The Newly Discovered Nutrient That Could Slow Aging with Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson - Transcript

Dr. Mark Hyman
Stephanie, it's great to have you back on The Doctor Hyman Show. Yeah. And, your work continues to astound me and discoveries that I think are going to hopefully make us all live a little bit longer, feel a little bit better, prevent some of the disease of aging. And we're talking about today, the work you've done as a veterinary epidemiologist working with the Navy SEALs I mean, the Navy Dolphins.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
We're gonna help the Navy SEALs too.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Oh, man. I feel like a Navy SEAL right now. I'm, like, I'm, like, trying to not shiver to death, and I'm not in freezing cold water, but I'm I'm wearing a thick coat because we're in Austin, Texas, and it is freezing out. With the windshield on like minus 12 degrees or something. So I'm just trying to warm up.

I I I think I'd love to start by having you sort of describe, the the sort of this incredible work you did with the Navy dolphins, which are used for kinda, what are they used for? And then and then what what did you find as as sort of you looked at the natural lifespan of dolphins compared to the dolphins in captivity, and and how did that start to get you thinking about the the sort of longevity aspect of what might be in the dolphins that you could discover, and how did you begin to discover that?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
So Yeah. Boy, this is gonna be exciting talk. I love the TF. Doctor Heiman, it's great to be here. It's always always good to see you.

So yes. As a veterinary epidemiologist, I was, you know, wanted to track diseases. That's I read Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague when I was an undergraduate and said, I wanna do that. And I thought it was gonna be infectious diseases, 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 it quickly pivoted to chronic diseases and chronic diseases of aging. So it's been a Do

Dr. Mark Hyman
dolphins get chronic diseases of aging? This doesn't make any sense to me. They're not eating McDonald's, and they're not not exercising, and they're not doing their normal sleep routine, and they don't I mean, maybe they have more stress than in captivity. But

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right. Well, I that was the key question. Right? It really you hit the nail on the head that, moved over to to the navy, ended up spending 20 years there, you know, ten 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. So it's it's a pretty nice environment, with regard to quality of life.

Dr. Mark Hyman
They just are free to go, and then they come back?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. It's pretty amazing. Right? So they they live in the open ocean. That's their pod.

So they they choose to be there. And it's it's it meant a lot to me as a veterinarian. I didn't know how I'd feel.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, also listening probably go, wait a minute. Why why does the Navy have dolphins? Like, they're not

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right. Yeah. So so it 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. They target it.

They, they, you know, market and then humans come in.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And They left over from World War two or whatever. Right?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Exactly. So they have now made entire areas of the world safe, which is amazing. They can also find underwater swimmers, 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

Dr. Mark Hyman
Wait. Wait. You mean enemy scuba divers?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. Yeah. In case they were in nefarious areas, the Navy Dolphins are there to to help. So what bait for them, their job is easy peasy. Right?

They have echolocation. They're able to do these things. Yeah. 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 sixty years.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Amazing.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
They've had a sustained population of a hundred bottlenose dolphins.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Wow.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
So that has resulted in, you know, what we're talking about today with regard to this unprecedented patient population that gets older, like we you you mentioned Mhmm. That in the wild, dolphins live to about 20. At the Navy, they're living into their fifties and even up to 60 years old. So They're even,

Dr. Mark Hyman
like like, two or three times as long

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
In captivity as they do in the wild. Is that because there's predators or just more it's more tough to get get along out there?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Or Great health care, system. Good preventative health care system, access to fish that you know, you watch any kind of wild animal show these days and that the world isn't isn't so friendly anymore for animals. It's getting harder and harder for wildlife.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Do you think do you think the wild dolphins, like, a couple hundred years ago lived longer?

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 a few years, but nothing on the average, like what we're seeing, at the Navy. So so there I was. Right? So taking care of this, older geriatric, dolphin population.

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.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
So and what was really important was that some of the dolphins were developing these conditions, which has now culminated in what we under now understand as a syndrome, that 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 in In

Dr. Mark Hyman
your blood.

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 threes to be at the tip top of the list. Yeah.

And instead, it was c 15, which none of us even knew what c 15 was. But pentadecanoic acid was the top predictor of healthy aging dolphins. So that was ten years ago and what started the next ten years of research now over a hundred papers on c 15.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's incredible. So so, basically, this is c 15 is a and and the the number 15 is really about where the carbons and the bonds are on the on the chain of fatty acids. And it's a saturated fat, which in most people's mind think is bad, but it's actually not. It's actually it turns out to be very powerful and have many effects on many of the longevity pathways. And and there's a lot of molecules that are being studied for longevity, everything from rapamycin to metformin to NAD, and the list goes on, ax you know, astaxanthin.

I mean, there's a lot of interesting molecules that are being used. How how does c fifteen stack up against some of these? What is the sort of the research that's been done today to help to look at what it what it does? How does it actually facilitate longevity? And and because just a it's just a fatty acid.

So you wouldn't think how is it doing all these things. Right?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right. Right. Well, so the first, important discovery that we made, and this was alongside, doctor Ed Dennis, who's a leader in fatty acids. So he's the was the editor in chief for the Journal for Lipid Research for fifteen years. And when we first made the discovery of c 15 association, right, because in the Dolphins, this was just association with Better Health.

We went to, doctor 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 nineteen fifties. And chances are that stuff, you know, no 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 doing eight studies to show that c fifteen 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 ninety years.

Dr. Mark Hyman
What makes something an essential fatty acid? Because we think of these things as essential for life. And if you don't have them, you're you're gonna be in trouble. Like, there's essential amino acids, fatty acids. By the way, everybody, there's no such thing as essential carbohydrates.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right. It's a good good point. Good point. Dang it.

Dr. Mark Hyman
But but but, you know, what what what makes it essential, and how and how do we have to think differently about it?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
We did. Yes. So what we've learned is that our bodies require a certain amount of c fifteen in our bodies and 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.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
It, has anti inflammatory properties. We'll talk about all the different mechanisms that c fifteen has. 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 c 15, specifically, at least 0.2% of c 15 of fatty acids are c 15 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 first deficiency syndrome to be discovered in seventy five years, which leads to you know, we can talk about this whole new new form of cell death called phoroptosis.

So it's, been, you know, an acceleratory

Dr. Mark Hyman
fragile cells. What does that mean? What is it what are the consequences? How do they feel?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right. So they 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 are 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. 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, c fifteen deficiencies, can accelerate our aging and everything that we feel with aging, we've now been able to work with the Navy and look at how can we optimize c fifteen to flip the the story, and how can we actually optimize our longevity, through c 15.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So you you talk also in the and you wrote a book, actually, just quite good. It's called Longevity Nutrient, and the full title is The Unexpected Fat That Holds the Key to Healthy Aging. So it's kinda a good title. It got my attention. And, you know, I actually have been measuring fatty acids in my patients for decades and decades, and, you know, I'd always see c fifteen, but I it didn't it didn't really register as something that was important to look at.

And now I look at it every time, and I'm surprised to see how many people are actually quite low.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. In

Dr. Mark Hyman
c fifteen, which comes from dairy products, right, and from fatty fish.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. That's right. And so now we're we're seeing that as many as one in three people are c fifteen deficient. And then there are some that are extremely c fifteen deficient, right, which will you'll see on your test. And it's exactly for that reason.

We have taken c fifteen out of our diets, globally. So our primary source, Mark, like you just shared, is dairy fat by far. And we're not saying go back and eat a bunch of dairy fat. 1% of dairy fats is c 15. Over 40% of the fatty acids in dairy fat are pro inflammatory Yeah.

Saturated fat. So we still need to work our way through that, but the Navy was interested enough to say, hey. Can we find a way to use c 15 and leverage it for longevity? Meanwhile, let's also talk about the need to prevent these, 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.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Well, breast milk for sure. Although conventional dairy has a lot of problems and Yeah. Is very inflammatory for a lot of people.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
And That's right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I wonder if it's I wonder if it's, high levels in goat or sheep. Is it?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
It's a good question. So what, the studies have learned is that c 15 levels are driven by what the ruminant so it could be a cow, goat, goat

Dr. Mark Hyman
what you're eating.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
What they eat. Yeah. So if you feed a, either cow, goat, or sheep grass, it has twice as much c 15 and it's dairy fat than fed corn. If you feed it high altitude grass, it has even higher c 15. So, you know, we don't know when you go buy your dairy product

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
What that animal was eating. And so one thing that we're pushing for is to have the dairy industry report c 15 levels, in their, you know, in their foods and to help change industry practices to help maximize c 15 levels.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Interesting. Yeah. So it's not you're not what you eat, you're whatever you're eating ate.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. That's that you're you've got that. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Now let's get into some of the sort of the the I mean, the discovery of it is fascinating. So you've had this, like, trove of blood from dolphins for decades, and then you can go back and check, like, okay, who are the dolphins that age fast? Who are the ones that age much slow more slowly? And then you kinda looked at all of them and then rose to the top where where with C15. But you you mentioned there's, like, a hundred other molecules you're looking at that may have promising benefits too that we haven't looked at.

And that's the beauty of sort of modern science with those listening. We really have gotten the ability to look at not just, you know, 20 blood tests or at function we do a 10. And there's now ways to do metabolomics, which looks at thousands and thousands of molecules that are floating around in your blood that have meaning and that do things, but that often we've kind of neglected or ignored. And this is clearly one of them. In in in terms of this seven sort of longevity enablers you talk about, fatty fifteen or which is the sort of brand of the product, c fifteen, which you can now actually buy, and I I personally take it every day, is it they could because the science was so compelling to me that I was like, okay.

Well, this is, you know if it doesn't work, you know, okay. But if I'm missing something, it's gonna be a big deal, so I wanna take it. What what, what are the sort of seven call must haves of a longevity enabler that this this this molecule, meets?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. So there are we have, established these seven must haves. And by way, I mean, you know, some the longevity, scientific community. This was also put together in part with, with doctor 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 we that has clean that has clean data. 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. Right. Right?

Dr. Mark Hyman
And it's

Stephanie Venn-Watson
like You're

Dr. Mark Hyman
gonna make worms live to be, like, a thousand years old.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
And it doesn't really translate.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Right? Yeah. And mice, you know, to be, like, a 20.

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? So let's figure out what how evolution has already enabled massive longevity enabling, tap into that, and then make it even better. So Some

Dr. Mark Hyman
of the bowhead whales have, like, two hundred years.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right. So it was just like, how let's look at let's focus on these species, not to dismiss the the short list. Right? The basic science, but it's an unlock. Right?

So so the seven must haves of longevity, and this is assuming that longevity, the way we define it is, is as a gero protector. So a molecule that slows our aging rate and therefore slows the onset of the chronic diseases that kill us. So you

Dr. Mark Hyman
may not actually live longer, but you'll live healthier.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Healthier. And then by default, be able to extend your own longevity. So right? So that you can live longer. So of those, the 70 the seven longevity must haves are first, it needs to this molecule needs to tap into the longevity regulating pathway.

It's this complicated keg. It's called the KEGG pathway, and it's based upon, of, hypocaloric diet. So caloric restriction and the whole pathway that's been built out on how caloric restriction, extends longevity across multiple species. At the heart of it is activating AMPK and inhibiting mTOR, which, as you had mentioned, your metformin activates AMPK, and rapamycin inhibits mTOR. C fifteen does both.

So that was really exciting to see. It's really hitting at the heart, as as other longevity molecules. The second is that it needs to target

Dr. Mark Hyman
And just just to back up on that, Rebecca, you might not understand that. So APK regulates a lot of things, inflammation, your blood sugar control, your mitochondrial function, and and interacts with a lot of other longevity pathways. I call them longevity switches, like the the four longevity switches that I wrote about sort of in my book Young Forever, which is, you know, mTOR, which regulates protein synthesis. And, also, when you inhibit it, it causes autophagy, which is cellular cleanup, which is really important to healthy aging. Insulin signaling, which we we can talk about.

And that causes us to kinda reproduce insulin and leads to obesity and diabetes and Alzheimer's and cancer and pretty much everything else. And then and then there's, the pathway called sirtuins, which is very involved in in in, regulating DNA repair and oxidative stress. And other than that, overlapping redundancies in terms of the key fundamental things of aging, which we talk about in the hallmarks of aging, whether it's mitochondrial dysfunction, whether it's autophagy, cellular cleanup, whether it's inflammation, oxidative stress, blood sugar regulation, protein synthesis. So all all those things are necessary, and they're they're fundamental to under understand because they're they're the things that underlie all disease. And and, you know, what people don't realize is now we're discovering these new frameworks for understanding disease that are based on root causes.

And so the hallmarks of aging are really discoveries that have helped us map out what are what are those things that tend to go wrong as we get older. And now we can think about how do we treat those. And if we treated those, we might extend life by a third rather than just, you know, if we got rid of cancer and heart disease, we'd extend life by five to seven years. You know, we completely eradicate it from the planet, so it's not much of a life extension compared to thirty years. Right?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So, they're really important to understand, but there's also causes of dysfunction, which I think doesn't get addressed. Like, why do we have these dysfunctions? But c fifteen seems to work on some of these key pathways around the hallmarks of aging.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. That's right. Thank you for that. And and your book, by the way, does a great job explaining all of those. So Hard

Dr. Mark Hyman
to explain. Trust me.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
If anyone wants to dive in more,

Dr. Mark Hyman
please, yeah. Young Forever.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
You wanna read it. Yeah. Please read please read, yeah, your book, Young Forever. So, and then so then the second one exactly feeds into the hallmarks of aging. There's 12.

It keeps getting the list keeps getting longer. It feels like every couple of years. Nine, ten, 13. Yeah. So, there's now, multiple studies, showing that that c fifteen targets six of them.

And that includes, helping c fifteen directly repairs mitochondrial function. It has the skip function where it's able to help restore broken mitochondria, by enable enabling it to make energy, when normally it wouldn't be able to, which is which is exciting

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
And important. It helps with so if poor cellular signaling, We know that it not only activates AMPK and inhibits mTOR, but it also activates PPAR alpha delta and AKT, and it it inhibits JAK STAT and HDAC six. So that was a bunch of letters.

Dr. Mark Hyman
What she's saying basically in English is that these are these are other pathways that we all have that regulate inflammation, that regulate blood sugar, and that that when we look at actually the things that drive aging, it's dysregulation of blood sugar and insulin and inflammation that is a consequence of that. And the downstream effects is it harms our mitochondria, it causes more oxidative stress, it it has so many awful effects on inhibiting autophagy and

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Causing stem cell exhaustion and shortening telomeres and all the things that I talk about in my book. So, you know, when you when you kinda get to the kingpin of what's going on for most of us as we age, and what's so curious about these lung with dolphins is that they they have this protective, molecule that they seem to accumulate. Now what I don't understand is if all the dolphins were eating the same stuff and all of them had the same environment, like, why were some actually having high levels of c fifteen and others? Is there some genetic component here that we don't understand, or is there some variability in how people, you know, keep or utilize it or absorb it? What what's what explains that?

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. 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, you know, given throughout the whole day.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
It ends up that those low fat fish had no c 15 in them. And where what we were able to get to, remarkably, because the Navy's, you know, vigilant data collection, we were able to see that some dolphins were getting a higher c 15 diet than other dolphins. And then even better, we did two navy funded studies in which we gave those dolphins with lower c 15 a higher c 15 fish diet. Mhmm. And we saw that their aging related conditions reverse.

So then right? So then we were like, oh, okay.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Now we're also test hypothesis. Right? You see, oh, well. It's associated with longevity, but it's a causal.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
When you add the molecule into the diet through fatty fish, it actually reverses the things that you saw as as consequence of aging.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. We saw complete reversal of the need now.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Like, the If the dolphin herring, that's good. But if you give them, like, flounder, probably not so good. Right?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. That's right. It was our not like a common food that we eat, but it was like capelin, and squid. Squid had no c 15 in it, but you're right. Herring was a great and mackerel were were were great fish.

So, so that's how how led to all of those. So then, you know, with the Hallmarks of Aging, you know, it targets six of them. It helps with we now understand from a clinical trial, it helps with gut dysbiosis.

Dr. Mark Hyman
How does it do that?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right? So c fifteen multiple ways. A lot of exciting research coming out on c fifteen for gut health, not from us, from other teams around the world. They've shown multiple studies have shown that in multiple mouse models of colitis, of IBD with regard to, like, leaky gut syndrome, That c fifteen specifically helps improve the gut lining, and it stops the leakiness. So it decreases inflammation, and it stops the leaking.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Is it because it sort of embeds itself in cell membranes in the gut?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's it.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It becomes more stable and less fragile? Is that the is that the kind of hypothesis?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's that's the hypothesis. Yeah. We know that it gets in there. We know that it has this effect. And so, so it helps with that.

In addition, really fascinating work on the microbiome that, in a clinical trial that was done in Singapore with c fifteen supplementation showed that women, who had a history of fatty liver disease, when they took, c fifteen, they saw an improvement in the growth of bifidobacterium adelacentis, which is like a mama microbe, 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 with an an interesting side point. I know

Dr. Mark Hyman
that worms have a microbiome.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
You know exactly.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Worm poop.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
It lowered, in that clinical trial, it also lowered, LDL cholesterol, which which was great. So and then there are other studies showing that, you know, that we know that fiber can help improve metabolism. And so there was a whole series of studies that were 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. And inulin is being fed to our gut microbes that then use inulin to make c fifteen.

And so it's because of the c fifteen that's being made by the microbes that, helped explain the benefits of fiber. So it's just like Interesting.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So if somebody you don't have to eat any fish or dairy. If you have enough of the right fiber and prebiotics, you can grow the right bugs in your gut, and they'll produce c fifteen for you.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
It'll get you it'll get you to it's like an additive. It's kind of like how to order all the different tips and things we can do Yeah. To maximize our c fifteen. So that is one component. If none of the single things alone can do it, but additively, absolutely

Dr. Mark Hyman
We've been measuring, like, fatty acids on our patients at the Ultra Wellness Center, my practice in Lenox, Massachusetts for twenty years. Oh, wow. And and we before that at Canyon Ranch, we also did for another ten years. And, you know, it would be interesting to go back and see, okay, who who has low levels of c fifteen? Because it wasn't something I was really paying that much attention to.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And now I paid very close attention to it. And I'm like, oh, wow. This one's low. You're low. You're low.

You're low. You're low. And I'm like, it's it's an important biomarker for for actually understanding how people are are navigating their health journey and longevity and aging itself. So really quite amazing. So you you know, we we're kinda going through seven longevity must haves.

We went through

Stephanie Venn-Watson
So we got the through the first two, which are the biggest. Yeah. 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.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
And that's usually we talk about Navy SEALs. Right? 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.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

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, 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. 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 Yeah.

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. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's interesting, actually. RDW is one of the biomarkers that's used to kinda calculate your biological age that we use to function health Yeah. Which is based on epigenetic testing and correlating that with certain blood biomarkers, and that's how we come up with functional health with biomarkers. So it'd be interesting to be able to start to test fatty 15 as part of our functional panel, but it's it's really, it it seems like such an essential molecule. And I think, you know, the the the fact that it's, quote, essential, you know, is is is is that is that something that's been established by the scientific community?

Is that something that you just sort of figured out? Or

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right. That's a pretty bold claim.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right? So so it's we put the stake,

Dr. Mark Hyman
Like discovering a new vitamin that's essential for a health.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right? Right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's a big deal. So We

Stephanie Venn-Watson
haven't been

Dr. Mark Hyman
a new one in, like, seventy or years or something.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right? It's it's been a long time. Exactly. So we've put the stake at the ground, back in 2020, and we published that in sign Nature's Scientific Reports. This last year has been really exciting, Mark, with, there have been, now to date, three other independent teams that have evaluated c fifteen 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 c fifteen deficient, does her does her neonate show evidence of a nutritional deficiency? And the answer was yes. And when you give it just c fifteen, does a nutritional deficiency, is it fixed? And the answer was yes. So the

Dr. Mark Hyman
And so, like, in infant mice, what are the what are the symptoms of nutritional deficiency?

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 c 15 levels, her baby gets lower c 15

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
And lower c 15 now has been associated with poor body growth, poor brain development Wow. Even up to cognitive development of kids up to six years old. But the upside, right, the, the what's the hope in all of this is that nutritional deficiencies and and essential fatty acids, right, these are fixable.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
So so now we have with regard to essentiality, another study shared with, again, with worms, showed that if you deprive the baby worm of all nutrients, right, it goes into this it doesn't die. It goes into this, like, slumber state. And they showed that if you give it just c fifteen, it will regrow as if you were feeding it in a a full nutritious diet.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Wow.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
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, again, re kind of revalidating that c fifteen meets the criteria of essential fatty acid, including, you know, the the discovery of a a nutritional deficiency, like Yeah. Vitamin c and scurvy and vitamin d and rickets.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So so what has been the human data? I mean, we're talking about worms, talking about dolphins, we're talking about

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
What what's the human data on on c fifteen, and how does how does it stack up against, for example, other longevity molecules? So the NIH has a program to study various compounds and looking at, you know, rapamycin or metformin or astaxanthin or acrobos, which most of these are drugs. Mhmm. And and, you know, there's not a lot that actually show significant benefit. Rapamycin is probably the most promising, but it has significant side effects.

And there's coming up with analogs that are without the side effects that only affect one of the pathways of mTOR, but that's way too complicated for me

Stephanie Venn-Watson
to Right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Me to understand. But, tell me tell me, like, how does this sort of stack up in that in that lineup?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yep. So, so we'll start with human cell systems, that because it's, you know, it's hard to do the long term studies to show, hey. If you take this molecule, will you live longer? And to your Like

Dr. Mark Hyman
a randomized controlled trial for fifty years

Stephanie Venn-Watson
to see

Dr. Mark Hyman
if it happens. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. And and and those are underway, which is good, but they just take time and they get really complicated. So, again, working with, doctor Shork, one way we looked at that was to say, okay. We use this panel called Biomap and that they're human cell systems, 12 different human cell systems that are mimicking various disease states. And it has a bunch a 48 different biomarkers.

And what you do is you treat these different cell systems, disease systems with different doses, like ascending doses of c fifteen, of, rapamycin, metformin, acarbose. And what we showed was that c fifteen had the most cellular clinically relevant benefits that are longevity enhancing compared to rapamycin metformin and a carbose. It was really close to, it was most close to rapamycin, which is exciting for the Longevity Consortium. Right? They really leaned into that.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Without the side effects.

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 the things we care about. C fifteen is anti inflammatory.

It's, it has an antioxidant. It has anticancer functions. It has, antimicrobial. It even stops the growth of pathogenic bacteria and fungi. And you look at that kind of wonky list of benefits, and that's what rapamycin does.

Yeah. So it just means that maybe we didn't have to go to Easter Island to discover rapamycin.

Dr. Mark Hyman
San Diego too. Maybe maybe a

Stephanie Venn-Watson
dolphin program. Just and then it was like, mom's milk. You know? It's like, thank you, mom. You know?

Why don't you

Dr. Mark Hyman
get breast milk, though? You can't get that easily.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Wait. Yeah. Yeah. We don't wanna and and no other mammal continues to eat dairy after the initial, like, growth. So it's, again, it's like, how do we leverage this molecule in our later years?

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's a good point. How do how do, you know, other mammals, you know, who are not, eating fish? Right. Like, you know, you've got bears who eat fish, you've got, you know, certain, you know, other mammals that might eat fish, like otters or seals Yeah. Whatever.

But but, you know, most land living mammals, like elk or deer don't eat fish. Right.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
How

Dr. Mark Hyman
do they get seafood?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
And they're not eating dairy. No. No ice cream, no cheese, anything like that. So, that is there are plant based forms, and there haven't been a lot of studies yet to understand what are the different c fifteen sources. Because now that we understand, c fifteen's essentiality really expands to the animal kingdom as far as we know it, of how different animals get it.

But it could be part of micro like, cows make it. Right? So they eat grass, and their their rumen is able to the bacteria, you know, to produce. 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. So if

Dr. Mark Hyman
you like regeneratively raised cows, they're gonna be eating more variety of wild grasses and plants. They might have more.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. If you're

Dr. Mark Hyman
eating sheep or goat, they typically don't, you know, feed them corn and soy.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Right? So they may have more. Yeah. That would They're often better tolerated because they have a different form of casein, which is the protein in milk that tends to cause problems. And most cows are bred to have a one casein, which is really problematic and inflammatory for most people.

Yeah. So there are a two cows, like Jersey cows and Guernsey cows, and there are a two cows, heirloom cows. But, you know, I think what I'm curious about is how how this molecule also can be a therapeutic molecule, not just sort of a preventive molecule that that deals with some of these basic mechanisms, but how how could it affect, you know, your treatment of diabetes or heart disease or fatty liver disease?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
How does that work? And and that's where it gets to, conveniently. Like, longevity molecule must have number right away on four, you know, clinically relevant benefits within months. And so, you know, there's a lot of if if a molecule says, hey. We target these mechanisms of longevity, but you're not really gonna see anything, but you'll live longer.

That that doesn't for for Nick and I, that just is not what we were looking for. We're looking for to say, can c fifteen actually have meaningful benefits, specifically with people with diseases? So, again, caveating that as a supplement, supplements aren't intended to to treat or, prevent or to treat diseases. But we're talking about the studies that have been done today and what we're seeing that, you know, we need c fifteen and putting c fifteen back into our system and optimizing those levels. We are seeing disease treating, effects.

And this is both in people. So let's take, for example, clinical trial, with doctor Jeff Schwimmer, fatty liver disease. Right? So that didn't exist. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease are now mazzled.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I They they they changed the name because Everybody you used to only see this fatty liver issues in alcoholics.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And now the most prevalent form is those with metabolic dysfunction, meaning diabetes, prediabetes, and they call it metabolic associated fatty liver disease.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
I I maybe us docs, it's either should be involved in branding, a disease name. So if

Dr. Mark Hyman
Nafel D as opposed to Nafel D.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
So there you go. So so I'll I'll call it fatty liver disease, not associated with with with, alcohol. So, you know, that did wasn't known until Mayo Clinic published a paper in 1980 for the first twenty cases. And then so since then, we move fast forward to to today. The latest paper showed thirty eight percent of people globally have fatty liver disease.

So this has been an 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. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, this is important. What you just said was really important because, you know, we're about one in ten or less, the one in nine now keeps getting worse in America have diabetes, type two diabetes.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
But

Dr. Mark Hyman
what you're saying is four in ten, almost four in ten have fatty liver disease. Even if you don't have diabetes, it still increase your risk of heart attacks, cancer, stroke, rapid aging, and death.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. None of the we don't want any any of those.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Even if you don't have diabetes.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. Right. That's right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So It's it's important, and it's often not diagnosed. Mhmm. It's often missed. There are now really great blood tests you can do to find out if you have it, not just your regular liver function test. And we we offer these as part of function health's testing.

So you can go to functionhealth.com/mark and actually get the, these tests as add on tests to the basic function panel that look at fibrosis and liver and and are are really helpful to kind of pick up people who have this. Because you don't wanna continue to have this if you have it. I mean, you can diagnose it through a, you know, an MRI or, you know, various kinds of of, fancy testing, but through a simple blood test, you can also kinda get a pretty good idea. And and it's important to understand because this is such a silent epidemic that nobody ever heard of, and, you know, it doesn't really have a ton of symptoms other than, you know, maybe you're overweight and maybe you got a big belly or maybe, you know, like but but it just it's it's quite important. And so what you're saying is that c fifteen has the potential to impact fatty liver disease.

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, I'd published a paper on fatty liver disease in dolphins. And he wrote me. He sent me an email, and he's like, it's probably not what we're seeing in people.

Like, it's probably not the same disease, but send me some liver slides that you have, you know, and and let me get back to you. Sorry. Send it.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Were dolphins who died and then you found it.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right? Exactly. Dolphins who had yeah. Exactly. And then afterward, we had found You're

Dr. Mark Hyman
not like sacrificing dolphins to

Stephanie Venn-Watson
get to

Dr. Mark Hyman
the specialist. No. No. No. Yeah.

They do mice.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right? Thank you for that clarification. Yeah. We're actually able to go back and look at patho, physiology reports and of dolphins that had passed. So we had this that was another amazing archive, right, of 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 All Go. 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.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's that's what I'm wondering.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right? And it's just like, what? And so that started our ten 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.

So, that, Jeff did this study, and he looked at these kids, and he showed that the higher their c 15 was correlated with lower liver fat. And this was a linear correlation. So the higher the c 15, the lower the fat in the liver. So he's like, okay. Well, that's interesting.

So then that resulted in him doing a randomized placebo controlled clinical trial with fatty fifteen, with c fifteen supplementation among young adults who were graduates of who had a history of fatty liver disease.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Wow.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
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 of the people in his study had the definition of a c fifteen deficiency. Two thirds. So if you have fatty liver disease, yet you had an even higher risk of what we were saying the general population has.

Dr. Mark Hyman
One in three two in three.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. Exactly. And then for the people who took c fifteen 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 twelve weeks. No. So now, the leading hypothesis and what we have found in, the dolphins is that nutritional c fifteen deficiencies may actually 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 Yeah. Affect so many? So that is obviously crazy for and

Dr. Mark Hyman
starch is a massive part of our diet. And and I think it probably might be a combination of the increase in sugar and starch plus

Stephanie Venn-Watson
The c fifteen.

Dr. Mark Hyman
C fifteen deficiency. Right?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. And, you know, our for us, you know, we keep going back to the dolphins. And, for the dolph we call this the dolphin phenotype of fatty liver disease. The only change they had, they had moved to, there was a they were eating a high fish, high fat fish called the eulacon, which is called a candlefish. It has so much fat in it that you can stick a wick in it.

You could dry it and stick a wick in it and and be a candle. Yeah. That fishery died out, in the nineteen nineties.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
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 and our c 15 sources. The dolphins were moving going on a low c 15 diet

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
And fatty liver disease Possibly.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. You know, the Native Americans you might not know this story, but the Native Americans used to trade in these really highly fatty little tiny fish as part of their trade. So if you were a, you know, Pacific Northwest Native American and you would trade with inland tribes and use the fish as your currency. So instead of dollars, you'd send give them fish, and they'd give you beads or whatever else they wanted. So that's fascinating because it it was such a valuable commodity back then.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. And little now we understand even more so, like, how valuable that that was. So that kind of as far as we also know that seems to be

Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, that's like that's a human trial. It just seems to be

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. Yeah. And so that was published on

Dr. Mark Hyman
the show. 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 facts. And you still have to cut out the sugar and starch.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. We need to look at the whole picture of lifestyles and how we're changing things. What this you know, what's interesting is it really goes against the whole, like, idea of, all saturated fats, like, are bad. And that Yeah. We have one that's essential.

So it's like, how do we get it back into our diet? Yeah. So there's, you know, a lot of, you could feel, alright, the urgency around this movement. The reason for the book, is really to help increase education, and let's have the conversations

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Around see, we can't explain it away anymore. So, you know

Dr. Mark Hyman
And and what kind of studies have been in humans around diabetes, type two diabetes, and heart disease? Is there anything?

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 increased the improved the gut, microbe, microbiome. That was an interesting study because the what they did, in this for this clinical trial, and this was also a controlled clinical trial, that they had the control group was one that went on a hypocaloric diet. So they had between, they had an average calorie diet. Yeah.

Exactly. Like, 1,000 calories per day. That'd be tough to sustain. That was the first group. The second group was a low calorie plus Mediterranean Mhmm.

Guidelines, which both of those have been shown to help with fatty liver disease metabolism and very similar

Dr. Mark Hyman
ketogenic diet works best.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Even better. Even better. You're spot on. And then the third was low calorie Mediterranean plus c fifteen supplementation. So it was a big lift to ask of c fifteen.

In those groups, not only did the third group, the c fifteen supplementation result in lower LDL cholesterol and, improved gut microbiome. 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 kinda saw this step. But, again, it was twelve weeks.

Yeah. And so the question is dosing, timing, things like that. In numerous studies of studies of so these meta analyses. Right? Studies of studies that prospectively follow thousands of people over decades.

Numerous studies have consistently shown people with higher c 15, just like we saw in the dolphins, lower risk of developing type two 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. So as you know, 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, doctor Nick Shorke, 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 c 15. 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 Mhmm. Than c 15.

Dr. Mark Hyman
But most people have never heard of it and don't know about it. Right.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
And it's like, what? So then and until now.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Right. Why we wrote the book and why we're having this podcast so people can understand this sort of emerging science around this, which is kinda cool because it's not very often you come up with a new discovery like this, and, it's pretty cool. I think the, there's a few questions I have around the foods, to help people understand what foods they should be eating. We kinda touched on a little bit.

Right. But what are the foods that are highest in c 15?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
So, probably not the groups that you're you're most excited about. Dairy fat, you know, by far is our primary source.

Dr. Mark Hyman
But depending on what the cows are eating.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Depending upon what the cows are eating.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Or what the sheep or goat are

Stephanie Venn-Watson
eating. Exactly. Exactly. And so c 15, you 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.

Oh. So it was used as a reliable marker of how much so that's how much, you know, dairy fat and, again, dependent upon what that animal was eating, really drives our c fifteen levels. It's a big reason why we, you know, the Navy funded, again, our development of the c fifteen supplement because it's a pure free fatty acid supplement that's bioavailable. Just importantly, it's vegan, and it, you know, it is not having to compete with all of these pro inflammatory

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Fatty acids.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So the good comes a lot of the bad in dairy, and that that's what you wanna avoid. Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise, we we

Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, interesting. Some of the studies, you know, looking at and these are epidemiological studies. We're looking at, you know, people who eat more dairy seem to have less diabetes. Right? So that's interesting.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Is it the dairy fat? Is it something else? Is it the saturated fats that protect them? I I don't know, but it's it's just sort of makes me wonder.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. It's, you know, it's it's 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. And so what they were able to narrow down to and they concluded was that c fifteen higher levels of c fifteen were one of the main predictors of having a benefit.

Higher levels of c eighteen was a predictor of having it being harmful. So, again, it's not

Dr. Mark Hyman
And that's another fatty acid that's saturated in dairy fat.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. So it's, you know, it's and that's not gonna be the simplistic answer.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
But I think it's, the more we can understand how to maximize c 15, you know, and and maybe having a ratio, like, we have omega six to omega three ratios, Maybe it's an even chain saturated fats, which are these pro inflammatory fats to c 50.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I mean, that's the thing you will understand. People say saturated fat's bad. Is saturated fat's good. I mean, there is no such thing as saturated fat.

There's saturated fats.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yes.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes. And each one has different properties and different benefits and different risks, and, and so uniformly they're not the same.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Spot on.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And they don't affect your lipids the same way, your health the same way. I wrote a lot about this in my book, Eat Fat, Get Thin, because people were super confused about it. I I think that that, you know, just to kinda sort of sum up what I what I'm hearing is that this is, like, a newly discovered molecule that is an essential nutrient that one in three of us are missing that has profound effects on many of the longevity pathways that have to do with aging, mitochondrial health, blood sugar health, microbiome health, affect your liver health, you know, cholesterol. I mean, it's quite it's almost good too good to be true. Right?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. We we hear that. We hear that. That's it's a and I I think we get down to it. It's essential.

You know? It's it's it's just one of those rare molecules where we need it.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And what's beautiful about these molecules, they're not needed in huge amounts. Right? So so when you think about a vitamin, like vitamin c and scurvy, you know, it only takes, like, sixty milligrams of vitamin c to cure scurvy, which is a, you know, deadly disease if you don't have enough vitamin c. And by the way, 10 of Americans don't have enough vitamin c to prevent scurvy.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Which is mind blowing.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Right? Which is because they're eating ultra processed food and they don't get any green vegetables and they don't get any, you know, fruit. And and so, yeah, it's it's a it's a big problem. But but what I find interesting about vitamins is that they have very, very powerful effects or essential nutrients at very low levels. And without them, our whole metabolic and biochemical machinery doesn't work the way it was designed to work.

And so things go wrong, and the things that go wrong are the things that we don't want to go wrong, like, you know, damaging our ability to keep healthy cells, right, the self fragility syndrome where your cells don't function properly and the membranes aren't right. And fats make up your cell membrane, so they have to be healthy, and this is a key component of that. We have to regulate our mitochondria properly, our immune system properly, free radicals and oxygen stress properly, our microbiome. So it's interesting that it sort of seems to work in so many different ways, and I think there's a word that probably people have heard me talk about, that is pleiotropic, meaning it has many different effects. So drugs usually have a single effect, they might have a few other side effects, but they're designed to be a single drug for a single biochemical targeted with a single receptor, the single outcome, working on a single pathway.

And what nutrients do, like, for example, magnesium activates over 300 different enzymes in the body, so it's so does zinc or maybe 200 different enzymes. So these are highly I think vitamin D controls hundreds and hundreds of gene expressions throughout your genome. And and these are multifunctional molecules that go beyond what we would normally think of as a pharmaceutical intervention. So these are the things that that create health as opposed to simply treat disease. And I always say when you create health, disease goes away as a side effect.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
I love it.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And and that's kind of what you're talking about here. This is a component of our biology that we've neglected, that we haven't known about, that has recently discovered thanks to the dolphins and you.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
We'll thank the dolphins. This was truly gift.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And, just having an observation that, wow, you know, like, jeez, these dolphins aren't living very long. These are living longer. Like, what's up with that? And just asking the right questions, you were able to come up with this discovery. And I think it's really groundbreaking.

I think, you know, people need to eat fatty fish. I think small fatty fish is key if you're not gonna eat dairy, like herring, mackerel, sardines, anchovies, all this stuff that people don't like. You know?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right. You gotta get it. Let the heck and sketch.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I'm Jewish, so I like all those things. I didn't grew up on those things that I didn't know at the time.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. You're already, like, dosing yourself well with C15. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Tons of cans of mackerel in my cupboard and sardines. And, in terms of the dosing, like, what kind of doses do people need of this?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
To your point, and that was a remarkable summary, the we need, about two one hundred to two hundred milligrams per day. So if you compare that to, like, omega threes, right, then you're talking more about grams. Two

Dr. Mark Hyman
thousand two thousand milligrams. Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. So this is to your point, it's very low dose of c fifteen. It's a % 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, it we would need greater than 0.2% of that cell membrane needs to be c fifteen.

So we don't need a lot

Dr. Mark Hyman
Basically, a fifth of a percent.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. It's just

Dr. Mark Hyman
of the fats in your cells have to be this fat in order for it not to become fragile and break down.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. So we just need a little and then we're learning now if we can optimize that.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's Oh,

Stephanie Venn-Watson
it's no worries.

Dr. Mark Hyman
No. It's me. That's my I should turn tell me to take my probiotics.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
You know, so what's fascinating is that, you know, we only need these low amounts to achieve these levels, in our, cell membranes. We also know what's been remarkable is that all these studies about all these different mechanisms, like if, you know, 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. So it's very good that 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, point four to point six percent? 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, and they did a large study. And they showed that people who had these higher levels of instead of point two percent, point four to point five five percent, that they were less likely to develop heart disease over time. And then, you know, the longevity zones are going through, you know, 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 live longer longest in Sardinia than anywhere else in the world.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I've been there.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right? These guys, so I'm jealous. Okay. So they they have, a mean c 15 level of point six. And they have and and they've replaced their

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's fascinating.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right? And they've replaced their meat for the most part with cheese. Yeah. They're using local, cheese from local goats and

Dr. Mark Hyman
cheese. Yeah. Yeah. No. This all makes sense.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
High altitude.

Dr. Mark Hyman
What was really fascinating was when I when I spent quite a bit of time in Sardinia.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Oh, that's

Dr. Mark Hyman
I got to meet with a lot of these very old men and old women. And, I mean, one couple, I think, was a hundred 210 years old together.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Oh my gosh.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And, they were fit and they were vibrant. This guy Pietro was, like, 95. He was just, you know, kinda retired from, you know, herding his sheep five miles a day up the rocky terrain. And what was really fascinating was was they understood that that, you know, one of these guys, Olinto, said, you know, we flavor our meat before we kill the animal. And I'm like, what do you mean?

He says, well, whatever you feed it determines the quality of the meat and the taste. So whether they feed carob or acorns or whatever, like the black footed pigs in Spain for the Iberican ham, very different fatty acid profile because all they do is live in oak forests and eat acorns. And in Sardinia, they know that if they take the sheep or the goat and they kinda graze them on different plants at different times of the year, it'll taste better. And what, they're not doing it because it has high C15 levels, or they're looking for better phytochemicals, or whatever, they just don't wanna taste better. The reason it tastes better is that phytochemicals create the taste in food.

So flavor always follows the phytochemical richness or density of the food. And and they just kinda knew this intuitively by by how they raise these animals. And so these animals are eating all these wild plants all the time. That's what they fed them. And so that that makes a lot of sense.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right?

Dr. Mark Hyman
That makes a lot of sense to me, just given sort of being there and seeing what they were eating and what they were eating, what they ate, and what the cheese was made from, and it was really fast. Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That is really cool. Yeah. They, they their, one of their cheeses, right, in which you might have seen there was Pecorino, and Pecorino has, in particular, has higher c 15 than most other cheeses. So, yeah, it kinda feeds into this all kinda neat how

Dr. Mark Hyman
it all comes together. It's really fascinating. I mean, I I I think what I would love to sort of know from you is, where is all this going? Like, what's next? And are we what do we gonna see next in terms of the research that's underway, the things that are promising?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. Well, the this this is the next step. So we've, you know, we spent, ten years on credibility. You know, that was really important before we even thought of bringing a supplement, and all the research right out is really building the credibility. You could imagine a dolphin veterinarian saying you need to take a saturated fat.

You'd better be able to back that up with really good data. 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 Yeah. And, again, over a hundred from people throughout the world. So that's a a fun place to go.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's the letter c in the number 15.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Thank you. Thank you.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes. So discoverc15.com. We'll put it in the show notes, but that it's a it's a treasure trove of of the current and ongoing kind of research.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. And and now, probably once every two weeks, there's a new paper coming out. So it's really exciting.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So it's not just you anymore. There's people all around the world who've taken up the researcher on this.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That is right. That is right. And which is really excite you know, now the movement. Right? This movement

Dr. Mark Hyman
how science works. Right? Somebody discovers something and then other scientists try to validate it and or discredit it.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's right. Yep. That's right. So And 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 c 15 into our for our kids, into infants with all the new studies that are coming out around the important to infant health as well as supporting our aging as we get older? And then, we have some exciting new research coming out around brain health, so stay tuned for that.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Cognitive development.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Cognitive development. And all

Dr. Mark Hyman
from both spectrums. Right? From young cognitive development and and also brain aging and all sorts

Stephanie Venn-Watson
of push.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

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 and if there is a chance that restoring c fifteen can help with that

Dr. Mark Hyman
Global crisis of what? Have you got

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Of just metabolic diseases. Disease. The increased worsening diseases

Dr. Mark Hyman
and yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Yeah. The kids that were born into basically this height of the 15 world, which is the nineteen nineties, they're now in their thirties. And so is this why people in their thirties are developing certain types of cancers? Are the rise in a coronary heart disease, the rise in type two diabetes, fatty liver disease showing up, and how much is the c fifteen deficiency part of that? So let's stop accelerated aging.

There are kids that are developing diseases of their grandparents before their parents.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
So we've gotta fix that. And then how to then again, leaning in, how do we optimize c fifteen, through supplementation, through various practices to be able to extend our longevity? So that's exciting. And then what is it all for? I mean, longevity so we can live healthy for as long as possible and enjoy life.

And Yeah. I I have a question for you Yeah. Which is, you know, it's to give us more time.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
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, what would you do with those two hours?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Two hours a day? Yeah. That's a great question. I probably would exercise more.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
That's great. It's more time to be able to do things because you makes you feel good.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Right? And then it makes you healthier and it feeds all those things. And so for us, it's you're like it's the the ability to say everybody has the right to longevity, to live a long life, to have a meaningful life. I put you know, the book is about the purpose that fell in my lap through the dolphins, and let's give us all more time to be able to fulfill our purpose.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I'm excited to see what's next. This is very exciting. You can read about this in great detail in, Stephanie's new book, The Longevity Nutrient, The Unexpected Fat That Holds the Key to Healthy Aging. It's out now, so you definitely should check it out. Also, if you're interested to learn more, go to discoverc15.com, and you can actually buy c, c fifteen as a supplement, and it's called fatty fifteen, which I love and I take, I just take two capsules a day, and that's it.

And it's pretty straightforward. It's a low friction way to get it. You don't like sardines and herring and mackerel. Hopefully, I'm not overdosing because I do eat those. But

Stephanie Venn-Watson
No overdosing over.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I I think, you know, we we're kind of in this moment where, you know, we we we are discovering a lot about aging and longevity, but we can't miss the force for the trees, which which is the fact that we're eating a diet that's killing us. And the amount of sugar and starch is driving our metabolic crisis, is causing a lot of causing a lot of the things that are going on. I think c fifteen can be helpful in mitigating that, but without actually also changing your diet, exercising, getting up to sleep, managing your stress, having connections and relationships, it's not enough. Right?

Stephanie Venn-Watson
So That's right. It's part part of the solution. But, boy, all those things are so, so important.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Exactly. So don't you don't wanna eat your c fifteen supplement and

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Not exercise and social life.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Three cans of soda a day. So That's

Stephanie Venn-Watson
right. Please don't do

Dr. Mark Hyman
that. So thanks for coming on the podcast again. This is really great. Everybody can find out more, and we'll put it on the show notes for the links that we talked about. And, keep up the good work, and we'll stay tuned for what's next on the horizon.

Stephanie Venn-Watson
Great. It's great to be here, Doctor Hyman. Thank you.