116. Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson: The New Essential Fatty Acid

Most people hear "saturated fat" and think of something harmful, yet emerging research reveals that one specific fatty acid supports stronger cell membranes, healthier metabolic function, and better long-term resilience. C15 plays a unique role in the biology of aging and may help explain why certain populations experience longer, healthier lives. In this episode of Extend, we sit down with Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson, veterinary epidemiologist and co-founder of Fatty15, to uncover how Navy dolphin research led to the discovery of C15 as the first essential fatty acid identified in nearly a century. We unpack why odd chain fats behave differently than traditional dietary fats, how C15 stabilizes cellular aging pathways, and why declining levels in the modern diet may be contributing to metabolic and cognitive decline. We also explore how C15's effects on ferroptosis, inflammation, liver markers, and mitochondrial efficiency offer a new way to support healthspan at the cellular level. Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson is a leading veterinary epidemiologist whose groundbreaking research on marine mammals revealed the essential role of C15 in aging, metabolism, and cellular integrity, ultimately leading to the development of the concentrated and clinically studied Fatty15 formulation. What's Discussed: (07:20) How Navy dolphin research led to the discovery of C15 (11:45) Why C15 functions differently from traditional saturated fats (15:10) The link between C15, cell membrane stability, and aging (19:40) How declining C15 levels influence metabolic and inflammatory markers (24:00) The science of ferroptosis and why it accelerates aging (28:30) How C15 interacts with AMPK, PPAR, mTOR, and mitochondrial pathways (33:10) The challenge of getting enough C15 through modern diets (38:25) How Fatty15 provides a bioavailable source of this essential fatty acid Thank You for Our Sponsors: Nexthealth: NextHealth: Your destination for cutting-edge health optimization—from IV therapy to hormone balancing. Explore at https://www.next-health.com/ Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: https://www.drshah.com/ Clinic: https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram:@darshanshahmd https://www.instagram.com/darshanshahmd/ Learn more about Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson: Website : https://fatty15.com/ https://fatty15.com/pages/stephanie-venn-watson?srsltid=AfmBOopHCx7kdGtSlbd0ycKGt9EAfK4sbJVbRH0UziSN5xayaXRj9Mvh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fatty15/ X: https://x.com/meetfatty15 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meetfatty15/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanievennwatson

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21 and trained and board certified in the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We're living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease and, most importantly, extend your health span.

• 0:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What if one of the biggest drivers of aging isn't sugar, carbs, or even omega-3s, but a missing fat? For decades, we've been told to avoid saturated fats, but new research is showing that one type of saturated fat called C15 may actually be essential for healthy aging. It's the first new essential fatty acid discovered in over 90 years and is changing how we think about metabolism, inflammation, and longevity. In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Steph Van Watson, the veterinary epidemiologist, whose research on Navy dolphins led to the discovery of this missing fat. We talk about how C15 fuels your mitochondria, stabilizes your cells, and even prevents a newly discovered form of cell death linked to faster aging. We'll unpack

• 1:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  what happens when your C15 levels run low, where to get it in your diet, and why this may be the next big leap in cellular health and human longevity.

• 1:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Dr. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate you being here.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Oh, Dr. Shah, it's great being here.

• 1:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, and you know, it's, I've been looking forward to this conversation because I've been taking fatty 15 for probably close to six months now, and I feel better on it. I really do. I don't know if I'm just convincing myself. off of it, but it does, you know, I feel like there's so much great science behind it. I just really want to dive into that with you. So thanks for coming up to do this.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Thrilled to be here. I like how you use dive in. That's gonna

• 2:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  be relevant here in a second.

• 2:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Dive in, exactly. All right. So there's a lot to talk about here, but first of all, I think it's important for people to understand how you came upon this discovery, kind of your career path as a veterinary epidemiologist.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Right, right. Am I like your fourth that you've interviewed, right? This month.

• 2:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  How many veterinary epidemiologists are there in the country?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  I don't know. There's probably maybe 50.

• 2:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  You're not a lot. Rare breed. Rare breed, exactly. Yeah. So, so as a veterinary epidemiologist, actually, when I was an undergrad, I decided I wanted to become a disease hunter. So I read Laurie Garrett's book, The Coming Plague. And I was like, oh my gosh. And I was this pattern recognition nerd, like I'm not good at a lot of things, Darshan, but I'm good at recognizing patterns. And then I learned that there was a career in that, which is epidemiology.

• 3:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  So I read Laurie Garrett's book and I thought, oh my gosh, I want to do that. We look for patterns, figure out diseases, and then more, most importantly, how to, how to fix them and prevent them. So I went into, met a physician who, or met a veterinarian who was an epidemiologist. And he said, you should go to veterinary school because you're going to learn diseases and eight different species instead of one, and you'll really understand disease.

• 3:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, makes sense.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I thought, well, that sounds great. So I did that. I went to veterinary school at Tufts. And then worked for CDC, the World Health Organization, and traveled all over the world, setting up disease surveillance systems, which was amazing. And then about 24 years ago, was recruited by the US Navy to help start and lead a clinical research program to continually improve the health and welfare of Navy dolphins.

• 4:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Dolphins, that's incredible. How fun. Did you get to hang out with the dolphins?

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was great. So I, okay, so a little confession, I don't know how to swim and I'm terrified of water. So didn't know that that was going to be my track. But yes, loved hanging out with the Dolphins, but they put me into a super secret classified classified space. And so to be able to work with an amazing collection of data. So this is a half a century of data, health data collected on the Navy Dolphins, you know, for the sake of helping the Navy Dolphins. And they had archived serum on the Dolphins throughout their 30 to 50 year lives. Minus eighty four C. I know you can appreciate this, right? So throughout their entire lives.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  And as I was working there, you know, we, we were increasingly appreciating that Navy Dolphins live a lot longer than Dolphins in the wild. In the wild Dolphins lived about 20. At the Navy, they're living 50 to 60 years old.

• 5:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Whoa. So it's three times the lifespan of a Navy Dolphin.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Incredible.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 5:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Is part of that because there's no predators in the Navy Dolphin community? Like.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  It is. I mean, they have, it's almost like looking at a developed versus a developing world. They have access to great healthcare and not quite next health level, but you know, they have a good, have a good quality of life. And so all of those things help them live a long time. And because they were allowed to get older, and it's this sustained population of 100 bottlenose Dolphins, because they're allowed to get older, they, we saw that about one in three were developing aging associated diseases like high cholesterol and chronic inflammation, fatty liver disease, even the full Swedish changes, consistent with Alzheimer's.

• 5:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Really?

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's so interesting. So these Dolphins that are living like in getting these chronic diseases, was some of that attributable to what they were eating, to the amount of movement they have? Yeah, I'm thinking about like humans, like we get these diseases because we become more sedentary, we be, we junky food, you know, we don't sleep as well. Is it similar reasons?

• 6:16Speaker 01

  We, we went down that same path and, and it was a lot of, a lot of this was thanks to working with healthcare providers for humans, right? It's kind of like we're, we're both working, we're all working on large brained, long-lived mammals, right? And that are developed. Being naturally the same as aging associated conditions. The gift we had was that it was a very controlled population. All they eat are fish. So we didn't have a complicated frame, but they do get to swim and exercise every day. They live in San Diego Bay. So we were able to narrow it down to something. We wanted to do something that we could act upon. So we looked, started at the diet. And so we did metabolomics.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  And we looked at, you know, thousands of small molecules present in their blood, but also in their fish. And went to see which small molecules predicted the healthiest aging dolphins. Again, going back to that invaluable archived serum. And we found surprisingly that the top predictor of the healthiest aging dolphins was C15, which is this odd chain saturated fat I had never heard of.

• 7:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow, that's incredible. So it's like the most incredible study ever done on a mammal, right? Like if you put a hundred humans in one controlled environment, feed them the same thing every day for 50 years and have them exercise the same amount. I mean, the data you can get from that is mind blowing. It is kind of interesting to note, though, that they all ate fish and they all, you know, exercised and moved around the same amount. But they still developed some of these diseases of aging, like Alzheimer's, you were saying, and cardiovascular disease as well.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, exactly. And so where we started seeing, so that is then we dove in, right? To say, okay, what are the differences? Why do some dolphins have higher C15 than other dolphins? And the, a couple of things happened. In the late 1990s, up until the late 1990s, the Navy had fed the dolphins a super fatty fish called Ulicon. And they're so fatty that you could dry them out, stick a wick in it and they'd be candles. So we called them candlefish. So they, this fishery died out in the late 1990s. So the Navy lost this super healthy source of fatty fish for the dolphins. So they moved to a collection of five different types of fish. And so some dolphins were getting, so it ends up two.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Two out of five of those fish had C fifteen, three had no C fifteen in it.

• 8:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  So then we ended up having this experiment, like you said, like kind of a dream experiment unknowingly that some dolphins were getting the fatty fish with C fifteen and others were not. And it divided a population that then over, you know, a decade, were getting either a higher C fifteen or a lower C fifteen diet.

• 9:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Why would some of the fish have the more C fifteen in the others? Were they like separated into different areas of the researcher?

• 9:11Speaker 01

  I think it was, it was the type of fish, so you know, the, the types of fish they were getting, like things like herring and mullet and mackerel had high, just naturally have high C fifteen in them, especially the heads and the skin, the parts of the fish we don't tend to eat. While there was a, a type of fish that was really common called cablin, really low fat and commonly fed, and those had no C fifteen in it. So the different types of fish will have different levels, uh, which is really interesting. But now they're having a harder time, just in general, finding fish that are fatty enough to have the C fifteen levels they used to, you know, thirty years ago.

• 9:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow. So dolphins need this special type of fat called C fifteen fat, which is a saturated fat, basically, right?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Right. That was the other surprise.

• 9:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, exactly. And, um, when they get more C fifteen fat, what happens?

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Right. So, so then the question was, what if we take, so let's take dolphins and let's take the ones that are what we call poor agers. And they had this new combination of, of aging associated conditions. And let's give them, purposely give them the fish that are higher in C fifteen. So we did that study twice, um, which was, cause you, you know, you show something once, that's great, but you really gotta, you have to repeat it.

• 10:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, uh, we did that and all of this was funded by Office of Naval Research, um, funding. And when we gave dolphins a higher C fifteen diet, first their C fifteen levels increased, which we'd expect in is good. Most importantly, um, we saw a couple of remarkable things. One is that every dolphin that had chronic anemia resolved within one to three months. Importantly, when they went off. The high C15 diet, Darshan, they, the anemia returned. So that became a big hint to us that C15 was really critical. Specifically, what we were seeing is it was stabilizing red blood cells. As we get older, right, our cells become more fragile, including our red blood cells. Sure, you start seeing decreasing hemoglobin, increasing red blood cell distribution with.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  In people, we see the same thing in dolphins. So we also saw lower cholesterol, triglycerides, normalized insulin. So we saw a lot of hints and then additionally decreasing ferritin, a marker of, what we learned, a marker of iron overload.

• 11:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah. So interesting. So the biomarkers improved within a few months of taking more C15.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 11:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Amazing. And so do they live longer? Do they live healthier?

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Well, there is, you know, those longevity studies take some time. But yeah, they have an increasing percentage of their population that's, you know, that's old and healthy. So, you know, at that point, it was really about, we gave them higher fish. The C15 went up, but it was higher, you know, it did include fish. There were other components too. It was at that point that we then moved C15, pure C15 into the lab to then do, we were, thought we were going to be developing C15 as a drug because for fatty liver disease. We were seeing fatty liver disease pop up in dolphins. It was matching exactly from pathophysiology standpoint, that of, of humans. So we moved C15 into the lab, worked with Dr. Ed Dennis, who's a leader in fatty acids. Happened to be in San Diego, which was great.

• 12:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  He was editor for the Journal of Lipid Research for 15 years. And so we worked with Ed to do eight studies over three years to show that pure C15 is not just associated with better health, but has a direct cause. So we figured out the mechanism of action, bioavailability, you know, how in vivo efficacy, all these things that you need to do if you're going to advance a drug. And now more and more people are doing this with nutrients.

• 12:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah, which is great. I mean, finally, like nutrients are getting the same amount of science as drugs do.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Exactly. Right? And then it's even better because they're more likely to be safe. Because right, there are things that nature made and that we're supposed to have.

• 13:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. It's like all the benefits with minimal side effects.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 13:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And so now I know dolphins are very similar to humans because they're mammals, but a lot of similar biology. But how does the dolphin research translate to humans?

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Right. So then that was the question. So my main job was to ensure the dolphins health. So they're like, great, this is doing great. But of course, the public health side of me started kicking in and seeing, could this be relevant for people? At the same time, we were making these discoveries with the dolphins. Their increasing number of studies started coming out, large scale prospective cohort studies showing that people, that people with higher C15 have a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes of cardiovascular disease, specifically coronary heart disease and heart failure. And so when we started looking into the literature on C15, it was like, oh, my gosh, that same pattern is existing for humans.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  Why is this not receive a lot of attention? And the reason is these studies were really to show that saturated fats are bad.

• 14:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  And so what they found in those studies were that even chain saturated fats like C16 and C18, higher levels of those were associated with a higher risk of heart disease of type 2 diabetes. And that was the headline. What was buried in the study was, oh, and by the way, higher levels of these odd chain saturated fats like C15, C17 were associated with a high, a lower risk of these diseases, but they're not really important. The main headline is saturated fats are bad.

• 14:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's super interesting because, yeah, I mean, the saturated fat studies, so many of them, thousands of them, I think. And it's so interesting that they actually did break them down into the different chains of the fatty acids. I didn't know they did that.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Right. And it was just again, so buried. And so when you go looking for it, and it's just, you know, one thing that, you know, we share is, is sometimes it just takes a change of perspective.

• 15:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  And that dolphins gave us the change. The, the support, the initial support was Absolutely showing up on the human side. So, once we started seeing that, we're saying, okay, we're seeing the same associations, we're showing in the lab and pharma-based approach that are for humans, right, that, that it's beneficial. These were human cell-based studies, dose-dependent, you know, activities that are relevant, activating PPARs, activating AMPK, inhibiting mTOR, like, all these activities we want to hear, if you want to support long-term health and longevity, this is what C15 was doing. So, that's when, and then since then, so if you fast-forward 10

• 15:44Speaker 01

  years, 100 peer-reviewed studies since our first discovery, now the world is working on C15, and, you know, it's been validated. We had introduced it as the first, as meeting the criteria, the first essential fatty acid to be discovered in over 90 years, since omega-3 in that initial paper. Now, there have been multiple teams throughout the world who have re-challenged, right, is it really an essential fatty acid, and then challenged it, used the appropriate hallmark models of nutritional deficiencies, and then Darshan's showing wonderfully, yeah, it meets the criteria of an essential fatty acid.

• 16:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's an essential fatty acid.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's playing out, which is amazing.

• 16:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So interesting. Yeah, so this is like, for the listeners, it's analogous to like the omega-3s. Like, everyone knows omega-3s are essential, most, it's hard to get it in your diet unless you're eating a ton of fatty fish and, you know, nuts and things like that. So, this is the next essential fatty acid that we found, that you found, called, what is the scientific name for it?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Pentadecanoic acid.

• 16:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay. Or C15.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  C15. We're just gonna go with C15.

• 16:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  We'll just go with C15. And so, one of the things that I, you know, want to highlight on the science of this too, is you have these fatty acid chains, basically, right, and there's even numbers and odd numbers of them.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 17:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And it sounds like the odd number ones are healthier than the even number ones. And why is that?

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Right. That's a huge question, and that was, you know, a big reason of why this became a big discovery, because even when we were working with Ed, you know, with Dr. Dennis, it was kind of like, well, is there really going to be a difference? Between what and then you're even skipping carbons. So see 16 is bad. See, see your 15 is good. 16 carbons are bad. 17 is good and 18 is bad again. But what we now know is there are a couple of reasons. One is that when odd chain, when saturated fats are metabolized, they're always metabolized by two carbons. So it's 16, 14, 12. And so they're always an even chain fatty acid in general stays even. And when it gets metabolized, it gets metabolized down to acetoacetic acid, which is pro diabetic.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  While the odd chain ones are metabolized down to C3, which is propionic acid, which is anti diabetic. So, you know, that is, has a lot of health benefits. That's what Food for All, they had published. Their, the reasons for how, why these are different, which makes a lot of sense. But when we have thrown these different fatty acids against receptors and now other teams have used them in in vivo models. They've shown that if you give a mouse a bunch of C16, it will become pro inflammatory, leave more fat in the liver. If you give it C15, it's anti inflammatory and anti. So it's, it has these opposing effects in part by

• 18:33Speaker 01

  C15 inhibits Jakstat, for example. It repairs mitochondrial function while C16 does the opposite. It activates Jakstat. So it's, it's how, that's how specific nature.

• 18:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So interesting.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Isn't it incredible?

• 18:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Really incredible. So I, that then leads to the question, like, where do people get more C15 in their diet? And where are people getting like C16 or C18 in their diet? Is it the types of foods that have different like chains of fatty acids in them?

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Right. So this is where the challenge is. It's that, that every food that has C15 and it has C16 and C18. So it's, and it's, it kind of all goes back to the milk story. So our primary source of C15 is dairy fat by far.

• 19:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  And in fact, there are a lot of studies about C15 prior because C15 was, is used as a biomarker of how much dairy. Fat we eat.

• 19:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  So it's like, so we were lucky that there's, there are a lot of, there's a lot of science around it. No one just knew that it was an active, right, fatty acid. So that's how, and again, an essential fatty acid, something that we must have, is something that is strongly influenced by what we eat. So it makes sense it was a biomarker for dairy fat.

• 19:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  As we've decreased our intake of whole dairy fat, um, our C15 levels population wide have been decreasing. And so what we're seeing, the patterns we're seeing in the rest of the world, is that decreasing C15 levels are, again, like I said, are associated on the flip side, an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease. And now that we know that C15 can actively fix these things, and we now know that a core role of C15 is to strengthen cell membranes against aging related breakdown, that what we published last year is the proposal of, obviously, if C15 is essential, if you don't have enough of it, that means there's a nutritional deficiency.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  And so if there's a deficiency, then there should be a syndrome associated with it. And that's where a culmination of the last decade of work, we've been able to detail the specific pathophysiology of if you don't have enough C15 in your cell membranes, they become fragile. It causes a new form of cell death called ferroptosis, which was

• 20:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Ferroptosis.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Ferroptosis, yes. Yes, exactly. Ferroptosis, ferroptosis. And, and this was actually discovered, this new form of cell death was actually discovered by scientists at Columbia University back in 2012. There have been 20,000 papers written on ferroptosis. I had never heard of it.

• 21:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Just in the last two years, 10,000 papers written on ferroptosis. And we now know that it accelerates aging. It accelerates the onset and aggression of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, these exact same diseases, you know, we're seeing. And so when you put the whole picture together, we've been able to describe, thanks to the dolphins, low C15 in the cell membranes, cell becomes fragile. It, um, it results in this new form of cell death called ferroptosis. That then, um, has an impact on iron overload in the liver and then has spillover effects of increased lipid prooxidation, iron overload, seeding the brain, the heart, the liver, and causing this accelerated aging we're seeing in younger, in younger people.

• 21:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 21:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  This episode was brought to you by Nex Health, a health optimization and longevity clinic located in Los Angeles, Manhattan, and soon to be opening in Montecito, Nashville, Miami, and many other cities in the United States and Canada. Nex Health is the Apple Store of wellness, where you can optimize your health span and lifespan using cutting-edge technology. I actually founded Nex Health eight years ago to give my patients a place to go get extensive biomarker testing done and provide them with all the tools that I use to get my health in order. The longevity circuit in Nex Health using hyperbaric oxygen, sauna, cryotherapy, and LED light is a game changer. In addition, the doctors at Nex Health measure thousands of biomarkers and put into place

• 22:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  a longevity optimization plan using advanced tools like ozone, plasma exchange, and peptides. Go to www.nex.health to check it out.

• 22:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  How is ferroptosis different than regular cell death?

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Right, because we were top three.

• 23:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  There's apoptosis, right? Necrosis and autophagy.

• 23:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Autophagy.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we have those three. And so it's kind of a big deal.

• 23:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  When you find a fourth.

• 23:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's like a new term for me. I actually never heard of it before.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Well, hey, okay, that's a bright idea.

• 23:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I'm learning something really good. I'm learning a lot here.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  So ferroptosis, so specifically, it's described by Dixon et al. in 2012 as they were seeing cells that were under the microscope, where it was fully intact, but all the mitochondria were dead and the nucleus looked fine. And so when they, and there was this strange unwanted iron inside the cell. So it's very distinct and therefore different looking than the other three types of cell death. And so what they found out, what they discovered is ferroptosis is caused by fragile fatty acids in the cell membrane, their words, not ours, that then are susceptible to lipid peroxidation. That lipid peroxidation then combines with the free iron in the cells.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  That then leads to massive reactive oxygen species, takes out the mitochondria, kills the cell. And so there's all these details and it's almost so complicated. We've missed the big picture of all the little mechanisms of how it works. And there are things that can benefit CoQ10 can help with it. Vitamin D can help, but it's like within the mechanisms. What the dolphins taught us is the same year that foroptosis was published, we had published this phenomenon in dolphins. We just didn't know it had a name.

• 24:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  And we were able to show that it was because of C15 deficiencies. Where Cas is again, a very, like you said, a dream model that has shown us. We have a real opportunity to like vitamin C deficiency and scurvy and vitamin D deficiency and rickets. We have a real opportunity to have meaningful impact on on global health.

• 24:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I mean, and you said, I mean, you said so many pathways. Like you said, the the mTOR pathway, the AMK pathway. It sounds like it's like really affecting a lot of the pathways of aging. How does it do that? Like, how does it affect all these different pathways of aging?

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Right. And that's a big question. That's when when Nick Shor came into our world. So Dr. Shor, he's the head of NIH's Longevity Consortium. And so, and he's been in that role for over 20 years. And though he looks like you all do, young, very young. So it's something's working.

• 25:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Probably taking C15, right?

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, C15, yeah, in the last six months. So so Nick, you know, he leads this consortium of the world's leading researchers in anti-aging and longevity. And so they've seen everything under the sun, right? And so much encouraging news on so many fronts with regard to, you know, so it's not like C15 is the only thing. There's lots of advancements in in healthy aging, anti-aging. When Nick saw the studies coming out on C15 and seeing all the things that you just said, wait, it's doing this, this, this, this. He said, Steph, I bet C15 is going to qualify as a Gero protector. And I was like, that's great because you're excited. I'm like, what's a Gero protectors, you know? And

• 26:11Speaker 01

  So that's what Nick explained to me is like stuff, you know, geroprotector is a molecule that can slow the rate at which we age to stem the onset of the diseases that kill us.

• 26:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  So he said, it's having an impact high up enough the chain that it can have all these downstream benefits directly, directly inhibit mTOR, directly activate AMPK. Right. And so, and, and stabilize the cell membrane. And he says, and that's what an essential fatty acid should do. You know, we know all the things omega three does, right? So if it's essential, it should be doing all these things. And if you think about it, we have all these receptors in our bodies and these pathways in our bodies, they're intended to be inhibited and activated by things to which we're supposed to be exposed, right? And so it's not, our bodies have them there for a reason.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  And we're realizing that one of those reasons is, is the need for C15.

• 27:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow, that's, it's, it's so, you know, a lot of people, they look at the supplement industry with a lot of skepticism, of course, right?

• 27:17Speaker 01

  It's earned, it's earned.

• 27:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's earned, right. Exactly. There's so much junk out there, there's so much stuff that's like a waste of money. But we're living in this incredible time where you can do the biochemical research and, you know, your research on this captive population of dolphins. I mean, it's a dream research model and really prove out certain compounds like C15. It's, it's revolutionary because it gives humans another way to think about like, what are they putting into their body, right? You can put drugs into your body, you can, now you have supplements and there's certain core supplements I talk about with all my patients, like vitamin D, of course, omega threes has always been a core supplement for most people. But now we can add some of these other geroprotectors in there that can be revolutionary.

• 28:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And people need to, I think, get over some of this supplement anxiety that they have, you know, because there are supplements now that are backed by science that can have an outsized effect by taking them.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I, I put that in this category now. So I take this every day, like I told you, you know, since I heard of it and I did some research into it and I'm so glad to learn. About it even deeper with you today. And like urolithin A is another one that I take. I feel like there's a ton of great research around it. Improving mitochondrial function and the number of mitochondria that we have. Nicotinamide riboside is another one. But all these like little molecules that at a cellular level can really help us, you know, geor protect, like slow down the aging process, avoid disease. I think it's revolutionary and you know, this definitely falls into that category.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Oh, that's great to hear. And it is, it is wonderful. And again, it's not a one stop shop, right? And, and but there, and, and there are core, like you said, there's a core combination of molecules of supplements that really have stepped up to the plate, have done the work, right? Of being able to understand from the basic level, even understanding dose dependent. And just simple things like bioavailability. And then knowing what activities, what concentrations you need to reach in order to be able to have these benefits. And then experiencing the benefits, right? And that's in the end, like for us, the Navy asked us to develop, you know, funded us to develop a pure C 15 ingredient. And because of the difficulty of getting for them, they were having a hard time finding fish that had adequate C 15 for the dolphins.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  So it was developed as a supplement for the dolphins. And now we kind of have that same challenge from on the human diet side. And even things like, even if you eat whole dairy fat, which I don't shy away from butter and I have a flat white in the morning. So, but even whole dairy fat, if a cow is fed corn, it has half as much C 15 in its dairy fat than if it's fed grass. So, understanding, the more we can understand how to get healthy C 15 into our diet, the better. And so this, having a pure form enables one us to control, have control over getting a bioactive, the most concentrated bioavailable form, you know, of a bioactive nutrient. So all the ones you listed are in that, you know, that same category.

• 30:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  This whole history of saturated fat, it's so mind blowing, you know, like.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  I know.

• 30:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's, it's, and it's so nuanced and we were making these crazy massive decisions as a food system, like going from whole fat dairy to 2% and skim milk. And now we don't get enough C15. And now it's like, you know, the cows that we get our milk from are not even fed grass anymore. And so they don't even make it. It's, it's mind blowing what's happened to our food industry.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  It is. It's crazy. And we're seeing, you know, like even the, a lot of science is coming out now from other groups around looking at infants and pregnancy. And they're showing the more C15 mom eats translates to how much C15 she has in her milk.

• 30:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  That then the more C15 baby gets, the, there are now two prospective cohort studies that have been done showing that the more C15 babies get from their mom's milk, the better their body growth, the better their brain growth. And then there's a group in France, the Eden cohort study showing, following kids three to five to six years old, showing they have better overall cognitive development. It's, it's association, but it fits with the experimental studies that have been done in rodents and others. And it does help with, you know, it's essential.

• 31:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's incredible. I mean, it's, it's so, it's such an important piece of information that is just now coming to light, I feel, even though there's been lots of studies around it, it sounds like.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And again, it's, the, the, the hard part is, you know, over a hundred, you know, peer reviewed studies, but a lot of them, it's, it's the buried, you know, story is because the main story is.

• 31:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Saturated fats are bad and it's C16. And then when you look and it's like, oh, and that, but increasingly pentadecanoic acid is actually becoming the title of the paper

• 31:59Speaker 01

  because people are, are starting to understand in wonderfully entirely different groups, people working on cancer, people working on Alzheimer's, you know, people working in with children's development, they're all now working, and of course, um, next longevity consortium, right? They're all working with C15. So there's about an average of one new paper of C on the benefits of C15 coming out each week.

• 32:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, amazing. Okay. That's, that's good news because now I think the more we learn about this, the more we can start incorporating it as an essential supplement now for people. So, and, and just for people, you know, I always have the conversation around supplements versus getting it in your diet. So you can get in your diet with full fat dairy, of course, but it has to be organic, grass fed dairy. And so even if you're, say you have two full glasses of grass fed milk every day and you're having butter, are you getting enough C 15?

• 32:49Speaker 01

  So there are a couple of limitations. So I would say, yes, your C 15 levels are going to rise to the levels that would not be deficient.

• 32:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Right. And so the fact that if the hypothesis is our health is getting worse in part because we've decreased our intake of whole dairy fat, I'd be hypocritical if I said, nope, drinking milk isn't going to fix it. I do think it's going to fix it in kids. I think if we get whole dairy quality, whole dairy fat back to our kids, I think we can fix a lot of this accelerated aging. I think Dr. Hyman just covered, talking about kids getting, increasing numbers of kids getting, having hypertension.

• 33:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Right. I think 6% of kids who aren't obese have hypertension. Like, it's just what's going on. So, so let's fix that. Let's not be deficient. And then with studies that have been done, I think as we get, look at adults. So if we look at mammals, if you drink, all mammals drink milk at birth, right? It's like nature's perfect food.

• 33:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  We're the only ones who keep eating dairy after, after development. So there's a little thing to learn there. But what we're understanding is that, you know, if studies that are done on example, for example, Bishop et al. did a study on mice with diabetes, high fat diet induced diabetic model. And if you give those, that model, C 15, you see a decrease in inflammation, decrease in glucose, decrease in insulin. If you give that same mouse model a dairy fat, just pure milk fat, it gets worse. So it's, there's increased liver fat, increased inflammation. And they're attributing it to the much higher load of C 16.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  So I think in the younger years, we, milk, I think good quality milk can help fix this, you know, Pandemic of deficiency of phlebotosis in our youngest years. As we move to our oldest years and then wanting to optimize our C15 levels. Like our Sardinians have three times higher C15 levels than the rest of us in the blue zone. They have, so they have sheep, local sheep and goats. They, the grass fud.

• 35:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Ends up high altitude grass has actually the highest C15. Ends up in the highest C15. So this is trifecta world and their cheese, one of their cheeses, which is pecorino.

• 35:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Highest C15.

• 35:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Pecorino.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Cheese. Yeah, so pecorino is a good addition.

• 35:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love pecorino cheese.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  To the diet. So, and they have replaced a lot of their meat with cheese. So they're getting, they just have that perfect environment for high C15. So, so yeah, so there, so Sardinia is an example of how you can.

• 35:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Get it for, most of us, I think that the pro-inflammatory fats and dairy fat can outweigh the.

• 35:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Benefits.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  The benefits of C15. And there's another hypothesis that, like for example, mice that are fed a lot of a high fat diet, including C15. Their C15 levels actually go down. And the hypothesis is it's because it's competing with the other fats. And only 1% of dairy fat is C15. Forty to 60% is C16, C18.

• 35:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  So that's why Navy said, hey, can you produce this?

• 36:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Pure C15 so that we can just get that, make it more bioavailable than what's in food. And so that we can get to the, the levels we need.

• 36:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And where does fatty 15 get the C15 from?

• 36:11Speaker 01

  So we take C, because we want it to be plant, because we're like, gosh, if we're gonna make it pure, we're gonna make it bioavailable. Um, let's also make it vegan friendly.

• 36:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  So we use a plant-based C14 and we add a carbon onto it.

• 36:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, okay. So you get a plant-based C14 and then you add a carbon.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Through a chemical process and then it's pure C15.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Ninety nine point nine. Sometimes it's, it's, you know, a hundred percent, even after three years, it's a very stable molecule.

• 36:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And you give this to the dolphins and they're living better, longer lives.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Pretty fun, isn't it?

• 36:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love it.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Have there been any human studies on the C15?

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Yes, so there have been. So there have been six clinical trials involving C15. Two of those are with pure C15, the same ingredient as it's, as what's in Fatty 15. One was Fatty 15. And those have shown that if you get, take C15 and you get to the levels above this threshold of, it's five micrograms per mill in the blood.

• 37:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Then in one population, they showed a decrease in ALT and AST in a population that had started with high liver enzymes. So improved liver function and improved hemoglobin levels. As, just as we saw in the dolphins. The second study showed a decrease in LDL cholesterol and improved gut microbiome, including Bifidobacterium adolescentis. So that's, will be a fun one to explore.

• 37:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Um, there's been skin studies looking at like a high alcohol C15 supplement showing improved skin health on all parameters that they evaluated. And then a recent study, Argavani et al., it was a high-fat diet study where they actually put them on a high-fat milk diet.

• 37:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  And they showed that if they had more than four high-fat servings a day, this was a crossover controlled clinical trial, their C15 levels went up. And as those C15 levels went up, those were correlated with improved vascular function. So of less stiffness, of a measure of stiffness. However, the higher levels of C16 were correlated with an increase in blood pressure. So that's another example of how milk can.

• 38:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's good with the bad, but, but we do need to get our 15.

• 38:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Interesting. And so do you see more studies being done with C15 in humans? And I'm sure you know of many of them.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're, and we're, there are two, two big ones planned for next year. So stay tuned. Yeah, and increasingly more and more independent teams are, are working with C15. So sometimes we find out about the clinical trial because it got published.

• 38:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  You know, the one with.

• 38:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, there's a study on this.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, the one in cholesterol was done in, was done in Singapore. Uh, so it's, it's great that the world has turned on, turned in looking at it.

• 38:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And do you measure? You said you measured C15 levels in humans in five milligrams per deciliter?

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Five micrograms per milliliter.

• 39:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay, got it. How does, can someone get this lab test commercially? Or is it something? Yeah, you can?

• 39:07Speaker 01

  You can, yeah. So fatty, in fact, most fat, I should say, an increasing number of fatty acid panels are including C15.

• 39:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, great.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  So you may be measuring it and not know it. That happened with Dr. Hyman. He went back and looked, he's like, oh, my gosh. I can't believe how many, he went back and looked, he's like, I can't believe how many of my patients had low C15. I didn't even know to look at C15 until now. So that's been happening at a few, with a few groups, but it is increasingly available. We did partner with, with Genova and we did a at-home blood spot test that people can use. But ideally, you go to your functional healthcare practitioner and you get the whole fatty acid blood panel. So you can see not just C15, but you can look at all your fatty acids.

• 39:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it. And then when you're looking at a fatty acid blood panel, you're looking at C15, C16, I assume. Are you also getting your omegas as well?

• 40:00Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So and then usually they'll report it as a percentage. So the easiest guide is you need to be have greater than 0.2% of your fatty acids. Greater than that gets you out of that nutritional deficiency zone.

• 40:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Sardinians are at 0.4 to 0.6%.

• 40:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So that's optimal.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. So you have not sick and then you have the longevity, can we call it the Sardinian longevity zone?

• 40:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that's what you want to aim for is 0.6 as a level?

• 40:29Speaker 01

  0.4 to 0.6, yeah. I'm, I'm at 0.5 and it's a combination. It's supplements. But I also, like I said, I have high quality dairy fat, too.

• 40:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. I have to check all our blood tests because I don't know if we're testing for C15, but if we're not, we're going to start doing it.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  I know. That'll be, it'll be really fun to see. And it's, and it's always nice when a biomarker is also the therapeutic.

• 40:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely, yeah, because then you can directly track how much replacement you're getting.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 40:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Very interesting. So what do you see like future therapeutic uses of C15 being?

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh.

• 40:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Besides your protection?

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I think it's, you know, it will become a core, just like vitamins, right? That you need to have certain levels. A lot of vitamins now, we don't, there's deficiencies are actually not very common. I think it's going to be increasingly understood that C15 is a common deficiency. It's fixed, we can fix it on many levels. You know, we've talked about dietary guidelines and increased, you know, agricultural practice, supplementation through testing. So I think that's going to be a huge area. We're focusing on two areas. One is cognitive health. So, of course, and so we just did a study that we published earlier this year showing that C15 inhibits MAOB, um, L-B and FAAH,

• 41:42Speaker 01

  which can help, as a result, can help increase and support higher dopamine and endocannabinoid levels. So it helps explain why, and myself included, better sleep, calmer mood, you know, and because we're like, why are people experiencing this? And now the science has caught up.

• 41:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm, so interesting.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Benefits. Yeah, yeah.

• 42:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wonderful. Well, I mean, this is definitely part of my core supplement regimen. I'm excited to have you on because, you know, I have a lot of my patients starting to take it as a core supplement and I wanted to point them to a podcast episode as to why.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Well, it worked out well.

• 42:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, exactly. So this is great. I could just be like, listen to this and you can, you know why now. I'm really excited that you have a new version of it as well, right? A physician practitioner version. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, so because we're seeing with regard, especially under healthcare practitioner's guidance, that people have, there might be people who have a greater need for higher doses of C15. They want to get a kickstart, they're vegan, they have some of these underlying conditions that we talked about, right? So to provide more specific support in, in certain areas, evidence of reuptosis, right? So if you have high ferritin and high RDW, that would be another patient population. So because of that, we came out with a higher dose C15, what is called Advanced Formula Extra Strengths, Fatty 15, that is exclusive to healthcare providers. Excited to have that available. In fact, you are the first to have it right here.

• 43:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, amazing. I'm excited. Thank you.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  You're welcome.

• 43:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I'm gonna put myself on it. I don't have a high ferritin, but I'm still gonna put myself on it.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  That's right. I think Sardinians, they have a lot to teach us. So we just want to get those levels and without, it'd be nice to live in Sardinia, but we don't, can't all do that.

• 43:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I always wondered why I don't live in Sardinia.

• 43:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  This is fantastic. Well, I really appreciate you making the drive up here from San Diego and talking to us about the dolphins and C15. And I'm really excited about having this in our toolkit now to protect our patients from aging, you know, and it's gonna be, it's a part of my core supplement routines. I appreciate you coming to talk to us about it.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Dr. Shaw, it's been an absolute pleasure.

• 43:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you. Where can people learn more about this?

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Sure. So they can. So Simon and Schuster came to me and said, Steph, we've been reading your science about C15, write a book. And so the, all of these studies, because the science gets real dense, is now in the longevity nutrient that came out in this last March. And then paperback will be coming out this March. It's now been published in six languages, which is fun. So the global movement is on. So you can get the longevity nutrient wherever books are sold. And then fatty15.com, you can learn about the supplement there. Of course, they could come talk to you. And then the, all the science, all that peer reviewed science, we've put them all in one place, which is at discoverc15.com.

• 44:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  And that's where all, and you can go to the resources page, and it's divided out by category of areas of longevity and essential fatty acids, pregnancy, things like that.

• 44:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Great. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. Look forward to continue the discussion with you guys.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  We are, we're gonna be learning together. So this was such fun. Thank you.

• 45:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you.

• 45:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And before we wrap up, here are five key takeaways I had from today's conversation with Dr. Steph Wenwotson. Number one, the discovery of C15 started with dolphins. Navy dolphins were living up to three times longer than wild ones, and the key difference was in their diet, a higher level of a specific fat that turned out to improve nearly every marker of health. Number two, C15 is now recognized as a new essential fatty acid, the first one discovered in 90 years. Our bodies can't make it, and when levels drop, we see faster cellular aging, inflammation, and even a new type of cell death called ferroptosis. Number three, not all saturated fats are created equal. The even-numbered

• 45:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  ones, C16 and C18, are linked to disease, but odd-chain fats like C15 do the opposite. They strengthen our cells, stabilize our mitochondria, and support heart and metabolic health. Number four, modern diets have lost most of their natural C15. Grass-fed dairy and certain fatty fish used to be reliable sources, but with changes in how we eat and how our food is raised, many of us are not getting enough. And number five, this is just the beginning. Researchers are now isolating pure C15 in supplement form, giving us a way to restore this missing nutrient without relying on the less healthy saturated fats

• 46:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  that usually come with it. If we want to age slower, think clearer, and feel stronger, we have to feed our cells what they actually need, and C15 might just be the fat that nature forgot.

• 46:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you liked this episode, and give us a good review, and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action. Based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best, and it's always important to seek their guidance.