff but it's still really early as well. dr. lew is said the next step is a large-scale clinical trial to see if they can reproduce those benefits. it's also worth noting this. you can't overdose. there are no side effects from taking fish oil. i'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 look her odds of developing breast cancer. [ woman ] ring. ring. progresso.

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it's projected nearly 40,000 will die. these are tough numbers to think about and allison gilbert knows them well. she lost her mother, her aunt, her grandmother, all to breast or ovarian cancer. she's now the author of this book "parentless parents:how the loss of our mothers and fathers impacts the way wi raise our children," and allison joins us with her doctor who performed a mastectomy on allison this summer. thanks so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> allison, raid the column that you wrote and it's quite striking. i want to share the opening. i'm not a helicopter parent and my children would tell you i don't bake cupcakes for their birthday parties but i'd readily cut off my breasts for them, and

recently i did. can you give us a little bit of the story and what you meant by that? >> my kids are young. they're 10 and 12, and i want to be around as long as possible for them. i grew up as an older person but certainly i feel like i've grown up as an adult without my mom and dad and i didn't want to have my kids go through that. i want to be around for the day they get married, when they graduate high school before then. i felt the writing was on the wall with my family history and also because i tested positive for the brca gene. so i wanted to do something about it. >> i think about that, what you just mentioned all the time. i have three young children myself. it's very powerful motivator to take care of yourself. and let me mention, allison, you already know this. a mutation in brca gene means the woman's chance of developing breast cancer is much higher and people hay not know this, but the same mutations can also lead to ovarian cancer, which is the

same sort of disease in different parts of your body. in fact, quickly take a look at the numbers. patients with barack ka 1 or barack ka 2 patients have a 50% to 80% and ovarian, a 60%. this is your area of expertise. who do you say should be tested and how reliable are the numbers you just heard? >> well, sanjay, i'm actually a reconstructive surgeon who takes care of a lot of breast cancer patients. i work with a breast surgeon who works with them. but basically patients who have a very strong family history or another member tests positive for the gene, they would be considered for genetic testing. in addition, having cancer at a young age or history of ovarian cancer, those are things that

are red flags that someone may be at a higher rif tock have a genetic predisposition for breast cancer. >> and this may be, you know, just a personal sort of question, a question that individuals will answer differently, dr. smith. but who should consider a bilateral prophylactic mastectomy then, based on the numbers people will hear? >> well, the nccn, the national come pre hencive cancer network has guidelines on this type of thing concerning recommendations. they recommend if you habrca mutations, you might consider it. even if you don't. you might consider it. we don't know awe the genes that might cause breast cancer. >> one thing else i want to point out again. our audience may realize this. but the overwhelming majority of women who develop breast cancer don't have a history of the

family disease. they become that. >> for me i feel like my stopwatch has been set to zero. i feel like my life is ahead of me and i think the risk now is 1% breast cancer risk, lower than the general population. now i can work with my diet and scher size program and give myself that fighting chance of what happened to my mom and aunt and my father and my grandmother, it won't happen to me. >> it's a remarkable story. i love that. hitting the reset button. allison gilbert, dr. mark smith, thanks so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> thank you. coming up, the astronaut who did the first triathlon in space. she raced against me wearing my number no less. she's next. [ lisa ] my name's lisa, and chantix helped me quit.

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this fruit can actually help protect your brain. it's ru. tomatoes get their rich red color from licopine. adding more of it to your diet could decrease your risk of having stroke. so do the anti-october dants soak up the free radical tazz can damage brain cells. cooking your tomatoes can actually boost their brain-protecting power. you get some tomatoes into your salad, red sauce into your pasta.

now, one of the neatest parts of the malibu triathlon last month was also racing my friend and nasa astronaut sunny williams as she orbited the earth from 250 miles high in the sky, traveling at a speed of nearly 18,000 miles an hour. while i was on the road, i had a chance to catch up with sunny and talk about that race. >> it's just absolutely amazing. i think about you every time i look up into the sky. i want to start off by just congratulating you on doing what we believe is the world's first triathlon in space. congratulations. >> thank you. you know, when we met a little while ago, i was feeling good because i was on the ground practicing running, biking, swimming, and feeling real good about it. then after coming up here, your body starts to change, and i was thinking i might have second thoughts about this triathlon thing, but i worked out for a while leading up to it, and felt pretty good doing it up here

too, so thank you for the congratulations. >> how about the food overall? we spent -- are you getting the types of foods you want up there? >> yeah. actually, there is a lot of food up here. you know, maybe it's because me and oci and yuri are a little smaller than crews beforehand, but i'm finding there's a lot of food, and there's a really good selection. we also have bonus containers which are provided maybe about six to nine of them per increment of your specific things that you like, and knowing that we're coming up here and there are some outstanding issues, high sodium, bone density, muscle loss, we get what the nutritionist before we come and sort of understand what foods are good for you, and so m bonus containers as well as the other food containers, you can sort of pick out because we have about a 16-day cycle. you can pick out the foods that you like, first of all, and then second of all, which are nutritious and good for you, so i've been eating a lot of fish,

a lot of nuts as well as doing controlled diets so we can do some comparisons so we can get really good data for future explorations. >> well, thank you so much. i have to say, sunny, since we met any time i look up into the sky, i think about you, and i think about you up there doing all this important work. i must say that i think we should do a triathlon together now at some point, and while it would be easy certainly for you to come to earth and for us to do it together on earth, i was thinking if you could somehow arrange it that i do it up there with you in the international space station, that would be even better. do you think you can make that happen? >> we'll talk about it when i get back at the triathlon that we do on earth, and then we'll see when the next people will be coming up to the space station. you know, people ask me all the time what do you think about, you know, when will memorial people or general people be able to come to space, and, you know, everything that we're doing up here, all the research that we're doing up here is one step closer and closer and closer, so i really do hope that in our

lifetime we see a lot of people coming to space. i think i've said it before. everyone needs to take a lap around the planet. it would change your perspective, and it's a beautiful place we live. >> consider me a fan. i would love to do that sometime, but just good luck. be safe up there, and hope to see you back soon. >> absolutely. thanks again for calling. thanks for your interest in the space program. >> i'll tell you what, i'm still hoping for that rematch in space, and you know what, it's a good time to announce that our triathlon challenge is coming back for 2013. you remember that nine months ago we picked a group of everyday viewers like you who wanted to make a change in their lives. i call it hitting the reset button. it works. i did it myself. i think i'm probably younger biologically than i was three years ago. we hooked these guys up with bikes and wet suits and trainers, also expense paid training trips, and just a few weeks ago you saw all of them cross the finish line at the nautica malibu triathlon.

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. >> i have a question for the men. when was the last time you saw your doctor as far as a check-up? men are 25% less likely than women to see a doctor, and as a result, they're much more likely to face serious health problems. makes sense. i'll tell you, black men have some unique risks. they're more likely to die from prostate cancer, heart disease, diabetes, so this weekend in philly national radio personality tom joiner is shouting a message loud and clear. take a loved one to the doctor. he set up a clinic so that thousands of men can stop by for free screenings, cooking demos. he will tell us how it went, but if you are a guy watching the show today and it's been a while since you've seen your doctor, pick up the phone. do it this week.