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Healthy Aging

A Clue to Slow Aging

This past week, our discovery of C15:0 as an essential nutrient was highlighted in The New York Times Science section. This gorgeous three-page spread shared what dolphins can teach us about aging – including how C15:0 may help slow down aging.

Wait – slow down aging?

That’s right! The New York Times story shares how Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson (our co-founder and CEO) and Dr. Nik Schork (our co-founder and senior scientist) found that some dolphins aged at a faster rate than other dolphins.

How exactly do you measure aging rates?

In our study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we showed that a key biomarker––hemoglobin––could be used to identify slow and fast aging dolphins. While fast aging dolphins saw a steady decline in hemoglobin over their lifetime, slow aging dolphins held relatively stable hemoglobin, even into their oldest years.

Hemoglobin is kinda important.

In and of itself, hemoglobin is important. Hemoglobin is in our red blood cells, and its primary job is to help carry oxygen from our lungs to our tissues.  Low hemoglobin is routinely used by physicians to detect anemia, including anemia of aging. About 15% of people over 60 years old have anemia, and 40% of these cases remain unexplained.  Beyond detecting anemia, our study and others have shown this steady decline in hemoglobin with age can be used to detect fast-aging folks.

So, where does C15:0 come in?

Wonderfully, we discovered that a diet containing higher amounts of C15:0 improved hemoglobin in dolphins. Further, we went on to show that our pure C15:0 ingredient in fatty15  had this same meaningful effect of raising hemoglobin.

To sum it up, we found that C15:0 could reverse a key sign of aging.

Beyond hemoglobin

Here’s the exciting part: The science supporting C15:0’s potential to slow down aging at the cellular level – beyond hemoglobin and red blood cells – has been mounting since our initial discoveries.

Typically, the aging process is defined by nine “hallmarks of aging,” and our pure C15:0 ingredient in fatty15 has been shown to directly address at least four of these hallmarks. Specifically, fatty15:*

• Increases cellular stability and repairs mitochondrial function to reverse age-related breakdown
• Improves cellular signaling by naturally activating receptors called PPAR alpha and delta, which balance metabolism and immunity
• Serves as an HDAC inhibitor, which can help repair damaged DNA