79-year old Dave Hall looks like the epitome of health. But four years ago, a slight cough turned out to be a major turning point...and possible dead end .
"So at that point I was told to get my affairs in order that I had three to six months to live."
As luck would have it, Dave's next door neighbor was biochemist Ron Pardini with the UNR College of Agriculture.
A cancer researcher Dr. Pardini's advice to his friend was simple.
Dave Hall says he went across the street and said, "Hey I have a problem. I have lung cancer what would you do if you were I. He said I would load up on omega three."
Dr. Pardini says his reasons were pretty simple. " When you feed mice omega three fatty acids we can suppress the growth rate of tumors in our mice.
How much omega-three fatty acids? How often? Dr. Pardini couldn't say. So Hall says he slowly built his way up to about 36-pills a day--six bags a day. Because there was no treatment for his kind of lung cancer he figured he had nothing to lose.
Within one year--90-percent of Dave's lung cancer was gone. To this day , Hall's lungs are cancer free.
" I'm not going to stop taking it, we are not going to find out."
The treatment was followed by Dr. Pardini as well as Hall's oncologist and appears in "Nutrition and Cancer." Dr. Pardini says by increasing omega three fatty acids in the diet Hall was able to suppress the cancer's growth. Dr. Pardini is testing the omega three treatment in mice to see if his theories hold true. Breast, prostate, colon, and pancreatic cancers could someday be treated with omega-three therapy. While Hall's story is remarkable--Dr. Pardini says its important to remember its just one patient study and as of yet, does not apply to all lung cancer patients.