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Dave Asprey
There's problems with milk protein, but milk fat is like the most important thing.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
If mom is C15 deficient, then her milk is C15 deficient and her baby is C15 deficient. If we have C15 deficiencies, we develop new form of cell death called phoroptosis that accelerates our aging. So our job to get C15 back into our lives, slow our aging rates, and then optimize C15 to get us a little closer to your goal, which is to live longer. Studies showed that people who have more C15 on their complex lipids had younger biological ages than their chronological age.
Dave Asprey
How much younger?
Narrator
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson isn't just a scientist. She's a veterinarian, public health expert, and award winning lipid researcher whose biggest breakthrough started in the most unexpected place. Studying the health and longevity of dolphins for the US Navy, she discovered that the healthiest, longest living dolphins had something in common. Higher levels of a rare overlooked fat that protected their cells, boosted their metabolism, and kept them biologically younger. The twist humans used to get this same essential fat in our diets, but thanks to modern food processing, we've nearly lost it. This essential fat is known as C15.0, and it may just be the missing link to cellular health, sharpened brain function, and one of the ultimate keys to slowing down aging.
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You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.
Dave Asprey
Stephanie, thanks for coming.
Narrator
Overlooked fat that protected their cells, boosted their metabolism, and kept them biologically younger. The twist Humans used to get this same essential fat in our diets, but thanks to modern food processing, we've nearly lost it all. This essential F known as C15.0. And it may just be the missing link to cellular health, sharpened brain function, and one of the ultimate keys to slowing down aging.
Sponsor/Ad Voice (Quantum Upgrade and Mitopure)
You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.
Dave Asprey
Stephanie, thanks for coming into the studio to do a live interview in person in Austin. Our last conversation over the remote podcast that was really popular and you've had a few critics come out and really just say a lot of really negative things about your research. And so I, I just wanted to have you on the show so that we could really have you apologize for saying you've discovered a new. A new essential fatty acid. The first one in a hundred years. What do you have to say to the trolls?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, gosh, Dave, you're. You're right. No, no, that's actually not why not why I'm here at all. I. I have to say we always appreciate skepticism. You know, a lot of crews have. Have earned it and we have to be there to rise to the occasion, to help respond to questions. And the good thing is that, you know, it's like my whole life, the life of my team, we've all been science first, right? So it's been a road, it's been a 20 year journey of science that has led to today. It wasn't an accidental or an intentional finding to go make a buck, right? So like you and I like work, this community is in the world for exploration to be able to find places where you fail fast. But then when you find something, you follow the science, when you have an opportunity to help improve health. So I think what, you know, a lot of people maybe didn't recognize is that, that there was a decade of science and studies all funded by that.
Dave Asprey
No, you, you talked about that. It sounds to me like there was a bunch of young cynical people saying I'm going to get some attention by taking down some new research based on old research that they'd been taught. Yeah, right. And it's funny because I, I get a lot of weird requests to be on the show and I say no to them. And when I first looked at what you were doing, I'm like, okay, this is like a dolphin researcher, what the heck? But then I dug into what you were doing, like, this is not a new finding. And I've had a bunch of new innovations come on the show, like the original urolithin researchers came on, the original spermidine researchers. These are major longevity compounds before they're well known. But for every one of those, there's 10 people saying, I have this magical unicorn sauce. And no. So I thought you really passed the test. And since our last interview, what additional research has come out about fatty 15?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
So a lot. So there's been a huge year in 2024 for the research around C, around the pure C15 ingredient that's in fatty 15. So for example, you know, we talk about C15 being the first essential fatty acid to be discovered in over 90 years, right? This is a giant discovery. We put the stake in the ground and said, and here's why, and we published that in Scientific Reports. So since then, in this past year, we've had now four independent groups come out throughout the world challenging, is C15 actually essential? Does it meet the criteria of a nutrient that our bodies must have? And if we don't have enough of it, our bodies fall apart, we develop a deficiency. So what those other groups did is they did the gold standard studies in models, in worms and in mice. And looking at all of the data that are existing in humans and if every one of them independently concluded yes, C15 meets the criteria of an essential.
Dave Asprey
Fatty acid, what are the other two?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Alpha linolenic acid. So it's an omega 3 and linoleic acid, which is an omega 6. They were discovered back to back in 1929, 1931 by George Mildred Burr. Wow. Husband and wife. So it's been a while. So it's, you know, I get. So there's a reason to ask, how can this dolphin veterinarian come out and make this big claim? We had the data to support it, we published it in the peer reviewed literature and importantly now we have others coming out and publishing the data and showing that it's meeting these criteria. That if you give a mouse that is pregnant and you make her C15 deficient, she has a baby that now has a nutritional deficiency. And when you restore C15 back into that baby, the nutritional deficiency goes away. So they're basically the one steak that had a warm. They showed that the worms, if you removed all nutrients from their entire diet, baby worms, then you know, they stop growing and they go into this like this sleepy state. And they found that if you gave them just C15, no other nutrients, they, their neural development matched that of a worm given a full nutrient diet. Wow. So it's like. Yeah, so it's, it was good that the dolphins had something to teach us. We put it out there. And now having the world bill come out with, you know, validating studies has been important. There have been two clinical trials with the PRC15, fatty 15 controlled clinical trials showing benefits. So it's been a good, it's been nice to see. See the world Help validate.
Dave Asprey
For listeners who didn't hear your last episode, how did you discover C15?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, so B's just kidding.
Dave Asprey
What?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Dolphins. Actually, now that makes it sound even better, right? Yeah. So I'm a veterinary epidemiologist, was working for cdc, World Health Organization and was recruited by the Navy to help lead a clinical research program to help continually take good care of older Navy dolphins. As we talked about before dolphin, the Navy's taken care of the sustained population of about 100 bottlenose dolphins for over 60 years now.
Dave Asprey
That's crazy.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Crazy, right? And they live in the open ocean. In the wild, dolphins live on average to about 20. Dolphins in the Navy are living to 40, even to 50, some even beyond. So we had this population of geriatric dolphins and that were getting high cholesterol, chronic inflammation, fatty liver disease. Even the full suite of changes consistent with Alzheimer's. And importantly, Dave, what we saw was that some of the dolphins, but not all, or developing these aging associated diseases. So we were able to use this advanced technology called metabolomics to find out which small molecules predicted the healthiest aging dolphins. We thought it would be Omega 3s because all they eat are fish. Right. And Instead it was C15, which was like, well, what is C15? Never even heard of this fatty acid before as the top predictor of healthy aging dolphins. So that in itself was a 10 year journey of understanding the pathophysiology of this condition in dolphins. Understanding what a C15 nutritional deficiency is. There's actually a clear definition behind it that is well backed by lots of studies now. And we think that is present in as many as one in three people globally. If we have C15 deficiencies, we develop the cell death, new form of cell death called for optosis, that accelerates our aging. So our job, this is a movement to get C15 back into our lives, slow our aging rates, and then optimize C15 to get us a little closer to your goal, which is, you know, to live longer.
Dave Asprey
And it's kind of funny the number of details you'd have to pay attention to. Only an epidemiologist could do. And, and to be really clear, I generally make fun of epidemiologists.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Fair enough.
Dave Asprey
It's fair enough because you'll see things like, and I apologize, Dan Buettner, lovely human being epidemiologist, he was like, well, I saw some data and they ate beans, therefore beans are the thing. And there's no mechanistic evidence behind that. And we talked about that on the show. And I'd have him back on any time to talk about things. And so for blue zones, it turns out epidemiology, it just shows correlations, but it doesn't show any cause. So you found, oh, the dolphins, some are old, some are young, even though they are the same age.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
And the type of fish that they like to eat was what was driving this.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Right.
Dave Asprey
And then what do you, like, put the fish in blenders and find out what was in them. Like, how does that work?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
It was a bassomatic during the 50 year anniversary of SNL. But so they, what we're able to do is we were lucky enough that the, you know, the dolphins are given options in some cases of five different types of fish. It was the types of fish that they chose that really dictated did they get an adequate or a low C15 diet. So the fish get routinely tested for as just part of the preventive medicine program. Could you imagine that, like, if everything that you ate every day was sent out to a lab to test for all the different nutrients and you knew exactly on every day which nutrients you got?
Dave Asprey
Have you seen the recent AI studies where they're now able to translate what whales are saying?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
There's really cool science coming out showing now multiple cetaceans are. Have names.
Dave Asprey
Yeah. Individual names. And they can't have directional stuff because it's underwater. But they talk about their pods and their family and identifiers and all this cool stuff.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, we just had to get smart enough to figure it out.
Dave Asprey
So when our AI systems get a little bit better, do you think bottlenose dolphins, that they're sitting there going, I'm a biohacking dolphin. I don't really like the taste of this pinfish or whatever, so I eat them. Because I'm a better dolphin than. Do you think that's going on?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, I'm pretty. I know that they're egging each other.
Dave Asprey
Like you're eating a junk fish. Ha ha. I kind of feel like that must be going on.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
I'm pretty sure for even just from the personalities that we would see in the different dolphins that. Yeah, you have some smack talk going on in a. In a fun way.
Dave Asprey
If the dolphins had a nickname for you, what would it be?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Oh, Data Girl. Or. Or it would be a vampire. Because at the point. At a certain point, we were. You know, they actually develop part of this cellular fragility syndrome, like C15 deficiency syndrome, is they develop iron overload in their livers. And so the way we were treating it, we didn't know the cause at the time. But the way you treat it is same as what you do in people. You pull blood out. It's phlebotomy. And by pulling out blood, you can get the iron out of the liver. So same with dolphins at work. So anyway, they. I would always take whatever. Whatever blood they had during those sessions. I would put it to work in.
Dave Asprey
The last run right away. Swim. Swim fast. It's funny in longevity, when people have high iron, turns out you can reduce iron and you live longer, which is why some people give blood if their iron's too high. So there's evidence for that. But that is intriguing. Does that mean when people have iron overload, they might really have a fatty 15 or C15 deficiency?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, that's it. That's exactly it.
Dave Asprey
Evidence in humans for that.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, same thing. Holy crap.
Dave Asprey
Really?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah. Yeah, so, so the, what we have found is that. And again, what was great about the dolphin, this dolphin patient part, it was so clean because if you, if you took, you know, 100 people that we'd have so much diversity. You take everybody sitting in this room, right, and we have a diverse enough lives, it would be hard to be able to be like, okay, this one thing is going to mean something to all of us because just have very diverse lives. But with the dolphins, it was such a similar population and getting similar exposures. So what we were able to show is that when C15 levels in our cell membranes get low, because we need a certain amount of it just to stabilize our cells, when it gets below 0.2% of total fatty acids, the cells get fragile. Hence cellular fragility syndrome. That includes red blood cells. And so when our red blood cells get fragile, we have KUFR cells in our liver, which is their whole job. Not their whole job, but part of their job is to sit there and engulf weak red blood cells, which is great because then they would recycle the iron and put it back in the body. But when you have a lot of fragile red blood cells, then those cells in the liver get overloaded and, and what's left behind is iron. And over time it accumulates and you've got a bunch of free iron sitting in your liver. This now in humans is called dysmetabolic iron overload syndrome, or Dios. And it then results in this ferroptosis, this new form of cell death. Lipid peroxidation of fragile cells mixes with iron. You get reactive oxygen species, mitochondria taken out.
Dave Asprey
Oxidized ldl.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
There you go. Yeah. Oxidized LDL spills over to the brain, to the heart. So now it's. And we were able to show that this is the phenotype of C15 deficiency that causes this. And then we're able to then reverse it. Right, just by putting C15 back into our body.
Dave Asprey
Crap.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Right?
Dave Asprey
So anyone listening? With iron overload, it's unlikely to cause harm. To test having some C15 in your diet, or I'm just gonna say this. If you've listened to this crazy guy telling, have cultured grass fed butter for the last 15 years. Is there C15 in butter that's cultured?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
That's funny you should ask that. Oh, my go. So, you know, we now know as far as like, how did we create, how do we get to where the world, one in three people are C15 deficient. It's, you know, We've moved away from what you have known and appreciated all along. Right. Which are, we have healthy fats in our dairy, fat and ghee. And in butter, when it's, when the cow is fed grass, it has twice as much C15 than cows that are fed corn. And so that is one reason why it's, those foods are healthier for you. And you know, one of our calls to action is to help, help the dairy industry to report what, what are the C15 levels in your product? Because I would try, I would buy that product if it had higher C15 in it. If I was looking at different butters, I would choose the one with the highest C15.
Dave Asprey
So it's funny if you look back at this group called Weston A. Price, I'm anthropologist and I think also an epidemiologist, if I remember right, this group was originally saying, well, let's look at ancestral foods and the correlation of those with straight teeth and a lack of degeneration. So some of the very early thinking behind my fertility book and my longevity book comes from a book called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Are you familiar with these works?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yes, yes, yes, absolutely.
Dave Asprey
And he hypothesized that there was a magic factor in butter and he didn't know what it was. And it was the thing that was causing all these health benefits. And most of us, including me, have said, well, it was probably vitamin K2, right. But there's no evidence that it's just one factor in butter. It was probably two factors, given what you're saying. So. And there would also tell you fermented butter is better, which is why I always recommend that when you can get it. Which is also why unsalted Kerrygold, which is mostly grass fed, that is fermented and the salted Kerrygold is mechanically separated. And I like, I don't know why. My intuition tells me and I can feel the difference. You want the fermented stuff, add your own salt later.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, I can actually tell you why the fermented is better.
Dave Asprey
Tell me why.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Oh, yeah, so. So when it's fermented, it's great that you brought this up, is that the fatty acids are then broken down and they go into a frame free fatty acid form. So that when, so when you talk about fatty acids in foods, typically they're in the form of triglycerides. Triacylglycerides. So they're bound to it. So it requires our digestive enzymes to take off those fatty acids, make them free fatty acids so we can absorb them.
Dave Asprey
Right.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
But when they're fermented, what studies show is that the ferment, the fermentation actually cleaves them off already. So they're all, you have more fatty acids that are already in the free fatty acid bioavailable form. So you get the grass fed fermented dairy fat and there you go, Dave, you're, you just knew it.
Dave Asprey
Or you could go one step further and you could clarify. The fermented butter, which makes it all free fatty acids, which is what all of Ayurveda talks about, in which Weston A. Price talked about his butter oil was the magic factor to heal you. And all this time we thought it was vitamin K too, and I think it is. And this was in there all the time. But because as humans we love to think there's one cause, but for longevity, it's not one thing, it's a recipe.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
That's right.
Dave Asprey
Right. And I think you've done some foundational work. And the reason you could do it is that you're not an md. It's because you're an epidemiologist and you're looking at animals, which means you have control over them that you could never do with humans unless it was like a prison experiment in the 60s, like they used to do in the US to like, well, let's feed half the prison nutritious food. And then they'd get less violent and actually start, you know, becoming happier and. But apparently that's unethical. So you were just able to figure this out. What gave you the, we'll say, the cognitive or emotional resilience to take this through to humans? Because you've had a lot of people complaining about this. Like, how dare you? I felt the same thing, but not about you, but just people. How dare you do this? You're a computer hacker. And I'm like, I don't know, I'm not a fat computer hacker anymore. Like, you should try it. So how did you go down this 10 year path of making this a human supplement and actually writing a book about it? Now, where'd that come from?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Grit. You know, and it's just, it's a big part. If we talk about longevity, what's the why of longevity? Why do we want to live as long as possible? And just like, you know, you always share, we want to live as healthy for as long as possible. And ideally to spend that time fulfilling her purpose. And for me, that purpose fell in my lap like so. From a kid, as a kid, a super nerdy kid who was like always fascinated with pattern recognition. So it's the recognition of patterns that I was gifted by the dolphins and 60 years of dolphin data. So matrix like, you know, it's like patterns were really clear and clean coming from these dolphins. And then once we moved from just like you said, from association to moving pure free fatty acid, C15 into the lab, going to the world's real skeptics, right? That one's like we went to Dr. Edward Dennis, who is the editor for the Journal of lipid research for 15 years. This is a world leader in fatty acids. We sat down with Ed right, as soon as we saw this hypothesis from dolphins and said, you're a leader, what do you think? And he's like, well, probably not going to happen.
Dave Asprey
You're full of dolphin girl.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Chances are staff that a dolphin veterinarian didn't discover something that the entire fatty acid community has missed. But the dolphin angle is compelling and so if you wanted to test it, here are the things that you would want to do. So we then spent the next three years doing eight studies in the lab demonstrating that not only is C15 a pure and active fatty acid with dose dependent mechanisms of action that are relevant, that it was meeting the criteria of an essential fatty acid. So we wrote that paper and the senior author is Ed Dennis. So if like you're a skeptic, you're going to have to talk to Dr. Dennis who is a leader. We did the same thing in longevity. We brought in Dr. Nicholas Schork, he's head of NH, ahead of NIH's longevity consortium. And Nick is like, man, I'm watching the science on this C15. It's like it is, it's meeting the criteria of a geroprotector, right? Which is like the holy grail of longevity, that it is showing evidence of slowing the rate at which we age so that we could slow the onset of chronic diseases and therefore live longer. So then Nick and I did a bunch, did a couple of studies, published those in PNAS and in nutrients and showed that C15 outperformed rapamycin, metformin and acarbo, some of the leading longevity. And again, this was senior authored by Dr. Nick Schork. So it's not just like I'm sitting in the grass. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Dave Asprey
Wow.
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Dave Asprey
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Dave Asprey
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Dave Asprey
I have a pretty good track record of spotting the longevity things early. C8MCT might be one of those things. You know, people have heard me talk about brain octane in coffee and I have this kind of list of the superhero unusual compounds for longevity and it includes NAD. I've been using NR and before that niacinamide for 20 years now. Right. And more and more science keeps coming out here. Thank you David Sinclair for, for pushing the science on that stuff. Um, so NAD and its precursors would be there. And then I look at Urolithin A. They came on the show and that stuff first hit the market. But 10 years of research on it, a big longevity mitochondrial resuscitant and spermidine. Spermidine. I couldn't even buy it. I was, I knew what it did and I couldn't get it when I wrote my longevity book. And now that's on the market and all of them come through the show and, and so for some reason I, I've got a good BS detector on that stuff. And this for me at fatty 15. It is one of the preeminent small handful of unusual unknown longevity molecules that are worth taking if you're on this longevity journey to live to at least 180 and be healthy and happy and smart and conscious the whole time. So thank you just for, for doing the hard science behind that because it's not easy to change people's minds.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
You know, following the science and just forging forth. Right. It's the whole, in the book we mentioned that whole Teddy Roosevelt being in the arena thing that it's about being in the arena where you have a purpose. It the science is pointing you continually in that direction that you're willing to get bloodied and marred and bruised to be able to do something great and good for the world. It's okay like when you're, if you, as we talk about, if you have a true breakthrough, you're breaking the ground upon which people comfortably stand. So you have to expect skepticism. The goal is. Then again because the science kept holding, you just have to hang it there and get it across. And so we're now with the book with the longevity nutrient with now over 100 peer reviewed papers on the benefits of C15 around the world anti cancer with you know, activities of whole group working that whole group looking at the importance of C15 to infant growth and development and to be able for. With regard to fertility, like all of these studies, Dave, are coming out from different groups that are just picking up C15 and looking different. So it's just been, yeah, it's worth it. You gotta fight for it.
Dave Asprey
My very first book, a lot of people don't know this, it's called the Better Baby book. And it took me five years to write it. And I went deep on the research of everything that will make a father and a mother more fertile and healthy before conception and then during pregnancy to reduce the odds of autism and to have smarter, healthier babies. And I published that in 2011, and it was because the mother of my children was infertile. And I had to put together the program for that. And there's a lot of cultured butter in those recipes because the science was really good for that. And if I was to update that book, I would just say straight up, if you want to get pregnant or you are pregnant or you are nursing, you are crazy if you don't take Fabi 15 because the evidence is there. You also take your EPA and for younger kids, especially DHA, and this is critical, you can change a child's IQ and reduce the risk of neurological issues and behavioral issues for life just with, you know, six months or nine months of the right fatty acids. And we didn't even know this existed.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
And it's. And it's current day now. Like, you know, it's just we still have things to learn. It's still. We still need to push the envelope, even with simple, simple things. Like here's a. It's a saturated fatty acid in milk, right? Which is what every infant mammal gets from birth to milk. It's like, should pay a little attention to, you know, the important nutrients within that perfect food.
Dave Asprey
Well, the fact that milk has saturated fats, C15, a lot of C8MCTs as well, it's proof that saturated fats are bad for us, right?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Oh, unequivocally so I think it's just, you know, it's just a world because we love putting things in a black and white, right? It's like, it's like it's one or the other. And so what, you know, and fats were in that world for a long time.
Dave Asprey
All of them.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, Right. And then it was like, okay, well, unsaturated fats are good and saturated fats are bad. We now know that saturated. Among saturated fats, that we have specific ones that you have found, like the short chain, saturated fatty acids have benefits when they get longer. It's the odd numbered chain versus the even chain. The C15 is this Goldilocks essential fat. C16 and C18 can be pro inflammatory and have opposite effects. So is we're just learning still as we go that there's massive differences in different fatty acids.
Dave Asprey
And it's really funny. We love to just make buckets of things. So let's see. Carbs are bad for you, protein's good for you, and saturated fat's bad for you. These are common beliefs like, well, spider venom probably isn't that good for you, and it's a protein. And high fructose corn syrup probably isn't that good for you and it's a carb. And all of a sudden is. Every different type of sugar and starch has a different biological effect. Some are probably good, some are probably bad. Every length of fat, whether it's saturated or unsaturated, has a different biological effect. And to lump them all together is lazy intellectually. And when someone says saturated fats are good or bad, breathing is bad if you're breathing toxic gas. And breathing is good if you're breathing air. And if you breathe too much air, it's also bad. So this simplification thing doesn't work. What we have now is we have AI, we have big data, and we have the ability to comb through vast amounts of information. You could have never done this Even in the 90s or early aughts, right?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
How much did big data and AI help you discover? C15?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
And what it does, it's mainly big data and relative. Like for dolphins, like just the Navy had amassed an unprecedented amount of dolphin health data throughout their lives. And these archived samples, they have, I think at the time, they had 10 minus 80 freezers in a room that just held archive tissues and samples that are collected throughout their routine healthcare. So it was only because of the foresight that the Navy was able to do that. We were then able to go in, take serum, archive serum samples throughout their whole lives, and then be able to look at thousands of small molecules in each of those samples to then be able to do relatively simple statistics. Because, you know, that's where it's where that's all I needed to be able to have very clearly rise to the top the molecules that predicted healthy dolphins. Wow. We couldn't. It did. Those same trends were coming out in people. People with higher C15, reportedly lower risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease, multiple types of cancers. But again, it's association and there's so much noise. So it was only because the dolphins, we were able to do that with big data that were clean. So we didn't even need AI at the time. Just I wow, just a little bit.
Dave Asprey
I It's kind of mind boggling. You look back on how much the world has changed. I was there at the conference where the term big data was coined. Guy named Om Malik put on the first big data conference way back in the day as probably late 90s if I remember right. And we were just figuring how to do this and you fast forward not that much time compared to human history and all of a sudden like oh yeah, I just used the tool set and look what we just discovered. And I feel like that curve is accelerating dramatically in the last couple years because of now AI plus big data. Like whoa.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, that was great. I was a technical agent for darpa, which is the Pentagon's research arm. That's what it was called at the time. And we had, there was a whole program on big data. Right. And these just best, best mathematical minds in the world in the room. And the issue they were having was that the technologies were generating so much data that we didn't have the AI component even. And we were having. It was difficult to just figure out we have all these data now. How do we actually use them to translate into something that actually positively affected somebody's life within months? Right. And yeah, so it's still, I think it's still a challenge, but obviously we have evidence now that we can get there faster, especially when the data are clean. Right. Because if it's junk and it's junk out. So if the data aren't going in, AI is going to have a, get things confusing, but we're getting a better idea of what clean data look like and then able to get some great excited. This is, this is just the beginning. I, I'm certain of it. As far as the discovery of other nutrients that are important and essential for us now.
Dave Asprey
You know, the military has been collecting blood samples on every recruit for like the last 75 years or something. Right. And they save them.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
I don't know what they say they do, do they?
Dave Asprey
Yeah. And someone a few years ago went through and found that they could by looking at the blood samples, I don't remember what the compound was, they could predict Alzheimer's decades and decades ahead. Just with a little blood sample. I'm wondering if you could get like 5 or 10,000 of those samples and do an analysis for C15. And just because you can get ones from 50 years ago.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Right.
Dave Asprey
And just Be like, are they dead or are they alive? Do they have neurodegeneration? There's probably so much cool science to be done on that stuff.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, there's. There. There may just be a paper in the works. Babe, I didn't even tell you. How did you even know.
Dave Asprey
Is that really everybody doing that?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
There's a paper in the works, so just stay tuned.
Dave Asprey
I may or may not have psychic powers.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
That's great. Which supplement was doing that?
Dave Asprey
I actually can tell you that that's largely neurofeedback based. And there is one supplement that has pretty good evidence for that that I do take that you cannot buy yet.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Oh, all right.
Dave Asprey
I'm an investor in that company and I think they'll be at the biohacking conference sponsoring a part of it.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Keep our eye.
Dave Asprey
So as soon as that one is public, I don't know if they're going to tell you that's what it does. But the lead researcher who's building their tech is this Russian woman and she's like, I don't believe any of this stuff. She goes, then two months after I take it, I start knowing things like.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Okay, you're like, all right, we just fed it to the test right now.
Dave Asprey
And people would say, but that's impossible, therefore it can't happen. I'm like, if it did happen, it's not impossible. Like, you're not very scientific. So in the yogic cities, this list of. Of superpowers that humans occasionally manifest the ability to kind of know, stuff happens. I'm not claiming that's what I did. I. Sometimes there's just pattern matching, but it's interesting. Sometimes it's just in the field and I think people know it.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah. Yeah. One of the projects I worked on at DARPA was Telepathy. So we're.
Dave Asprey
Oh, did you now?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Can't. Can't say anything more about it, but just say it's. It's. We have things that we're. We have still have lots of things to explore.
Dave Asprey
I am friends with the top remote viewer that worked with the three letter agencies on that. So that stuff is real. It does happen and it's actually trainable. In fact, she's been on the show, so. And I don't know if she wants me to say her name. I'm not going to. She was. She was entirely secret about till someone outed her in a big book on remote viewing. So this stuff is like, sometimes intuition is a thing and it can be trained. And I like. It's. It's There. So maybe that was intuition. Maybe I noticed your left eye was twitching and I unconsciously pattern matched that. Well, let me ask you this. You mentioned you had this kind of unusual pattern matching ability. Are you neurotypical?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Neurotypical? I. I'll need a definition.
Dave Asprey
All right. So sorry. There's normal brains and then there's people who are on the spectrum. Asperger's got. It doesn't have to be Asperger's. You know, anything autism, like, different auditory. Could be synesthesia. But basically people whose nervous systems don't run the standard operating system. I'm one of those.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah. So my trade off of strong pattern recognition capabilities are very poor physical capabilities. So if you ask me to walk and talk, I could very well trip.
Dave Asprey
Wow. So you're probably not that typical. And it's. It's a complex and kind of beautiful spectrum.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
And there's a study just came out on women who are in that direction on the spectrum, where quite often they're really interested in a certain kind of animal or a certain kind of plant, and they just tend to know everything about it. And I mentioned that because I had Asperger's. It runs in my family. Grandmother's a PhD nuclear engineer on the Manhattan Project with my grandfather and just loves math. And she actually sent a thing out to the whole family in the 90s going, oh, my gosh. Like, I did this. This test and I have this, and it turns out all of my kids have it too. And it's actually reversible. You can keep the pattern matching, get rid of all the negative stuff. But it's been a lot of work for me. So I'm always curious when people have an unusual mind.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
What's going on in there? So there's some unusualness there.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
There is definitely an unusual. Yeah. And there's a. There are trade offs for that. You know, I think, you know, one thing you share in the book is, is the whole idea that if, you know, longevity is enabling. These advances in longevity are enabling more of us to live healthier, longer and. Right. And if I was like back in the 1700s, I would have been eaten by bears. Right. Because like, I. We'd have to.
Dave Asprey
Yeah.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Glasses and I would have been eaten. But. But now it's like, we now have the ability that, like, even us nerds can live a long time. And what do we do with our time? Well, we're doing science. Right. It's just. It's just.
Dave Asprey
And we can eat the bear's gallbladder if it'll have tadka that makes us live longer.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
There you go.
Dave Asprey
But don't eat bear gallbladders. It's mean. You can buy tadka separately.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, there you go. That was nice. Nice.
Dave Asprey
By the way, that is also a longevity molecule, I would say. Now, you wrote your book called the longevity nutrient, which is a pretty big claim here. So what in your definition is a longevity nutrient?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Right. So a longevity nutrient. This is kind of thought what we thought through with Dr. Nicholas Short. Right. So it's like what is actually longevity. So in order in our book, the way we define longevity, is it something that slows aging, that helps to delay the onset of chronic diseases so that we can live longer? So it slows the things that inevitably kill us.
Dave Asprey
When you say live longer, you're talking about extending lifespan.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Extending lifespan, expanding health span and being able to extend lifespan to some extent. Not quite to where you're to your 180. So but it is a good step in that direction. Right. So it's like, let's start with, first of all, not aging faster than we should, which is what looks like what's happening with kids now because of C15 deficiency. So when we talk about a longevity nutrient, we have these seven longevity nutrient must haves. You'll be familiar with all these. It must happen to human longevity regulating pathway. So C15 activates AMPK, it inhibits MTOR. So it's like right at the mother.
Dave Asprey
Those are kind of big pathways, kind.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Of good that it does that. The second is it needs to target key hallmarks of aging. So we, you know how we age at the cellular level. So we know that it repairs mitochondria, it helps with cellular signaling, it helps with gut dysbiosis, it decreases inflammation. So it helps with at least six different hallmarks of aging. And we walk through all the science and studies showing that we, we know that in there needs to be evidence that it slows the rate at which we age. We now know that C15, again, by helping cell membranes stay stable, it helps keep this measurement called red blood cell distribution width, which tends to go up.
Dave Asprey
They get bigger and less functional.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
There you go. Yeah. So that it. It actually. And that is a measurement of how fast we're aging. We know that C15 reverses that. Whoa. Yeah. And in one study showing measurements of epigenetic aging, our biological versus our chronological aging study showed that people who have more C15 on their complex lipids had younger biological ages than their chronological age.
Dave Asprey
How much younger?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
I think it was about two years. There you Go like, I'll take that. Right. And it's early stages of that study and then fourth, that it needs to have meaningful clinical benefits within months. So this is not something where you cross your fingers and say, I hope I live longer. That it needs to like when you take it. And if you have an aging related condition, there's evidence of reversal of that, of an improvement within months. And that's where these randomized clinical trials have shown that within 12 weeks, C15 supplementation, fatty 15 supplementation lowers LDL cholesterol, it lowers liver enzymes in people who have a history of fatty liver disease, it improved red blood cell function, and it improved gut health, like all within 12 weeks in two different clinical trials. So. And then the fifth, the big one is, you know, that there's evidence. And that's where epidemiology comes in. Oh yeah. Evidence of large scale studies show repeatedly showing prospective cohort studies showing that higher levels of this molecule can prevent the onset of the diseases that kill us. So heart disease, type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancers, Alzheimer's. So evidence of all of those first three Alzheimer's we'll be talking about later in the year. And the last two are really simple but really hard to overcome. The first is that we need to. We need to know that it's something that we could have access to our whole life because something we need to take every day for 75 to 100 years, are we going to have access to it? And the last is that we can do that safely. So once you get those criteria, it's real hard to find something that meets all those. And that's where Nick was sitting. He's like, gosh, stuff. He's like, there is no. He was spoke at the ARDD meeting, one of the leading anti aging therapeutic meetings in the world. And Nick stood on the stage and he said, there is no single molecule that has more evidence of being a longevity molecule than C15. And he says, I've seen it all. So it's. We really are there. So I love my congratulations. Thank you.
Dave Asprey
Yeah, that's a huge accomplishment. Accomplishment.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Thank you. Well, you've been along for the ride. I mean, you saw it early and it's just the data just keep growing and growing. So I love those skeptics that we talked about in the beginning because it's like we should continue to challenge and say, what else do we need to look for? What do we need to challenge? The world has taken that on and C15 has emerged, truly, as Simon and Schuster gave it the title like the longevity nutrient.
Dave Asprey
How do you respond to, like, the minority of doctors who say there is no evidence that we can extend human lifespan. All you can do is hope to be healthy until you die at the age you're going to die.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Two answers to that. So the first is we are. We have. We've doubled our lifespan.
Dave Asprey
Okay. Yeah.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
So like, even you look at humans and just like, okay, that's already. So we already know that. We already know that that's possible. I know that there's some, you know, controversy around 120, 122. Can we get past that? The other is evolution. Right? So you take mammals. We have mice, and then we have humans and dolphins and elephants.
Dave Asprey
We have naked mole rats. That's what I'm saying. They're way better than that.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Even better, right? So in nature today, we have proof that mammals can live. A human can live 37 times longer or 27 times longer than a mouse. So evolution has already figured out massive changes in longevity for C15. That's where we've learned it feeds into this whole cell membrane pacemaker theory of aging, that the more stable the cells are. This is right. A.J. holbert described. Right. The more stable our cell membranes, the longer a species lifespan. So C15 is just tapping into something nature told us all along. So my answer, clearly I'm like, yes, we can get there, but we really need to be like, that is a big reason why the Navy funded development of a pure free fatty acid, C15, absent of the pro inflammatory fats. We know what you get in propel. The Navy funded all this, Dave. Like, all of the science to help optimize a molecule that they saw a lot of promise in to do a lot of good for dolphins and for, you know, public health.
Dave Asprey
Is the Navy going to put fatty 15 in MREs so soldiers can be more productive?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Shouldn't they?
Dave Asprey
They paid for the research. They ought to.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
The dolphins are getting it. No joke. They get fatty 15.
Dave Asprey
Oh, that's so cool. Like, here's a bucket of it, right? Oh, my gosh.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
They get like 20 capsules a day.
Dave Asprey
Now, you mentioned that in your study of epigenetic aging, I'm assuming using true age or something.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
And it was another group that did the study.
Dave Asprey
Okay, so you didn't do the study. Even better. I love it when you didn't pay for it. You didn't know the results and they arrive in your inbox.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, those are the.
Dave Asprey
I always feel good about those. Okay. Two years of additional lifespan. Now, there are some people who will Say the only thing you can do to be healthy for your health span, which is all that's possible, is to train, train, train. VO2 max is the most important. If you improve your VO2 max by 12%, that correlates with a two year life extension and you have a nutrient that gives you a two year life extension. And get this, if you do an hour of Cardio Every day, five days a week, you only get a 2% improvement in your VO2 max when you come to upgrade labs. And we kind of have a way to do it in 15 minutes. But seriously, this idea that more exercise is going to improve VO2 max or muscles and it's going to make you live longer, the effect is relatively small compared to what you can do with nutrients and other lifestyle measures. And exercise is really important and muscle mass is important. Yeah. And if you had high VO2 max and you took fatty 15, are you likely to live longer or less? Long?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, I'm going to go with longer. And, and the big point being it's that it's additive. That more and more things we can do that are becoming. It's not right.
Dave Asprey
It's multiplicative.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
You're a good point.
Dave Asprey
Because synergistic effects.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, yeah. You see how we did synergistic at the same time?
Dave Asprey
I totally. We were downloading that with our psychic telepathy because we know you're foam darpa.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Oh, that's right. I had the little device.
Dave Asprey
Nice. You have one of those too. The implant or. No, now everyone's going, oh my gosh. They really are. No, we're, we're actually not cyborgs, I promise. What happened to remove C15 from our diets?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
So we did. So there was this 50 year experiment where, you know, somehow congressional recommendations, if you can think about that.
Dave Asprey
This is ample keys. Nonsense. Oh my God.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
It was like five senators got together with good intent. Right? Five senators got together. They developed these nutritional guidelines for All Americans, 1977.
Dave Asprey
Their intent was not good.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
I'm just, I'm trying, I'm trying.
Dave Asprey
You know why they did? They were going to lose their committee because they have everything to do. So they made up something to maintain their power. Like, oh yeah, let's come up with food things so that you know that we're going to have a war on saturated. Like it was not it. They're politicians. What do they know?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Well, I'm trying, I'm trying to have a positive out. But it did start. The committee did start to actually help understand malnutrition. In children. And somehow it turned into.
Dave Asprey
That was to get elected. Come on.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Somehow it turned into taking whole fat, milk and butter away from all Americans, including children. So that was 1977. So we've had a good 50 year run of actively removing those. It got even worse in that there have been really two big phases, wars in the 1990s. So these people are, who were born in the 1990s are now in their 30s. So they, in the 1990s, the, the recommendations got even stricter and that's where they moved not only to children from children, but they moved to infants. And so if you looked at the 1970s, 100% of babies of children by the time they were 12 months old had exposure to cow's milk. Today, less than 10% percent have had exposure to any cow's milk, let alone non fat. Look, shocking, right?
Dave Asprey
So there's problems with milk protein and allergies, but milk fat is like the most important thing.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
So we've. And then if mom is C15 deficient, then her milk we now know is C15 deficient and her baby C15 deficient. And the studies are showing that the more C15 mom has, the less likely that that baby is to develop allergies, to develop type 1 diabetes. They have better body growth, they have better head circumference and better cognitive abilities with higher C15. In a study that's looking at kids all the way up to six years old. So what happens when we take C15 out of our diet? Unfortunately, it's the biggest, you know, some of the biggest evidence is this broken generation, people who are now born in the 90s, now in their 30s. And you see article after article in the media of like, why are people in the 30s? All of a sudden we're seeing an increase in coronary heart disease, an increase in colorectal cancer, anxiety, increase in anxiety. Right, there's that whole component. So what the book goes through is it details and has again over 100 citations of papers throughout the book of just walking through how different studies have been done throughout the world have been laying the path of we just cannot explain C15 away anymore. And we just have to be having the conversation. So taking C15 away is accelerating aging in our younger people. And so, you know, there's this need to be able to, to bring it back, have a conversation. If it's, let's get grass fed, you know, fermented dairy, back to, back to our kiddos.
Dave Asprey
Well, if you're a young adult, you're in your 20s, maybe you're a teenager and you wanted to really just say, screw you world. One of the ways you could do that would be eat butter instead of the crap food they're trying to feed you. You could take some C15 and just have a brain and nervous system that works better than everyone else and just be like, you set me up to fail and I refused to fail and I did a few things for my health and now I'm not so docile anymore. And now you can tell me to do things and I'm just gonna say, no, I'm not doing stupid things because I have enough energy because my brain works again. It's a big deal. And I do feel like having proper fatty acids is fundamental to showing up with full power in the world at any age. And when people choose to do that, willpower goes up. And is that like a mitochondrial membrane C15 thing?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
It's part of MVW. It helps the, the mitochondria. One aspect that was another big surprise through our studies was we found that when we eat C15 it does all these great things, right? Activates everything we talked about the seven must haves of a longevity molecule. And our bodies also take C15 and they. And it uses it to make a second molecule, a metabolite called pentadecanoyl carnitine, which is A. Or PBC, which is the first. Sorry. The second discovered full acting endocannabinoid. So it fully activates CB1 and CB2.
Dave Asprey
So it's just an amino acid carnitine bound to C15. And people in longevity have been taking acetyl L carnitine for God, I've been that for 30 years for cognitive function and fat burning. So if you had, if you took fatty 15 and acetyl L carnitine, you might make some. Yeah, right. Why don't you just put the two together and make it a supplement?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
We're, we're working on that. It's not readily bioavailable, but we're so, but we're working. But our bodies do appear to be pretty good. At this recent clinical trial that happened, we also took a peek to say if the people who took fatty 15, did their PDC levels go up and they did. So that did happen. And by doing so, all of a sudden that helps answer this. The questions of. Just like you were bringing up with Dave, people who have poor sleep, it's not just metabolic issues, right. It's also poor sleep of more active depression. We have problems with more mental health. So there are a lot of things that. So a big question that we have a whole chapter on mental health in the book of could some of this be again, part of a deficiency syndrome where not only do we. Does lower C15 result in faster aging, it's actually directly impacting our mental health because we're not making this endocannabinoid we were meant to have. And we don't have these receptors for cannabis. It's great that it works, but I mean, but that's not why they're. Their dogs have the receptors and they don't.
Dave Asprey
Right.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
You know, use ingestibles or anything like that. So they use endocannabinoids. So it's like, how do we tap into that naturally? So anyway, it's. It's, you know, I clearly very passionate about.
Dave Asprey
Yeah.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
About the movement and the ability to fix something that has been wrong.
Dave Asprey
It's completely wrong.
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Dave Asprey
Do you know about Lord Rothschild?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
No.
Dave Asprey
This is an interesting thing. So the Rothschilds are a very, very old money family and still pull the strings on a lot of global banking and currencies and wars. And they're not the only ones. There's Bilderbergs and Rockefellers and probably a bunch of ones I don't even know about. There's enough evidence for these guys like there's something going on there. I'm not an expert, but there's something going on. And so this very wealthy guy has only made two public proclamations in his entire life. So the guy was kind of a puppet master here. One of them was the creation of Israel, which was an important thing. The other one was when the first study came out showing that pasteurized milk reduced fertility in rats, that he mandated that we have pasteurized milk.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Oh, did not know that fact.
Dave Asprey
Yeah. And it's funny how there's this insane like sociopathic war on something as innocuous as raw milk. And I always wonder, is there an association there? And that leads to the question.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Right? I looked into that too. I had the same question. I had the same question. I looked into the literature and with regard to C15, it looks like it's about the same.
Dave Asprey
So survive pasture. Okay, that was my big question.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
One of its role is it's a super hardy fatty acid. Right.
Dave Asprey
Because it's saturated, so it doesn't date down well.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Okay, so in this instance, yes, you're able to get your C15.
Dave Asprey
Okay. So I get blended into my coffee. But if it's skim milk, you're getting less because they took the fat out.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Exactly.
Dave Asprey
Okay. Yeah, got it. So weird. Wow. The world's complex and I do feel like sometimes I'm in my super positive thing. And we get emergent complex behaviors from complex systems that look intentional. Right. And an example is a flower like, oh, God, must have made this beautiful Flower and you go, well, you can actually make that flower with three rules in a simulator repeated an infinite number of times. Like beauty comes out of relatively simple things done over and over. Well, when you have emergent behaviors from complex systems, sometimes you can say, well it sure looks like there's a conspiracy against this. But it turns out the complex system was set up to drive profits or to drive this. And so it looks like an organized conspiracy, but there is no intent behind it. And then other times the, maybe the, the, the devil on the other shoulder is like this has to be designed because it's like every decision you could make to make humans weaker, it seems like those are not only being made, they're being mandated and forced sometimes with regulatory authority. So I love that you're sort of flying in the face of that and going, get your C15. Get your C15.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, I just, it's. For me it's like, it's just following the data, it's taking on the same role as people who are appropriately should go in, they should question science. They should. Because one study showing one thing is never enough. Right? You need, you need years and years of studies looking in different directions pointing to the same thing. So yeah, like I, when that happens, then you, you gotta, you gotta start changing your thinking. And we need to rework how we, you know, nutritional guidelines. The USDA has nutrition that current nutritional guidelines for USDA mention saturated fat. All saturated fats is bad 161 times in a 164 page document. So we have some work to do.
Dave Asprey
I think that's about to get blown up big time.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
And we just gotta, we gotta parse it. So I'm not saying all saturated fats are good, but I'm just saying that just like we were saying, we need to parse it out. We need to get smarter about it. We just can't explain it. It's just too urgent of a problem. And then, and there's a possibility to be able to fix it through a lot supplement is one way. But it's really meant to be to bring the science out, help share all the stuff and the work that the world's been doing. You know, have a chance to, to save the world. Right?
Dave Asprey
Well, we now know six saturated fats I was just thinking of that are actually good for you. There's stearic acid, there's propionic acid, but steric acid reduces fatty liver. If that comes from tallow. Right. So propionic acid and butyric acid, which are really, really pro Keto, and you get those from fermenting veggies in the gut or maybe fermenting collagen. We now have fatty 15 or C15. We have C8MCT, which is really good for you. That's five. And number six, that's probably good for you, but may increase Parkinson's would be lauric acid, one of the other mcts that acts more like a long chain fat. Am I missing any other beneficial saturated fats?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
I would throw C22 in winter. I. It's. I can't remember the, the name of it, but that did pop out in the dolphins as interesting. But for the most part, we don't get it from our diet. We can, but our bodies are better at making it. So it's more like eat the good fats that you just mentioned.
Dave Asprey
Okay.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
And then our body can help us make more of that C22.
Dave Asprey
Now, I asked you this last time, but I have to hitch up again. I have a bunch of friends who are making tallow based skincare and I'm a huge fan of tallow. I cook in it. I wrote about it in all my books. And it's, you know, it's the thing that gets rid of fatty liver. But tallow based skincare works really, really well. So fatty 15, when am I going to get a skin care? Fatty 50? I've literally blended it into lotion and used it.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
And it probably works, but I wasn't doing like, you know, stuff. In fact, I can tell you I lost 28 square inches of skin on my face since I started taking C50.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Well, that is amazing. With zero other intervention, there's.
Dave Asprey
That might have been a little surgery.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
There are no blades involved at all. It was all just fatty 15. I love it. So we do know that C15 gets into our skin. It gets into all of our cells. Right. It helps ourselves. It gets in our skin. So I know because, like, I've had atopic dermatitis my whole life and problems with hair falling out. It just rashes around my skin and dry skin, just my whole eczema. And that C15 gets into the cells and it helps again prevent it drying. We know that it stops with leaky gut syndrome. And so this whole epithelial barrier hypothesis where we need our cells to be strong and stable works at the gut level. It works at the skin level too, so. And then once it started, I just need to talk about it, I guess.
Dave Asprey
So here's the thing about topicals. The FDA doesn't regulate them.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah. Yeah.
Dave Asprey
Well, so you can do whatever you want in there.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
You can just rub it on. We'll. We'll work. How about we'll work on that? Funny thing about the tallow that Napoleon had a contest during one of the wars in which he had said, we need to find a cheaper butter because butter's too expensive. So he had a contest for chemists to come up with a substitute for butter. And they came up with a margarine.
Dave Asprey
Hydrogenated fats.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Right, Right. And they called it margarine. And it was called margarine because at that time they were using beef tallow. They were using the tallow, the top of the beef. That was the first version of margarine. They called it margarine because it was made primarily of C17, which is called margeric acid.
Dave Asprey
Oh my God.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
So they were like way even back then this like so, you know. And then the tallow ended up being wonderful until all of a sudden it wasn't right. So anyway, it all comes full circle because you could just rub it on our skin.
Dave Asprey
I mean, I open up the capsules. It doesn't rub in very well. So I dissolve it into like an oil.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
I put a little bit of MCT and then I mix it in with my other stuff. You could just like sell it to me.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Lotion. All right, we'll work on that. Orders, Orders taken.
Dave Asprey
It'll be easy. And, and the testing is just use those, those high resolution images of skin. You should be able to see a difference in six weeks. Then you have a little paper. And I'm telling you, okay, it's a good thing. Like I, I advise biohacking businesses all the time. Like this is waiting to happen.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
You heard it here first.
Dave Asprey
Okay. Come to the Business of Biohacking conference. I put on every other teacher. Entrepreneurs will. We'll get you all dialed in.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
All right, Deal. And we'll make. We'll make the lotion.
Dave Asprey
Do it. I'll be your, your, your guinea pig.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
That's great.
Dave Asprey
Okay, now I have put fatty 15 in my coffee. The danger coffee. Now with some butter and some MCTs and blended it up because you said it was okay last time. But I'm kind of lazy. I don't really do that. Mostly I just swallow the pills. You saw them on my shelf in there. I did this crazy vitamin cupboard, closet, room, whatever. So is there benefit to dissolving it into smaller particles when I'm going to die? Cut.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
I think it will get absorbed. In fact, we know that in its current form it is 100% bioavailable. So the only thing that we're studying now is there are some studies showing that when mice are fed high fat diets that their C15 levels actually go down. So what we're looking into now is is there a possibility that there's better absorption by taking C15 absent of a high fat. You know, the. While you're taking a high fat meal, for example.
Dave Asprey
Right.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
And it just might be competition that all the other fatty acids are going to flow through and the C15 is like. Or, sorry, will get absorbed. And C15 just doesn't have as good of a chance. But we're still trying to understand that. But in general, again, it's. It's an essential fatty acid that's in our food.
Dave Asprey
And so it must absorb that.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
It must be able to absorb just fine. But it is one aspect that we're looking. Can we. How can we further improve absorption? And again, that's why the Navy invested free fatty acid 100 bioavailable.
Dave Asprey
Okay.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Let's increase our odds of. Of getting its benefits.
Dave Asprey
Now, when you eat fat, if your pancreas is working, you get some lipase, which breaks fat down so you can make energy out of fat. So fat can be either a building block or it can be a source of electrons for calories. Do we know how much C15 gets metabolized for energy versus goes into lipid membranes?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
I think a good part of it goes into the membranes. Okay, all right. And is being used for that. But my guess is that we. Well, I. Let me take that back. We also know that when we absorb C15, it gets into every nook and cranny of different lipids, complex lipids around our body. So it's going to all kinds of work. So we. We know that our total C15 levels help inform us if we're at the levels we're at. We want some amount of free fatty acid available to target those. Ampk, inhibit the mtar, activate PPAR Alpha delta, inhibit jak, stat. I mean, it's just all the great things that it does in the free fatty acid form. So we're just. Some of the research we're doing now is better understanding what percentage of free fatty acids which are bound in cholesterols, which are being. Are in our membranes, which are being. Being used for mitochondrial energy.
Dave Asprey
Can you make liposomes out of C15?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
You can.
Dave Asprey
Have you ever done it?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
We have not yet.
Dave Asprey
Get with it. Steph, what are you doing? You have this crazy longevity molecule, and you're holding me back from my longevity goals.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
I'm kind of busy, Dave, trying to save the world here, but that's a good one to add to the. Yeah, it's on the list. It's on the list.
Dave Asprey
I'm just imagining. You take that with a straggle aside, which is one of the things that lengthens telomeres. You might as well just blend those up in a little liposome. I got double longevity molecules. My telomeres are so long, they're sticking out of my forehead like little hairs. I want a telomeres.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
I love it. I think we just, we needed a whiteboard up here and just start all.
Dave Asprey
The ideas through it.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Work in session.
Dave Asprey
I love advising cool companies. So there's so much cool stuff you can do with this. It's a pretty amazing thing to be able to discover this. Now, this is going to sound like maybe a little over the top, but isn't this the kind of stuff that, like, Nobel Prizes in medicine come out for?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Not the first time we've. Not the first time I've heard that.
Dave Asprey
It seems like it's at that level.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
From what I'm understanding, it's when vitamins and essential fatty acids in the past have been discovered, it has resulted in Nobel Prizes. But it's been a while.
Dave Asprey
It's been a while. This is a groundbreaking thing. I mean, the first 10, 90 years and just the whole story, like, you just notice this weird thing and you just followed it. I. I think it's really impressive.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Well, thank you. I will. I'll pass that. Thanks to the dolphins. It really was opportunity, just the ability to be there for that, for that wonderful, that wonderful moment.
Dave Asprey
Dave, we'll thank the dolphins and then we'll call the Carolinska and just talk some sense into those guys.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
I love it. Keep them coming, Keep them coming. The science just keeps piling on. So it's. It's all good. It's all good.
Dave Asprey
We have a new administration in the U.S. bobby Kennedy is part of the Trump administration, just took over hhs. If you had your, like, magic wand in the new world there, what changes would happen in regulation so that the kind of discovery you just made can get out there and help the most people.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
I do think there are opportunities now that of understanding of an emphasis in nutrition and whole foods and whole body health. And, you know, C15 is one example of that, that there's still, if we apply these advanced technologies that were initially developed for drug development, which drugs have their role in, in our world for our health, if we're able to apply those same technologies like we were able to do thanks to Navy funding and this dolphin population. That's what enabled us to make this discovery. Nutrition. So I do think that the hope is that there's greater appreciation of the importance like you're talking about all the time, the importance of maintaining and protecting our bodies and our health proactively, preemptively. We're not saying preventing. And then too, so that we can better defend and have greater resilience against the challenges and onslaughts that continue to fight us. Right. That's the goal. I do. The best way to get there is to get there naturally through what evolution in nature is teaching us. So let's start there. And even looking at short lived species and figuring out how to help them live longer. Now for me it's like that's nature's already figured it out. Like we talked about. We already know nature's already figured out how to live longer. Let's tap into those learnings and figure out what foods, what evolved mechanisms are allowing longevity to happen in longer lived mammals and then push those even further. That's I think, and I think it's a good opportunity now to really embrace and pour science into foods. And what do foods have to teach us and nature? Like dolphins with names.
Dave Asprey
You're going to be at my biohacking conference in May, right?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Oh, absolutely.
Dave Asprey
Are you doing a breakout?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
I am.
Dave Asprey
You're okay, Cool. So guys, that's biohackingconference.com. the reason I'm asking is that I want to introduce you to Dr. Hamil Patel from UC San Diego. Are you wonderful.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, I know him. Absolutely. I know of him. But we have not, we have not connected. So that would be great.
Dave Asprey
Okay. He runs the best mitochondrial test I've seen and this has been a. For a dozen years I've been looking for really good mitochondrial testing. It's very hard to do without on biopsies and I've been to his lab, but it'd be really interesting putting you guys together and just have him test mitochondria with fatty 15. I, I think he would be so fascinated. So I'll make the introduction at the conference. You guys should sit down and have a meal. You can like pour some fatty 15 on it. It'll be good.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
That's good. I, that would be fantastic. Because we've had the same challenges, you know, with regard to the mitochondrial testing. So that's not just cells in a dish. This is great. Love it.
Dave Asprey
Now, anytime someone's on the show to talk about their discovery and their product. There's a bit of a hostage situation here where the audience wants a discount so they can try the stuff. Fatty15.com Dave and you're giving people $15 off. Now I do want to say I've been on this since I saw the first research. I am an early and aggressive adopter of longevity technologies and I take two or three a day. I have for a while and I think it's really effective. Some supplements like rhodiola or something, you're gonna feel that that day cuz it shifted A neurotransmitter or a catecholamine. I don't think I feel fatty 15 the first day I take it.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
How long does it take before people notice the difference?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
So we have about 50% of our customers report feeling benefits within two weeks and interesting. These are the folks that was the surprise and Delight Dave of Fatty 15. But the dolphins couldn't tell us. Right. And that was, I really think it's the, it's the people who are in which their bodies are good at turning C15 into this endocannabinoid. And so these are the people who are like within two weeks I'm sleeping better, I have a calmer mood, my joint pain has gone like it's endocannabinoid activities. Right. And then within 16 weeks 72% of our customers report seeing or feeling benefits. And what we really encourage people to do is get your labs ahead of time of your routine, you know, cbc, chemistry, labs ahead of time and then go and get it tested reliably. Take fatty 15, you know, daily for three to six months and go get your follow up test. And that's really where you know, see C15. And again as part of those zero protector longevity must haves that you, you will see a benefit, see or feel a benefit within weeks. And that's why our monthly retention rate with customers is 95% which is unheard of in the.
Dave Asprey
That is a very impressive business result.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah. And, and it's, and I, it really is because again it's, it's something that we need. It's essential. It's come out of our diet. We have found a way to optimize. I don't shy away from cheese and from dairy fats. So I was not C15 division and I, for me it has, it has helped me achieve higher C15 levels that are more supportive of longevity, better heart health. So it's you know, lots of, lots of good. So, so hang in there. And then there's also C15 tests you can take, you can test your C15 levels, but there's a blood spot test that Genova Diagnostics, so I took that one and then I'm in the longevity zone level of 0.46. The average person's around 0.22% of C15s.
Dave Asprey
I'm gonna have to order that.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, we'll have to get you, get you tested for that.
Dave Asprey
And I, I was likely not deficient given my fetish for grass fed butter.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
For a long time. Yeah.
Dave Asprey
But amplifying something to beyond what would be normal for some things that are longevity nutrients, as your book is called, is probably a really good idea.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah. And it's better for people like you. It's like I'm able to exercise longer, I have greater energy, I'm able to get, you know, have, be able to do more throughout my day. It's, my recovery times are faster. So it's those types of things that for people who are really fit like yourself, those are the benefits that they're really excited about.
Dave Asprey
I think it also means you can be fit with less work.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, that's a great way to put it.
Dave Asprey
So you get better results per unit of effort that you do. And this is my fifth full length podcast today.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Proof isn't the perfect. And look at you.
Dave Asprey
My resilience is just fine. I could do another one. And it's, it's remarkable because I did not have this when I was 30. I, I could not have done this. And I don't even feel like I'm working hard. And this kind of resilience where you just know you can handle anything that life brings your way, it doesn't come from a single longevity nutrient. And this appears to be really foundational.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Right, Right.
Dave Asprey
It also comes from having adequate minerals in the body and having a whole bunch of different things that are in my unique recipe for resilience and longevity. And the principles are the same for all of us, but the implementation is different. Based on genetics and lifestyle and all this stuff.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
That's right.
Dave Asprey
What do we know about C15 in Women vs Men?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
That it looks like it's the same. So there was a genetic study done looking at how much do genes influence C15 levels across. So not just across a gender, but also across different people and, and populations. And what it showed is that there were no genetic influences on C15 levels, which for Nick like that blew his mind. He's like, that is what an essential nutrient does. Because if you are an animal who didn't, who wasn't able to use C15, you died. So it's like essential nutrients. We're meant to be able to use them. So it's equal. If I had to hedge one gender versus the other, I'd hedge toward female. But I honestly think it's because women were more likely to start trying it. But then once it was in the household, Dave, of course everybody wants to live longer. Everyone starts taking, taking the pill, so. And we have the same retention among men versus women, so equal.
Dave Asprey
One of the reasons I was asking is that women will store extra EPA and dha, and these are not technically essential, but women store them on their thighs, inner and outer thighs, and on their butt. And with the first baby, the body will drain all of those out and give them to the baby, which is why firstborn children oftentimes have a slightly higher iq. It's maybe not the only reason, but it is a major contributing factor. And it's why for women who are pregnant or getting pregnant, you want to supplement those because you know you're going to lose them and you want to get your minerals in because you're going to lose them. Not lose them. You got to donate them to your baby, which is a good thing. And then you want to replenish them afterwards for your longevity. And if you're going to have another child, you'd want to do that. And it's probably why men are, on average more attracted to curves, because, not that we consciously know this, but our. Our operating system is like, hey, if there's curves, there must be some omega 3s in there. And that's probably going to be a really healthy, smart baby. Let's do it. And of course, we're just like hips, but the underlying stuff there is finally controlled by mother Nature, right? So by the way, guys, if you like curves, now you have a biological explanation. So it's not a moral failing or something. So I'm just wondering, do we know where C15 is stored in the body? Do women store extra C15 along with the other fatty acids so that they can give them to their babies?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
It's definitely an adipose tissue, so yeah. And whether it's preferential in one area versus the other, I don't know the answer to that, but it definitely does do store itself in adipose stage 2. One study showed that pregnant, pregnant women who exercised actually had higher C15 levels and had babies with healthier body growth. They think that they had higher C15 for that population. Because when you exercise, you're releasing the C15 out in the blood. And we got over to baby makes.
Dave Asprey
So much sense in mono.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Another reason to exercise.
Dave Asprey
There you go. Another reason. Exercise. In my longevity book in Superhuman, I found some science about how quickly different tissues in the body will take up different types of fatty acids. So we know that if you take linoleic acid, which is a essential acid, unfortunately if you get a lot of it, it's also pro inflammatory, but you need to have some. And it is present in grass fed beef at 1.6%, which is all you really need. So you need some of it. But if you take that or Omega 3 and Omega 6, the first place it'll go is white fat, subcutaneous fat. And the second place is in the brain. So the part of the brain that's not saturated fat rapidly shifts based on your intake of DHA and EPA. So we don't have evidence yet for where C15 goes in the body.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
It just, it's that as much as we know, it goes everywhere.
Dave Asprey
So all lipid membranes.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
All lipid membranes, yeah. And. And there may be preferential.
Dave Asprey
It probably follows the same rules.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Yeah, we don't yet know. I don't know the answer to that question.
Dave Asprey
It's a pretty detailed question and it kind of matters because if you look at which benefits you get over time from taking C15, well, if you know it goes to your white fat first, you're gonna see less of the inflammatory molecules, maybe less estrogen, which is interesting. The other thing I have to call out here, we talk about these estrogenic chemicals that are disrupting our endocrine systems. And it's usually, oh, fragrances and all these plasticizers. Well, lavender oil in six weeks will grow man boobs because it's an endocrine disruptor, estrogen. So you shouldn't put that or tea tree oil on kids. Maybe use it for a short period if there's an infection, but let me just put it on my baby's pillow. So, dude, you're estrogenizing the baby. Whether it's a boy or a girl baby, you don't want to do that, like let mother nature do its thing. Well, CBD oil and cannabis also are estrogenic. And that's not saying that you shouldn't take CBD if you're really sick, I don't have an issue with it. But using it prophylactically, what you're showing is that C15 activates the endocannabinoid system. Is it also estrogenic?
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
We don't know. So the studies haven't been done to show as far as is it its influence on hormones? Which means that as far as what the studies that have been done have shown that there's not an effect.
Dave Asprey
It doesn't seem likely. If it goes to every membrane in the body and increases cellular youthfulness, it should raise sex hormones via whatever health things would happen, which is usually more testosterone in men and women and less excessive estrogen. But we don't like saying we don't have a study on that.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
Exactly. No.
Dave Asprey
Okay, so if I had a choice between CBD and fatty 15, I would certainly try fatty 15 first, because actually it's the same system and it well has other benefits for longevity that CBDs probably don't. I'm not opposed to CBDs, but just like risks and benefits, this any risks that you've found with C15, it's been remarkably saved, Dave.
Dr. Stephanie Van Watson
So we haven't, we've done we ourselves have done extensive C15 studies. So have others at this point. We now have multiple clinical trials and most importantly, C15 has been in the human diet since humans have existed. So so it's the upside is it's it's of many, right? It's kind of that last longevity molecule must have that. It's a molecule we can take that is safe and the doses.
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The Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was completely created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully read all labels, and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.
Guest: Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson
Host: Dave Asprey
Date: March 27, 2025
In this deeply engaging episode, Dave Asprey sits down with Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson, a veterinary epidemiologist and leading lipid researcher, to explore the groundbreaking discovery of C15:0 (“Fatty 15”), the first essential fatty acid identified in nearly a century. Dr. Venn-Watson shares the remarkable story of how studying the health of Navy dolphins led to recognizing C15’s pivotal role in cellular stability, aging, and overall human health. The conversation dispels myths about saturated fat, unpacks the science behind C15’s impact on longevity and healthspan, addresses skepticism in the scientific community, and provides practical insight on how this overlooked nutrient may be integrated into both daily diet and cutting-edge longevity strategies.
[02:25–07:36]
“We thought it would be omega-3s because all they eat are fish… instead, it was C15, never even heard of this fatty acid before—as the top predictor of healthy aging dolphins.”
– Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson [07:09]
[04:21–06:59; 14:28–17:42]
“When it’s fermented… you have more fatty acids that are already in the free fatty acid bioavailable form.”
– Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson [16:56]
[02:25–05:23; 19:05–21:55]
“We brought in Dr. Nicholas Schork… and Nick is like, man, I’m watching the science on this C15. It’s like—it’s meeting the criteria of a geroprotector.”
– Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson [20:22]
[12:09–14:28; 38:54–43:12]
“Studies showed that people who have more C15 on their complex lipids had younger biological ages than their chronological age.”
– Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson [41:06]
[47:30–50:45]
“If mom is C15 deficient, then her milk is C15 deficient and her baby is C15 deficient… If we have C15 deficiencies, we develop [ferroptosis] that accelerates our aging.”
– Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson [00:04]
[28:31–29:27; 60:01–61:07]
“Among saturated fats… C15 is this Goldilocks essential fat. C16 and C18 can be pro-inflammatory and have opposite effects.”
– Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson [28:53]
[38:40–43:36; 71:55–76:17]
“There is no single molecule that has more evidence of being a longevity molecule than C15.”
– Dr. Nicholas Schork (quoted by Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson) [43:12]
[66:18–69:09]
On the science journey:
“It’s been a road—a 20 year journey of science that has led to today. It wasn’t an accidental or an intentional finding to go make a buck…it was following the science.”
– Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson [02:25]
On skepticism:
“If you have a true breakthrough, you’re breaking the ground upon which people comfortably stand. So you have to expect skepticism.”
– Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson [25:56]
On dietary guidelines:
“The USDA’s current nutritional guidelines mention saturated fat—ALL saturated fats—as bad, 161 times in a 164-page document. We have some work to do.”
– Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson [60:01]
On longevity nutrients:
“For longevity, it’s not one thing, it’s a recipe… and I think you’ve done some foundational work.”
– Dave Asprey [18:09]
On practical action:
“If I was to update [my book]… I would just say, straight up, if you want to get pregnant or you are pregnant or you are nursing, you are crazy if you don’t take Fatty 15 because the evidence is there.”
– Dave Asprey [27:06]
C15:0/Fatty 15 is redefining our understanding of fats, aging, and essential nutrients. Its unique, overlooked role in prolonging life (as shown in both dolphins and humans), preventing cellular damage, improving metabolic health, and supporting cognitive and emotional resilience is now validated by both direct clinical trials and global cohort studies. Dr. Venn-Watson’s work not only spotlights the power of rigorous, interdisciplinary science but also invites a societal re-examination of dietary guidelines that have deprived generations of a key nutrient for healthy aging.
“This is a movement to get C15 back into our lives, slow our aging rates, and then optimize C15 to get us a little closer to your goal, which is, you know, to live longer.”
– Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson [07:37]
Practical advice:
Start by prioritizing grass-fed, fermented dairy products. For targeted supplementation, consider Fatty 15, and track your results through lab markers and, if available, C15:0 bloodspot testing.
Final Word:
The era of demonizing all saturated fat may be ending. It’s time to distinguish, re-evaluate, and embrace essential nutrients that science has finally uncovered.
For references, further reading, or to connect with Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson: