Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Appearances
Ask Dr. Drew
Dr. Peter McCullough: RFK Jr. Faces Senate Hearing Circus, As 81,000 Doctors & Experts Publish New Demand For COVID-19 Vaccine Recall – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 450
What I'm trying to say today is you're really pro-vaccine. You want to ask questions. You have started a group called the Children's Health Defense Group. You're the original. Right now, as I understand it, on their website, they are selling what's called onesies. These are little things clothing for babies. One of them is titled Unfaxed Unafraid.
Ask Dr. Drew
Dr. Peter McCullough: RFK Jr. Faces Senate Hearing Circus, As 81,000 Doctors & Experts Publish New Demand For COVID-19 Vaccine Recall – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 450
That was just a few months ago. You founded that. You certainly have power. You can make that call. Are you supportive of this?
Ask Dr. Drew
Dr. Peter McCullough: RFK Jr. Faces Senate Hearing Circus, As 81,000 Doctors & Experts Publish New Demand For COVID-19 Vaccine Recall – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 450
Are you supportive of these onesies?
Ask Dr. Drew
Dr. Peter McCullough: RFK Jr. Faces Senate Hearing Circus, As 81,000 Doctors & Experts Publish New Demand For COVID-19 Vaccine Recall – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 450
Are you supportive of this clothing, which is militantly anti-vaccine?
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
Dr. Drew, it's wonderful to be here. Thank you.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And it's what's really exciting, Dr. Drew, is when we look at longevity and we cover in the book, like the seven must-haves of a longevity nutrient or really any molecule that can effectively slow our aging rate, stem and slow the onset of chronic diseases that kill us. And that's how we can not only live longer, but we can live healthier. So
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
We go through some of the top molecules on that longevity leaderboard, including things like rapamycin, metformin, and then how this new discovery of C15, right, this first essential fatty acid discovered in over 90 years that we've talked about, how it really has become not only the leading longevity nutrient, but the leading longevity molecule.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
It provides a lot of hope and a lot of excitement in the field of longevity that we really can reverse the aging process. Lots of really smart people working on it and lots of hope.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
Yeah, you know, a lot of, if you talk to us fellow longevity scientists, we all have our favorite doomsday reason for aging and what takes us out in the end. But, and agree with you, Dr. Drew, that lipid peroxidation, it's ironic that oxygen, right? This molecule that we can't survive without for three to seven minutes is the same molecule that in the end,
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
tacks our molecules in our cell membranes, breaks them down, leads to the aging process, and in the end, kills us. So we need, it's this balance that we have with the Jekyll and Hyde of oxygen. And we now know that the more stable the fatty acids in the cell membrane, especially C15, one of its essential roles is that it keeps our cell membranes stronger and
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
protects us against this lipid peroxidation, the attack of oxygen, and that prolongs life. There's actually a really cool theory that comes from A.J. Holbert, where he showed that the more stable and sturdy fatty acids in the cell membranes are, the longer a species lives.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
So it's already, you know, nature has already figured this out, exactly what you said of how a human and a dolphin can live 20 to 30 times longer than a mouse. So let's not start by trying to figure out how to help mice live longer. Let's start by understanding how us long-lived species live a long time and then push and optimize that.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
And so that's what we've been able to do with the Navy and C-15.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
Yeah, that's right. And in fact, there was this discovery of a whole new form of cell death called varroptosis. And this was discovered by Columbia University researchers back in 2012. And that's where they found that when we went to medical school or took our cell biology class, we learned there were three ways our cells die. This group discovered a fourth.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
And this form of theroptosis is exactly what you said, where it's this attack of oxygen on fragile fatty acids in the cell membrane that That leads to everything, Dr. Ju, you just described. It takes out our mitochondria, it leads to reactive oxygen species.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
While that used to be a slow process that happens over time, what we're now seeing is with this process and this new cell death that for optosis is accelerated. And so this accelerated aging process is happening. Nobody really understood why fructose showed up until we'll talk about the dolphins. Go ahead.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
Yeah, this unexpected surprise, right? As a veterinary epidemiologist, I was working to continually help improve the health and welfare of the Navy's dolphins.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
That's when we discovered that about one in three of Navy dolphins, as they got older, developed things that are going to sound familiar, like high cholesterol, chronic inflammation, insulin resistance, and fatty liver disease, and even changes consistent with Alzheimer's in the brain.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
So because the dolphins are such a clean population, they don't smoke, they don't drink, they have a very clean diet and consistent health care.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
I know, maybe they need dolphins. They might be getting some drinking in there. But we were able to use this advanced technology called metabolomics to study thousands of small molecules in their archived serum and in their all-fish diet. And that's where we discovered it was C15 of 460 different molecules present in our, in the dolphin's blood.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
This population of dolphins gave us the gift, the secret showing that C15, this odd chain saturated fatty acid helped explain why the healthy aging dolphins were aging healthier. Since then, over a hundred peer reviewed papers published by folks from around the world have
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
showing that C15 is not only essential, but is now a key to sustaining our long-term metabolic heart and liver health and therefore our longevity.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
That is correct. So we published last year what's called cellular fragility syndrome. So if something is essential, part of the definition of essentiality means that if you take it out of your diet, which is exactly like you said, has happened as we decreased our intake of dairy fat. that you would expect to see a deficiency like vitamin C deficiency in scurvy and vitamin D deficiency in rickets.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
So what we found was C15 deficiency makes cells more fragile. They break down faster, cause this new form of cell death. Reptosis is present in as many as one in three of us. And in fact, maybe explaining this rise we're seeing in type two diabetes, coronary heart disease, and fatty liver disease, especially among younger people born since the 1990s.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
So there's, there's for the book, there's the longevity nutrient.com. And then we have a fatty 15 dot and Eric's right here to tell me, to tell me the answer. Dr. Drew fatty 15.com slash Dr. Drew.
Ask Dr. Drew
LIVE From DC: RFK & Trump Team Meets Dr. Drew + Dr. Peter McCullough – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 470
Great. Thank you.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah, so we have established these seven must-haves. And by we, I mean the longevity scientific community. This was also put together in part with Dr. Nicholas Shork, who is the head of NIH's Longevity Consortium. And so Nick was really interested in the dolphin angle because he's like, wait, you've got a long-lived species that has clean data.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So let's work through that to make these discoveries. And when we get to these longevity must-haves, we're now able to, you know, a lot of longevity research is on short-lived species of how do we help mice and worms live longer.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
And it doesn't really translate, right?
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So, you know, Nick really, Nick and I really came in and we're like, oh my gosh, we have this incredible opportunity. Nature's already figured it out, right, Mark? I mean, nature's already figured out how a mammal can live 27, 30 times longer because humans and dolphins and elephants live a lot longer than a mouse. So why?
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So let's figure out what, how evolution has already enabled massive longevity, enabling tap into that and then make it even better.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So it was just like, let's focus on these species, not to dismiss the short list, the basic science, but it's an unlock. So the seven must-haves of longevity, and this is assuming that longevity, the way we define it is as a geroprotector, so a molecule that slows our aging rate and therefore slows the onset of the chronic diseases that kill us.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
healthier, and then by default, be able to extend your own longevity so that you can live longer. So of those, the seven longevity must-haves are first, this molecule needs to tap into the longevity-regulating pathway. It's this complicated keg, it's called the keg pathway, and it's based upon a hypocaloric diet.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So caloric restriction and the whole pathway that's been built out on how caloric restriction works extends longevity across multiple species. At the heart of it is activating AMPK and inhibiting mTOR, which, as you had mentioned, metformin activates AMPK and rapamycin inhibits mTOR. C15 does both. So that was really exciting to see. It's really hitting at the heart as other longevity molecules.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
The second is that it needs to target these... And just to back up on that for a minute, because people might not understand that.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. That's right. Thank you for that. And your book, by the way, does a great job explaining all of those. It's hard to explain, trust me. If anyone wants to dive in more, please read your book, Young Forever. So then the second one exactly feeds into the hallmarks of aging. There's 12. The list keeps getting longer, it feels like, every couple of years.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
We're going to help the Navy SEALs too.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah, so there's now multiple studies showing that C15 targets six of them. And that includes helping C15 directly repairs mitochondrial function. It has a skip function where it's able to help restore broken mitochondria by enabling it to make energy. when normally it wouldn't be able to, which is exciting and important. It helps with poor cellular signaling.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
We know that it not only activates AMPK and inhibits mTOR, but it also activates PPAR alpha delta and AKT, and it inhibits JAK-STAT and HDAC6. So that was a bunch of letters.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right. So with the dolphins, it was pretty, it ended up being pretty straightforward. So they have an option of five different fish types and or they might be fed different fish types based upon what their job is at the Navy.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So if they're doing a job in which they're going through, you know, training of learning how to find an object, for example, they might get a bunch of low fat fish that they get kind of given throughout the whole day, it ends up that those low-fat fish had no C15 in them.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
And what we were able to get to, remarkably, because the Navy's vigilant data collection, we were able to see that some dolphins were getting a higher C15 diet than other dolphins. And then even better, we did two Navy-funded studies in which we gave those dolphins with lower C15 a higher C15 fish diet, and we saw that their aging-related conditions reverse.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So then we were like, oh, okay, now we're onto something.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. We saw complete reversal of anemia.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah, that's right. It was not like a common food that we eat, but it was like capelin and squid. Squid had no C15 in it, but you're right. Herring was a great, and mackerel were great fish. So that's how it led to all of those. So then with the hallmarks of aging,
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
uh you know it targets six of them it helps with we now understand from a clinical trial it helps with gut dysbiosis how does it do that right so c15 multiple ways a lot of exciting research coming out on c15 for gut health um not from us from other teams around the world
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
They've shown, multiple studies have shown that in multiple mouse models of colitis, of IBD, with regard to leaky gut syndrome, that C15 specifically helps improve the gut lining and it stops the leakiness. So it decreases inflammation and it stops the leaking.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's the hypothesis. We know that it gets in there. We know that it has this effect. And so it helps with that. In addition, really fascinating work on the microbiome that in a clinical trial that was done in Singapore with C15 supplementation showed that women... who had a history of fatty liver disease.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
When they took C15, they saw an improvement in the growth of Bifidobacterium adolescentis, which is like a mama microbe that's really good at helping to regulate our metabolism. It's also been shown to extend longevity in worms. So we already talked about the limitation of that, but it was an interesting side point.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
In that clinical trial, it also lowered LDL cholesterol, which was great. And then there are other studies showing that we know that fiber can help improve metabolism. And so there was a whole series of studies that was done to figure out how fiber helps. It ends up that there's a molecule in fiber called inulin. not to be confused with insulin.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
And inulin is being fed to our gut microbes that then use inulin to make C15. And so it's because of the C15 that's being made by the microbes that helped explain the benefits of fiber.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
It'll get you to, it's like an additives kind of like how to order all the different tips and things we can do to maximize our C15. So that is one component. If none of the single things alone can do it, but additively,
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Dr. Nick Schork, he was at ARDD, which is one of the world's leading anti-aging therapeutics meetings. He said, listen, I've seen every longevity molecule, under the sun, and I've not seen a molecule that has more supportive data of being a longevity enhancing molecule than C15.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So we got through the first two, which were the biggest. So in addition to targeting the longevity pathway, human pathway, regulating pathway, it also targets key hallmarks of aging. It needs to show, the third is it needs to show evidence of slowing the rate at which we age. And that's usually, we talk about Navy SEALs, right?
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So if this was a Navy SEAL course, this is where most longevity molecules would be not make the cut and drop out of the competition.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So we did, Nick, Shark and I, we did a study showing dolphins that, showing what hadn't yet been proven before, which is if you take individuals within the same population, that there will be some that age at different rates, despite having a relatively controlled environment. And it was crystal clear in the dolphins that we had fast aging and slow aging dolphins.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah, boy, this is going to be an exciting talk. I love the TF. Dr. Hyman, it's great to be here. It's always good to see you. So yes, as a veterinary epidemiologist, I wanted to track diseases. I read Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague when I was an undergraduate and said, I want to do that. And I thought it was going to be infectious diseases.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
it ends up the aging rate biomarker for that was hemoglobin. And that had to do with, again, fragile cells in which they were increasingly losing red blood cell health over time. One measurement of that is called red blood cell distribution with, or RDW, which has become – see, there you go – a really popular way of – understanding aging rate is RDW. So we saw that crystal clear in the dolphins.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Numerous studies have consistently shown people with higher C15, just like we saw in the dolphins, lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, of heart disease, specifically coronary heart disease, of developing fatty liver disease, and certain types of cancers, specifically a lot of work on colorectal cancer.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right, that's a pretty bold claim. So we put the stake.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
It's been a long time, exactly. So we put the stake at the ground back in 2020, and we published that in Nature's Scientific Reports. This last year has been really exciting, Mark.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
There have been now to date three other independent teams that have evaluated C15 as meeting the criteria of essentiality, all using different methods of gold standard methods of looking at pregnant mice and saying, hey, if you make the mom C15 deficient, Does her neonate show evidence of a nutritional deficiency? And the answer was yes.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
And when you give it just C15, does a nutritional deficiency, is it fixed? And the answer was yes.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Poor growth and poor neural development. It ends up that epidemiologically we're seeing the same trend disturbingly in humans. That if mom has lower C15 levels, her baby gets lower C15. And lower C15 now has been associated with poor body growth, poor brain development, even up to cognitive development of kids up to six years old. The upside, right? What's...
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
The hope in all of this is that nutritional deficiencies and essential fatty acids, these are fixable. So now we have with regard to essentiality, another study, Shad, again with worms, showed that if you deprived a baby worm
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
of all nutrients right it goes into this it doesn't die it goes into this like slumber state and they show that if you give it just c15 it will regrow as if you were feeding it and it a full nutritious diet so walking through and then another group looked at all the the wealth of human data today and so all of these papers came out just this last year
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Again, kind of revalidating that C15 meets the criteria of essential fatty acid, including the discovery of a nutritional deficiency like vitamin C in scurvy and vitamin D in rickets.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
And it ends up that, thanks to being recruited by the Navy, to help lead their clinical research program with their dolphin population to help improve the lives of their dolphins, it quickly pivoted to chronic diseases and chronic diseases of aging.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yep, so we'll start with human cell systems. Because it's hard to do the long-term studies to show, hey, if you take this molecule, will you live longer?
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah, and those are underway, which is good, but they just take time and they get really complicated. So, again, working with Dr. Shork, one way we looked at that was to say, okay, we use this panel called Biomap, and they're human cell systems, 12 different human cell systems that are mimicking various disease states. And it has a bunch, 148 different biomarkers.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
And what you do is you treat these different cell systems, disease systems, with different doses, like ascending doses of C15, of rapamycin, metformin, acarbose. And what we showed was that C15 had the most cellular, clinically relevant benefits that are longevity enhancing benefits.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
compared to rapamycin metformin and acarbose, it was really close to... It was most close to rapamycin, which is exciting for the longevity consortium, right? They really leaned into that.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Without the side effects. I mean, this is a molecule that every mammal gets at birth. Yeah. So... And then when you look, you step back a little bit and you look at the activities, the things we care about. C15 is anti-inflammatory. It has an antioxidant. It has anti-cancer functions. It has antimicrobial. It even stops the growth of pathogenic bacteria and fungi.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
And you look at that kind of wonky list of benefits and And that's what rapamycin does. So it just means that maybe we didn't have to go to Easter Island to discover rapamycin.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
And it was like, mom's milk. It's like, thank you, mom.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
You can't get that easily. And no other mammal continues to eat dairy after the initial growth. So again, it's like, how do we leverage this molecule in our later years?
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
And they're not eating dairy, no ice cream, no cheese, anything like that. So there are plant-based forms, and there haven't been a lot of studies yet to understand what are the different C15 sources, because now that we understand C15's essentiality really well. expands to the animal kingdom, as far as we know it, of how different animals get it.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
But it could be part of micro, like cows make it, right? So they eat grass and their rumen is able to, the bacteria, to produce it. So it may be a combination based upon the species, how well their microbes are able to make it from the food versus how much they get from their food, the food directly.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right, well, that was the key question, right? It really, you hit the nail on the head. That moved over to the Navy, ended up spending 20 years there, 10 full years working with the Navy's dolphins with the pure goal of improving Navy dolphin health. So they live, Navy dolphins, they live in San Diego Bay, go out into the open ocean every day. Every day they choose to come back.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah, and that's where it gets to, conveniently, a longevity molecule must have number, what are we on, four, clinically relevant benefits within months. If a molecule says, hey, we target these mechanisms of longevity, but you're not really going to see anything, but you'll live longer. That doesn't, for Nick and I, that just is not what we were looking for.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
We're looking for to say, can C15 actually have meaningful benefits, specifically with people with diseases? So again, caveating that as a supplement, supplement. Limits aren't intended to treat or prevent or to treat diseases.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
But we're talking about the studies that have been done today and what we're seeing that, you know, we need C15 and putting C15 back into our system and optimizing those levels. We are seeing disease treating. And this is both in people. So let's take, for example, a clinical trial with Dr. Jeff Schwimmer, fatty liver disease, right? So that didn't exist.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease are now mazzled.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Maybe us docs inside should have been involved in branding a disease name.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So there you go. So I'll call it fatty liver disease, not associated with alcohol. So that wasn't known until Mayo Clinic published a paper in 1980 for the first 20 cases. And then, so since then, we move fast forward to today, the latest paper showed 38% of people globally have fatty liver disease.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So this has been a alarming rise in people with fatty liver disease, a percentage of which are progressed to steatohepatitis, inflammation, cirrhosis, becoming one of the leading causes of liver transplants and liver cancer.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. None of the, we don't want any of those things.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Exactly. And so when Jeff Schwimmer is a leader in pediatric fatty liver disease, and he opened the first clinic for fatty liver disease for kids. And so Jeff, back in 2012, had published a paper on fatty liver disease in dolphins. And he wrote me, he sent me an email and he's like, ah, it's probably not what we're seeing in people.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So it's a pretty nice environment with regard to quality of life.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Like it's probably not the same disease, but send me some liver slides that you have, you know, and let me get back to you.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Dolphins who, yeah, exactly. And then afterward we had found.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
They do mice. Thank you for that clarification. Yeah. Yeah, we're actually able to go back and look at pathophysiology reports of dolphins that had passed. So that was another amazing archive of information. So we were able to send those slides to Jeff, and then a couple weeks later, Mark, I got an email, and the title was, We Are, I'll Go.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
He's like, this is the exact same presentation of fatty liver disease that you're seeing in dolphins that I'm seeing in my kids. And he's like, you're blowing my mind because dolphins don't eat sugar. They're not eating trans fats. It's not ultra-processed food.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. It's pretty amazing, right? So they live in the open ocean. That's their pod. So they choose to be there. And it meant a lot to me as a veterinarian. I didn't know how I'd feel.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right? And it's just like, what? And so that started our 10-year journey in which we have worked together but independently. that jeff then did a study in which he looked at 237 kids and he did at the time they didn't have your wonderful test which everybody should get the test that mark just mentioned to assess your liver regardless of your who you are and your age everybody should get this test
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So Jeff did this study and he looked at these kids and he showed that the higher their C15 was correlated with lower liver fat. And this was a linear correlation. So the higher the C15, the lower the fat in the liver. So he's like, okay, well, that's interesting.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So then that resulted in him doing a randomized placebo controlled clinical trial with fatty 15, with C15 supplementation among young adults who were graduates who had a history of fatty liver disease. And what he found, there were really key important things that happened that he found. The first is he found that two out of three of the people in his study had the definition of a C15 deficiency.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Two thirds. So if you have fatty liver disease, you had an even higher risk of what we were saying the general population has.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah, exactly. And then for the people who took a C15 supplementation and got their blood levels above that threshold of deficiency, they had lower liver enzymes, lower ALT, lower AST, and improved red blood cell health within 12 weeks. So- Now, the leading hypothesis and what we have found in the dolphins is that nutritional C15 deficiencies may actually
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
be the cause or at least one cause of a substantial phenotype of fatty liver? Because why did it show up? Why? Like why did this show up all of a sudden? In fact, so many. So that is obviously raising the urgency.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah, and for us, we keep going back to the dolphins. And for the dolphin, we call this the dolphin phenotype of fatty liver disease, the only change they had, they had moved to, they were eating a high fish, high fat fish called the eulachon. which is called a candlefish. It has so much fat in it that you can stick a wick in it. You can dry it, stick a wick in it, and be a candle.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right. Yeah. So it ends up that they're really good at being able to find underwater objects that we can't see very well. And so they've done humanitarian demining missions in the Mediterranean where they're able to find buried mines.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
That fishery died out in the 1990s. And so that's when they moved to this lower-fat capelin And so at the same time that humans, we were moving away from whole fat dairy in our C15 sources, the dolphins were moving, going on a low C15 diet, and fatty liver disease pops up.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah, and now we understand even more so how valuable that was.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
that kind of as far as we also know that that's a human trial that seems to be that's right yeah and so that was published directionally showed what's possible like it didn't cure their fatty liver disease but it seems to sort of create a downward trend in the effects and you still have to cut out the sugar and starch yeah we need to look at the whole picture of lifestyles and how we're changing things what's interesting is it really goes against the whole like
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
idea of um all saturated fats like are bad and that we have one that's essential so it's like how do we get it back into our diet um so there's you know a lot of uh you could feel right the urgency around this movement um the reason for the book um is really to help increase education and let's have the conversations around so we can't explain it away anymore so you know
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So with regard to, there was a second study in Singapore, and that's the one I had mentioned. That was also fatty liver disease, women with fatty liver disease. And it showed that it lowered LDL cholesterol and then improved the gut microbiome. That was an interesting study because what they did for this clinical trial, and this was also a controlled clinical trial,
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
The control group was one that went on a hypocaloric diet. Low-calorie diet. Yeah, exactly, like 1,000 calories per day. That would be tough to sustain. That was the first group. The second group was a low-calorie plus Mediterranean guidelines, which both of those have been shown to help with fatty liver disease metabolism.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
target it they um they you know mark it and then humans come in and things left over from world war ii or whatever right exactly so they have now made entire areas of the world safe uh which is amazing they can also find underwater swimmers uh enemy swimmers and be able to interdict and put a leg cuff on those swimmers and they get reeled up by their human counterparts so
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Even better. Even better. You're spot on. And then the third was low-calorie Mediterranean plus C15 supplementation. So it was a big lift to ask of C15. In those groups, not only did the third group, the C15 supplementation result in lower LDL cholesterol and improved gut microbiome,
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
But it also had the lowest, it had the greatest loss of liver fat, the greatest loss of body fat, the greatest glucose improvements, but it was trending. It was not statistically significant. You just kind of saw the step. But again, it was 12 weeks. And so the question is dosing, timing, things like that. In numerous studies, so these meta-analyses, studies of studies that prospectively follow
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Thousands of people over decades, numerous studies have consistently shown people with higher C15, just like we saw in the dolphins, lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, of heart disease, specifically coronary heart disease, of developing fatty liver disease and certain types of cancers, specifically a lot of work on colorectal cancer.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
This is why with all these different aspects of the data from epidemiological data, clinical trials, mechanisms of action, in vivo efficacy studies, this is why Nick, Dr. Nick Shork, he was at ARDD, which is one of the world's leading anti-aging therapeutics meetings. He was in Copenhagen last year, and he presented C15. He said, listen, I've seen every longevity molecule before.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
under the sun, and I've not seen a molecule that has more supportive data of being a longevity-enhancing molecule than C15.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right, and it's like, what? So then, until now.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So probably not the groups that you're most excited about. Dairy fat, you know, by far is our primary source.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Depending upon what the cows are eating.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Exactly, exactly. And so C-15, you know, for a long time has actually been used as a biomarker of how much dairy fat people ate. They didn't know that it had any meaning. So it was used as a reliable marker of how much. So that's... how much dairy fat, and again, dependent upon what that animal is eating, really drives our C15 levels.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
It's a big reason why the Navy funded, again, our development of the C15 supplement, because it's a pure prefatty acid supplement that's bioavailable. Just importantly, it's vegan, and it is not having to compete with all of these pro-inflammatory fatty acids.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right, yeah, yeah. Otherwise, we would have just... Well, it's interesting.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah, the dairy studies are super messy. And so there are absolutely studies showing this benefit. There was a recent study that looked at this to say, hey, why do some studies show that people who eat more dairy have a lower risk of a given disease and other dairy studies don't show it?
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
And so what they were able to narrow down to and they concluded was that C15, higher levels of C15 were one of the main predictors of having a benefit. Higher levels of C18 was a predictor of having it being harmful.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. And that's not going to be the simplistic answer. But I think the more we can understand how to maximize C15 and maybe having a ratio, like we have omega-6 to omega-3 ratios, maybe it's an even chain saturated fats, which are these pro-inflammatory fats to C15.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. Yeah. In case they were in nefarious areas, the Navy dolphins are there to help. So what they, for them, their job is easy peasy, right? They have echolocation. They're able to do these things. And the program has been so successful being able to deploy the dolphins all over the world and have them stay, right? That that has allowed, you know, this program has been around for 60 years.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah, we hear that. I think we get down to it's essential. It's just one of those rare molecules where we need it.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Which is mind-blowing, right?
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
We'll thank the dolphins. This was truly gifted.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right. You got to get it, like the head and skin.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
You're already like dosing yourself well with C15.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Amazing. they've had a sustained population of 100 bottlenose dolphins. So that has resulted in what we're talking about today with regard to this unprecedented patient population that gets older, like you had mentioned, that in the wild, dolphins live to about 20. At the Navy, they're living into their 50s and even up to 60 years old.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
To your point, and that was a remarkable summary, we need about 100 to 200 milligrams per day. So if you compare that to like omega-3s, right, then you're talking more about grams.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. So this is, to your point, it's a very low dose of C15. It's 100% bioavailable in the free fatty acid form. So we only need a small amount. And again, in order to help fortify our cell membranes and keep them strong, we need greater than 0.2% of that cell membrane needs to be C15. So we don't need a lot.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
You know, we only need these low amounts to achieve these levels in our cell membranes. We also know, it's been remarkable, is that all these studies about all these different mechanisms, like activating AMPK, inhibiting mTOR, they're all showing the same concentrations. It's all the same amount that we need in our blood to have all of these many, you know, pleiotropic benefits.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So it's very consistent. The story just is so consistent on what we're intended to have to stay healthy. Now what we're saying is, hey, can we increase it and push it further? So it's like 0.4 to 0.6%. Can that help us be even healthier and live longer? And there's a big study that was done by a group at Harvard and a bunch of other teams.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
And they did a large study and they showed that people who had these higher levels of instead of 0.2%, 0.4%. to 0.55% that they were less likely to develop heart disease over time. And then the longevity zones are going through an evolution, but in Sardinia, the people there who have, they live longer in part because they have a lower risk of developing heart disease, and specifically men,
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
live longer longest in sardinia than anywhere else in the world i've been there right oh i'm jealous okay so they they have um a mean c15 level 0.6 and they have and and they've replaced their that's fascinating right and they've replaced their meat for the most part with cheese yeah they're using local uh cheese from local goats and sheep yeah yeah no this all makes sense high altitude
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
That is really cool. Yeah, one of their cheeses, right, which you might have seen there, is Pecorino cheese. And Pecorino has, in particular, has higher C15 than most other cheeses. So, yeah, it kind of feeds into this all kind of neat how it all comes together.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah, well, this is the next step. So we've spent 10 years on credibility. That was really important before we even thought of bringing a supplement. And all the research right out is really building the credibility. You can imagine a dolphin veterinarian saying you need to take a saturated fat. You better be able to back that up with really good data.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So we went above and beyond with regard to the science. And then now the world has picked it up. So again, you can go to discoverc15.com. And that's where all the peer reviewed papers, again, over 100 from people throughout the world. So that's a fun place to go.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Great healthcare system. Good preventative healthcare system. Access to fish. You watch any kind of wild animal show these days and the world isn't so friendly anymore for animals. It's getting harder and harder for wildlife.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Thank you. Thank you.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. And now probably once every two weeks there's a new paper coming out. So it's really exciting.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
That is right. That is right. Which is really exciting. Now, the movement, right?
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yep, that's right. So that's been great to see. So then now we're moving toward exciting new avenues, obviously getting the conversations going. How can we change nutritional guidelines? How can we get C15 for our kids into infants with all the new studies that are coming out around the importance of infant health, as well as supporting our aging as we get older?
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
And then we have some exciting new research coming out around brain health. So stay tuned for that.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. So a lot of exciting work coming out around that. And then, you know, for us, it's like we really have really taken a step back and said, why? Obviously, there's urgency to fix, you know, global crisis that's happening. And if there is a chance that restoring C-15 can help with that.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Of just metabolic diseases.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Brain diseases. Yeah, the kids that were born into basically this height of the C-15 deficiency world, which is the 1990s, they're now in their 30s. And so is this why people in their 30s are developing certain types of cancers, the rise in a coronary heart disease, the rise in type 2 diabetes, it's fatty liver disease showing up. And how much is the C15 deficiency part of that?
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So let's stop accelerated aging. There are kids that are developing diseases of their grandparents before their parents. So we've got to fix that. And then how to then, again, leaning in, how do we optimize C15 deficiency? through supplementation, through various practices to be able to extend our longevity. So that's exciting. And then what is it all for?
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
I mean, longevity so we can live healthy for as long as possible and enjoy life. And I have a question for you, which is, you know, it's to give us more time. And so if you were given two extra hours of every day and those two extra hours, whatever you did was guilt free. You didn't feel guilty about it because you weren't working on something else because you're so busy.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
What would you do with those two hours a day?
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
It's more time to be able to do things because it makes you feel good, right? And then it makes you healthier and it feeds all those things. And so for us, it's the ability to say everybody has the right to longevity, to live a long life, to have a meaningful life. The book is about the purpose that fell in my lap through the dolphins.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
And let's give us all more time to be able to fulfill our purpose.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's a good question. I do think there are things, there are studies that have shown that there were times that dolphins might have lived slightly longer, like maybe a few years, but nothing on the average like what we're seeing at the Navy. So there I was, right? So taking care of this older geriatric dolphin population.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
No overdosing.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. It's part of the solution. But boy, all those things are so, so important.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Great. It was great to be here, Dr. Hyman. Thank you.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
And what we started seeing, Mark, was an increase in that some of the dolphins were developing aging-associated diseases. like chronic inflammation, high cholesterol, fatty liver disease, and even the full suite of changes consistent with Alzheimer's. And what was really important was that some of the dolphins were developing these conditions, which has now culminated in what we understand
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
now understand as a syndrome, that some dolphins were developing this and others were not. So we were able to go in, use metabolomics, which is this advanced technology to study thousands of small molecules.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah, exactly, in the blood. And we had this amazing archived inventory of dolphin serum. Look at those molecules in their blood and in their all-fish diet. to find which small molecules predicted the healthiest aging dolphins, we expected omega-3s to be at the tip top of the list.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
And instead it was C15, which none of us even knew what C15 was, but pentadecanoic acid was the top predictor of healthy aging dolphins. So that was 10 years ago and what started the next 10 years of research now over 100 papers on C15.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right, right. So the first important discovery that we made, and this was alongside Dr. Ed Dennis, who's a leader in fatty acids. So he was the editor-in-chief for the Journal for Lipid Research for 15 years. And when we first made the discovery of C15 association, right, because in the dolphins, this was just association with better health.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
we went to Dr. Dennis to Ed and shared our hypothesis and Ed was like, well, chances are this isn't gonna pan out because we've known about C-15 since the 1950s and chances are that stuff, no offense, that a dolphin veterinarian didn't discover something new about fatty acids. And he's like, but it's intriguing about the dolphins. So we spent the next three years
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
doing eight studies to show that C15 not only has direct benefits and is a beneficial saturated fat, like you shared, but that it meets these rare criteria of being an essential fatty acid, the first essential fatty acid to be discovered in over 90 years.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah, so what we've learned is that our bodies require a certain amount of C15 in our bodies, including in our cell membrane. It's a sturdy saturated fat. That is because it's an odd chain saturated fatty acid, has an odd number of carbons, it has anti-inflammatory properties. We'll talk about all the different mechanisms that C15 has.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
So it's really this Goldilocks healthy fatty acid that is essential to maintaining the stability of our cells. If we don't have enough C15 specifically, at least 0.2% of fatty acids are C15 in our cell membrane, our cells become fragile and we develop a nutritional deficiency syndrome, which we published last year in Metabolites called cellular fragility syndrome.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
the first deficiency syndrome to be discovered in 75 years, which leads to, you know, we can talk about this whole new form of cell death called phoroptosis. So it's been, you know, and accelerates everything.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right. So if you have fragile cells, your cells basically start falling apart, which is what happens when we age. So a lot of aging-related breakdown that we feel, our aching knees, our foggy brains, our slower metabolism, increased inflammation, all of those things come with more fragile cells, which leads to, if we nerd out a little bit, leads to lipid peroxidation.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
There's this abnormal iron sitting inside the cell. They combine, and they cause this increase, like explosion of reactive oxygen species that take out the cell. So when that happens, our whole bodies get affected from our immunity to our metabolism. So it ends up that while this process, C15 deficiencies, can accelerate our aging and
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
everything that we feel with aging, we've now been able to work with the Navy and look at how can we optimize C15 to flip the story and how can we actually optimize our longevity through C15.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. That's right. And so now we're seeing that as many as one in three people are C15 deficient. And then there are some that are extremely C15 deficient, right, which you'll see on your test. And it's exactly for that reason. We have taken C15 out of our diets globally. So our primary source, Mark, like you just shared, is dairy fat by far.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
And we're not saying go back and eat a bunch of dairy fat. 1% of dairy fats is C15. Over 40% of the fatty acids in dairy fat are pro-inflammatory saturated fat. So we still need to work our way through that. But the Navy was interested enough to say,
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
hey can we find a way to use c15 and leverage it for longevity meanwhile let's also talk about the need to prevent these um you know deficiency syndrome that's showing up in our kids and that might just be by helping to get milk fat back into kids diets including mom's milk fat
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
It's a good question. So what the studies have learned is that C15 levels are driven by what the ruminant. So it could be a cow, goat, sheep.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
What they eat. Yeah. So if you feed either cow, goat, or sheep grass, it has twice as much C15 in its dairy fat than fed corn. If you feed it high altitude grass, it has even higher C15. So we don't know when you go buy your dairy product.
The Dr. Hyman Show
The Unexpected Dolphin Discovery That May Hold the Key to Longevity | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
what that animal was eating and so one thing that we're pushing for is to have the dairy industry report c15 levels um in their you know in their foods and to help change industry practices to help maximize c15 levels interesting yeah so it's not you're not what you eat you're what ever you're eating eight that's right that's