Fatty acid discovery is a fluke for longevity

For years, science has been advocating less saturated fat, but a fatty acid discovery turned that on its head. And it all starts with dolphins…

Supplements often have interesting origin stories – molecules from vegetables we eat regularly (sulforaphane) or named for what they were first found in (spermidine) – but C15:0 beats them hands down. Or is that flippers down..?

The story begins when veterinary epidemiologist Dr Stephanie Venn-Watson was working to improve the health of older dolphins as part of the US Navy Marine Mammal Program; while studying health data from a half-century longitudinal cohort of the Navy’s long-lived, large brained dolphins, she made an intriguing discovery – dolphins pods in Florida had fewer aging-related conditions than pods in California. Venn-Watson discovered an odd-chain saturated fat in the dolphins’ all-fish diets predicted the healthiest aging individuals, and increasing dolphins’ dietary levels of this saturated fat alleviated anemia, a biomarker of accelerated aging in dolphins, and stabilized age-related conditions, with researchers observing a 72% improvement in cellular stability. This led her to discover the first essential fatty acid to be found in 90 years – C15:0.

My take on this: The age-related conditions reduced by C15:0 in dolphins are the same as those that are the precursors to diabetes, heart disease and stroke in humans. So, what makes C15:0 so effective? C15:0 is a fatty acid, like omega-3 and omega-6, but unlike them, C15:0 has no double bonds in its main chain, making it a resilient molecule that is resistant to oxidation. C15:0 is also an odd chain saturated fatty acid of a type consistently associated with lower risks of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and fatty liver disease. This all sounds great, but the catch is we don’t make C15:0, so we need to get enough from our diet or through supplementation.

We needed to find out more about C15:0 and a new supplement based on this fatty acid, so we sat down with Stephanie Venn-Watson, DVM, MPH, the Co-Founder and CEO of fatty15 and Eric Venn-Watson, MD, MBA, Co-Founder and COO of fatty15.

Fatty acids have been demonized for decades; after red flags were raised about saturated fats in our diet over 40 years ago, health programs and practitioners have advised avoiding them, but instead of seeing improved global health, say the Venn-Watsons, there has been a rise in type-2 diabetes, heart disease, liver disease and specific types of cancer, especially among younger people.

“Mounting science now supports that we accidentally caused nutritional deficiencies of C15:0, a healthy and essential saturated fat,” explains Stephanie Venn-Watson. “In turn, these nutritional C15:0 deficiencies may actually be increasing our risk of getting the very diseases we were trying to avoid.”

Discover valuable insights about fatty15, its implications for longevity and the aging process straight from Stephanie Venn-Watson and Eric Venn-Watson HERE.

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