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Four Fish Stories

The following stories tell about my search for a lifesaving nutrient and how discovering it enriched my health.

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES

My passion for omega-3 research began with the birth of our eighth child. The story begins in 1991 with the pregnant teenage daughter of a close friend. Like many pregnant teens, she was struggling with the realization that she did not have the maturity to raise her child. Yet, giving her child up for adoption was an even more upsetting alternative—choosing strange parents from a stack of résumés, perhaps never seeing her child again, and always wondering if she’d made the right decision.

Sensing her struggle, my wife, Martha, and I offered to raise her child in open adoption, where she could choose to be involved on her own terms. She was overjoyed, as were her parents, and she thrived throughout the rest of her pregnancy.

The Tale of Two Milks. Then came another decision that helped plant the seed for this book. Each of our previous seven children had been exclusively breast-fed. Although we wanted the same for the new baby—call her Lauren—we knew that Martha would only be able to produce half of what Lauren needed. Would Lauren be the first formula-fed Sears baby? No big deal, right? Wrong!

Around that time studies had started to show what breast-feeding mothers had suspected all along: children who are breast-fed grow up to be smarter and healthier. We felt that just because Lauren was adopted, she shouldn’t be deprived. We began searching for the formula closest to mother’s milk.

After looking into the nutritional content of all the infant formulas, I discovered that every formula, especially those made in the United States, was missing vital brain-building omega-3 fats. The brain is 60 percent fat, and one of the top omega-3 fats in the brain is DHA. Hmm! Growing brains need special fats, yet infant formulas contained none. What’s wrong with this cerebral picture? In the end, the only choice was to find a way to give Lauren breast milk. We concluded that the best alternative to her mother’s milk was another mother’s milk.

Two Mothers Making Milk. A few minutes after Lauren was born, she was nursing from her birth mom, who was producing colostrum, the perfect immune-boosting starter milk for a newborn. Meanwhile, Martha was hooked up to pumps trying to produce breast milk of her own. You should have seen the look on the obstetrical nurse’s face when she came into the room and saw this dual-mom milk-making scene, probably the first and the last such scene of her career.

Milk Moms to the Rescue. The challenge was how to get enough breast milk for Lauren. During office visits mothers of infants would often comment on how much milk they were making. They were happy to give me the excess; at the end of each day I would leave the office with bottles of this liquid gold. Two years and thirty-five milk moms later, Lauren had made a smart nutritional start.

Improving the Formulas. What I learned from the failed formula search for our adopted baby made me angry. For more than ten years the known nutritional information about brain fats in human milk had been ignored by most formula makers, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and even my own profession. That had to change. I was motivated to “milk” the scientific literature for all the available facts. The more I read and studied about DHA in the brain, the more appalled I felt that millions of babies in much of the world went to bed each night without the most important brain-building fat. My crusade to get omega-3 smart fats into infant formulas began.

When I made my case to one of the largest formula sellers in the United States, I presented a slide show of what I thought was compelling proof for why omega-3 DHA, the smartest fat in the brain, must be added to infant formulas. To my amazement and disappointment, the head number cruncher said, “It would not be profitable for us to add DHA to our formula at this time because it would cost the consumer thirty-five cents more a can.” Shocked, I pleaded, “I don’t know a parent in the world who would not pay thirty-five cents more a day for their baby to grow a better brain!” I lost my case.

One of the joys of being a pediatrician is what I call the helper’s high, the feeling that someone’s life will be better because of something you said or did. Vowing to get formula companies to upgrade their offerings, I teamed up with doctors and scientists who taught me about brain-building fats, and continued crusading.

Finally, in 2001, the FDA and the infant formula companies could no longer ignore the science, and today nearly all companies add omega-3 fats to their infant formulas.

CANCER CAUSED ME TO CARE

Growing up Roman Catholic, I ate fish once a week. I thought I had to if I wanted to go to heaven. Yet what I ate were fish sticks and breaded fish sandwiches. Real seafood was not at the top of my list until April 1997, when I was diagnosed with colon cancer. Following major surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, I studied the data on survivors of major illnesses and life-changing events. Survivors had one thing in common: they made a project out of their problem. So that’s what I did. Because my problem was in my gut, I began to search for the healthiest foods. Why not make a project out of healthy aging at the same time I was searching for the perfect health food? I found that the food that was ranked as the best health food also got top marks for healthy aging—seafood. In fact, the same fats that were crucial for baby brains were also important for senior brains and bodies. From head to toe—brain, eyes, heart, gut, muscles, joints, and skin—seafood was the best food to help prevent all the ailments I didn’t want to get.

One of the earliest studies I discovered showed that cultures that eat more seafood have less cancer, especially colon cancer. In fact, these cultures have a lower incidence of just about every ailment of aging, like cardiovascular disease and many of the -itis illnesses, such as arthritis, bronchitis, and dermatitis. There was even emerging research suggesting these neuroprotective fats might delay Alzheimer’s disease, or what I call cognitivitis. In my life before cancer I was a hearty carnivore, habitually devouring grilled steaks....