Our Universal Age-Delayer, C15:0

Healthy Aging

C15:0 is nature’s go-to for healthy aging

There have been many advances in science around aging – and ideas on how to slow it. While anti-aging used to be an area limited to anti-wrinkle creams, some of the smartest researchers at the most prestigious institutions are pursuing the fountain of youth. Well, at least a drinking fountain that will keep us healthier longer.

This series of Science Says, inspired by a feature in GEN Biotechnology, is dedicated to the most promising advances in longevity research – and popular concepts that have recently fallen. This week, let’s talk about our favorite age delayer: C15:0 (pentadecanoic acid). Yeah, we’re a little biased.

What is C15:0, and what is an essential fatty acid?

C15:0 is an odd-chain saturated fatty acid naturally found in trace amounts in whole fat dairy products, as well as some types of fish and plants. While C15:0 has been known since the 1950s, we didn’t discover it as an active, beneficial nutrient until around 2015.

Since that discovery, C15:0 has emerged as the first essential fatty acid to be found since omega-3, which was over 90 years ago. That means our bodies require certain levels of C15:0 to maintain our baseline health. Since our bodies can’t make C15:0, we need to routinely get C15:0 from our diet or supplements.

Nature’s back-pocket trick for longevity.

Back in October, we talked about how queen bees use C15:0 to live longer than the worker bees. It ends up that C15:0 is used by all kinds of creatures to live longer.

• Microbes. While bacteria don’t typically thrive in the refrigerator, Listeria monocytogenes grows just fine at cold temperatures. This bacterium appears to improve its cellular resilience and survival against the chill using C15:0.
• Worms. There is a certain type of worm, daf-2 C. elegans, that lives twice as long as regular C. elegans. This worm has better control of its insulin metabolism… and has higher C15:0 levels.
• Dolphins. While helping to care for older dolphins, our team discovered that the healthiest aging dolphins had the highest C15:0 levels. Importantly, when we provided accelerated-aging dolphins a diet higher in C15:0, their aging-related conditions resolved.
• Human Health. Numerous studies have shown that people with higher C15:0 levels are less likely to develop aging-associated conditions, including those involving your metabolism, heart, immunity and liver.
• Human Longevity. People who live in Sardinia, Italy (a high longevity zone pictured above) have higher C15:0 levels compared to people living in low-longevity zones. In another extensive study including over 14,000 people, those who had more C15:0 in their diet lived longer.

Got it – longevity is associated with higher C15:0. How do we know it causes longer life?

Over the past few weeks of Science Says, we covered the leading anti-aging contenders: metformin and rapamycin. These compounds help to fine-tune our longevity pathways. Specifically, metformin works by activating AMPK. Rapamycin works further downstream by inhibiting mTOR.

C15:0 has the same healthy aging benefits of metformin and rapamycin, plus more:

• Strengthening our cells. C15:0 makes our cell membranes sturdier and less resistant to age-related breakdown.
• Restoring our mitochondrial function. C15:0 can restore our mitochondrial function to keep our body’s cells energized and working,
• Repairing our DNA. By inhibiting HDAC, C15:0 can help fight off epigenetic DNA damage and enable our DNA to repair.
• Balancing our metabolism and immunity. C15:0 naturally activates key receptors, including PPAR-alpha and PPAR-delta. C15:0 also inhibits pro-inflammatory cytokines and pathways.
• Restoring our longevity pathways. Finally, C15:0 has earned its place in the anti-aging world due to its broad effects on the longevity pathway, including by activating the AMPK-signaling pathway. Check out the figure of the mapped human longevity pathway below… and how much of that pathway is supported with C15:0.