Healthy aging for the whole family (with Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson)

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0:38That's where OLLI comes in. Start your mornings off right with Maltese made to support nutrition and immune health. Choose from our lineup of gut-supporting probiotics, and we've got occasional sleep support to help the whole fan chase their big dreams. Head back to class with the number one gummy supplement brand. Stock up on OLLI.com today. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. And last question, you're a tired parent and there's one thing that you should be doing this week to get you on the path of healthy aging.

1:09What should that parent be doing? I think they should be going out with their kid outside and running around and going to, you know, go. You get the socialization. You get the exercise. Maybe you're going to go get something that's really healthy to eat. But I really think, you know, being able to, we get so busy as parents. And like you said, you know, that we get, we're tired and it's so easy to just have the kids around, sit on the couch and watch TV, which again, also has value because you're together. But being able to take yourself to go outside and do something fit and fun, it checks off a lot of boxes and they'll probably sleep better at night too, which is a win for all of us.

1:51Welcome back to another episode of Two Parents in a Podcast. You guys, today we have a very exciting guest and a very exciting conversation because we are talking about all things longevity and science. And I know when you hear those two words, Harrison and I don't come to mind. So we called in a specialist who now will come to mind and we're going to dive into so many fun things today. So you guys, we've got Dr. Stephanie Van Watson today. We're via Zoom, but don't you worry because our connection is so good. We had a little bit of tech troubles at the beginning, but we're back. Dr. Stephanie is a veterinary epidemiologist, big words for me, who is a researcher focused on healthy aging.

2:35And I think with that, Dr. Stephanie, we should just get right into your story because I think that's the most fascinating part. Yeah. And in addition to to the pedigree. She's the founder of FATIC15, which is a proud two parents sponsor. Yeah, which we're very excited about. And we were excited. Well, first we were excited about that. And then we were like, you know what, we can make this a larger conversation. So here we are. Hi, Dr. Stephanie. Welcome. Great. Hi, Alex. Hi, Hertha. It's wonderful to be here with you. So yeah, the discovery of this new odd chain saturated fatty acid, it's benefits that we're going to talk about this foundational nutrient has like the best origin story ever, right?

3:18So as a veterinary epidemiologist, I'm just basically all that means is I'm basically a nerd who likes looking at connections between common diseases that can happen and health that can happen between animals and humans. And I was recruited by the Navy about 24 years ago to help continually improve the health and welfare of older dolphins. So like, who's going to turn that Like, who's going to turn that job down, right? So I was super excited. I thought I'd spent a couple of years doing that. And I ended up being with the Navy in San Diego, caring for this population for over 20 years. The Navy's cared for this sustained population of bottlenose dolphins who live out in San Diego Bay.

4:06And they've cared for them for over 60 years. And when you look at dolphins in the wild, they live to about 20. When you look at Navy dolphins, because they get such great care, they're living into their 40s and 50s with two dolphins this last year turning 60 years old. So I had this like incredible job of saying, hey, Steph, we want you to come in, work with our team and understand healthy aging in dolphins, not to help people. This was to help, this was a dedicated effort and funding from Office of Naval Research to continually improve the health and welfare of Navy dolphins, which was incredible.

4:48So over a long period of time, we found that Navy dolphins, as they get older, about one in three get conditions that are going to sound super familiar, right? High cholesterol, chronic inflammation, fatty liver disease, even the full suite of changes consistent with Alzheimer's. We then did this advanced technology called metabolomics, which is just a fancy way of saying that we're looking at a bunch of small molecules in their all fish diet in their blood to see which small molecules predicted the healthiest aging dolphins. And lo and behold, that's how we discovered C15, this nutrient that was in their fish and for us in butter that predicted the healthiest aging dolphins.

5:31Fast forward 10 years and over 150 peer-reviewed studies later, and C-15 is now emerging as the first essential fatty acid to be discovered in over 90 years. So a big thanks to the dolphins. How about that? That's incredible. So the TLDR is like you started studying dolphins, you found something really incredible, which is the fatty acid, and now we're saying, okay, humans, this will help you too. That's right. So what we found was at the same time that we were seeing these associations in dolphins, we were finding that what was being published was that people with higher C15 levels in their blood had a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease, and others.

6:19So at that time, it was association, which is important, but it's not causation. And what the dolphins taught us is that as we gave them basically a higher C15 diet, we were able to show reversal of these age-related conditions. So that really kicked off this huge discovery. And now our goal is to get C15 back into our lives because it ends up, it's like we said, essential, really important to just maintaining our baseline health. So I'd love to hear how, you know, is your focus and energy and what gets you excited, you know, very much focused on C-15 because this is a big part of the work you've done and what you've discovered?

7:10Or was there a larger anti-aging longevity interest beforehand that this all collectively ties into? Yeah, Harris, it's a really good point, right? So the whole effort with regard to the initial work with the dolphins, right, to help continually improve the health and welfare of these aging dolphins was to understand what is it? Like, how do we continue to protect the health of aging? And when we talk about healthy aging, right, whether it's a dolphin or human, what is healthy aging? What is longevity? And it's really getting down to the why, right? So when you actually use the word longevity, it's funny, no bias against men, Harrison, but women tend to actually be like, I don't actually want longevity because we're thinking I'm going to be broken and later in life and alone.

8:00And I'd rather just live a shorter, happier life. So when we talk about healthy aging and longevity, where the world has wonderfully moved to is that this is really about how do we preserve who we are, right? the best of who we are for as long as possible. Like aging has this real evolution in life, right? Nature has this main trick of which as we get older, right? We gain maturity and lessons and wisdom and, you know, hopefully wealth and comfort. But as that is all happening, as we age, our physical and mental degradation starts kicking in at the age 30. And so aging should be something that should be celebrated.

8:43And if we were able to basically take advantage of all those wonderful components of aging without the breakdown part, right, by enabling us to stay as healthy for as long as possible. And if you said that's longevity, that's healthy aging, that's what everything, you're not going to have anybody who says, I don't want that. No, sorry, keep going. So, you know, so when we were looking at, you know, from the dolphin standpoint, and it translates over to people, what we were really looking for, and what the longevity space for humans has been looking for is what's called the holy grail of healthy aging.

9:22The fancy word for this is called the geroprotector, which admittedly it's not a very sexy word, right? But it's like a really big deal in the science world where geroprotectors are defined as molecules and interventions that can slow the onset of the diseases that kill us so that we can live healthy for as long as possible, right? It's not just about finding a molecule that taps into some fancy anti-aging mechanism and we kind of cross our fingers and hope and pray it works. This is something that should have a meaningful benefit, you know, within weeks to months because we're seeing this benefit to our long-term health.

10:02So this bigger picture of what is healthy aging, what is longevity, you know, it's really about, again, you know, preserving the best of who we are for as long as possible. And geroprotectors are the understood way of the best way to do that. And C15 is a geroprotector? Yeah. And that's what was super exciting is that then Dr. Nick Shork, who's head of the Longevity Consortium, he's been in this role for over 20 some years. He came into our world and he was so fascinated about the dolphin population because they're long-lived, large brains. They naturally develop the same aging-associated diseases we do over decades, right?

10:48We're not talking about mice in a lab where you basically induce these disease states in a very quick fashion, and then you inject them and see if it works, right? Nick was fascinated because dolphins are aging just like us, just like humans. And so these parallels became really important. And when we discovered C15 and as more and more studies started coming out about it, that's where Nick came in. And he's like, stop, I think C15 is going to meet the criteria of a geroprotector, which that's when I was like, great, what's a geroprotector, Nick? But now understanding that he, Nick is now speaking in front of his colleagues and saying that he has not seen any other molecule, whether it's a drug or a nutrient, that is providing more promise as a geroprotector, basically protecting our health for as long as possible, than C15.

11:45So that says a lot more than me saying it is Nick saying it, which is wonderful. Can I ask something really quickly? Because you mentioned at the beginning, like it's in butter. And as you're taught, like my layman's term question is literally where else, like, is it an avocado? Yeah, great question. So our primary, so the dolphins, right, the dolphins were getting some, were getting their C-15 based upon specific types of fish. The Navy had, there was a really fatty fish that the Navy dolphins were eating up until the 1990s. They were called the eulicon fish. Those eulicon fish died out. So they got fished out.

12:29So they started feeding them lower fat fish, which then over, you know, a decade or so induced, you know, unknowingly, basically a C15 deficiency. It ends up, we've done the same thing, but through dairy fat. So for humans, by far, our primary source of C15 is dairy fat. Like, hallelujah. This is fantastic news where full fat dairy, butter, any full fat dairy sources, those by far are our primary sources. So much so that for a long time, C15 levels in our body have been used to as indicators of how much dairy fat we eat. So it's really important. And then what happened in the late 1970s, right, we were all told that all Americans shall decrease their intake of saturated fats, primarily through decreasing our intake of whole fat dairy and butter.

13:30That took away the pro-inflammatory saturated fats, but it also then dramatically reduced our intake of C15, so much so that evidence is now emerging that there's a C15 nutritional deficiency syndrome that's popping up because we've taken this out of our diet. So the new dietary guidelines with regard to putting dairy fat back up on the top of the pyramid, we are fully supportive of that huge change. So we've started things off. we understand, okay, boom, we have a massive benefit to healthy aging from C15. I think, what else have you seen from your studies that should be top of mind for people as they look to age in the healthiest way possible?

14:24Yeah, absolutely. And this is leveraging, you know, not just my work, but a lot of exciting work done by a lot of other people. I mean, there is, you know, it wasn't that long ago, right, where if you talked about anti-aging, it was basically, you know, a cosmetic, right, that you put it on your skin, and you reduce your wrinkles, and anti-aging was there, and everything else is a bit sci-fi, right? And so now where the research has really grown, and which is really exciting, is that they've been able to, and we've been able to define how we age at the cellular level. So we can go all the way down to our cells where there's a great publication that came out that defined these 12 hallmarks of aging, that there are specific ways that we age at the cellular level.

15:17So when we talk about interventions and different types of molecules that are being used to help support healthy aging and combat, you know, and to basically be able to enhance longevity, there's literally been a map. It's called a KEG map that's been drawn out. That's called the human longevity regulating pathway. And so this has now opened up an entire new world where it's not guesswork. It's saying, okay, here's a molecule. It taps into this pathway. It taps into that pathway. So when you hear about things like rapamycin or metformin, NAD, right, and urolithin A, these all, all of these molecules tap into this human longevity regulating pathway, including, of course, C15-2.

16:02So it just means all of this is just a fancy way of saying that there are now, we now have a specific map drawn on how we can help to keep us healthy as long as possible, extend our longevity for as long as possible. That's all the way down to the cellular levels. We protect ourselves, right? Keep ourselves from aging faster. That keeps us from aging faster. From a practical standpoint, you know, a lot of old school things, we're able to tap back into that longevity pathway. So exercise, right? It's no big mystery that exercise is, you know, helps us as far as be able to live healthier, longer.

16:46We're increasingly learning it's not just aerobic exercise, right? It's actually activating our muscles, which serves the same way as our brain. If we don't keep our brain stimulated, it will atrophy. Same thing with our muscles. If we don't keep our muscles activated. And then by doing things like this, we're actually tapping into these pathways that aren't just helping with our immediate near-term health, like bigger muscles, or, you know, I can go longer on the treadmill. It's actually tapping into these pathways to help us live longer. Same thing with healthy diets. The Mediterranean diet has been shown so many times over to help with healthy aging and longevity that, you know, and again, their understanding not just that Mediterranean diet helps with our health, but it taps into these pathways.

17:34And then there are other givens that we understand. Two other huge ones, three other huge ones are the ability to, you know, stay social. So it is so we hear about this loneliness pandemic, right? And the ability to maintain a healthy social life is just as important as exercise and good diet. And then getting sleep, the right amount of sleep has a direct impact on our longevity. And some of the most interesting research coming out recently is hearing. that if people don't correct their hearing as they get older, hearing loss is a very strong predictor of the onset, earlier onset of dementia. And again, that goes to if we're not getting healthy input, right?

18:23And this includes, you know, through our ears, that is stimulating our brain. When we lose that, we stop stimulating our brain and it helps then feed into this atrophy and dementia. So there's, long story short, there are a lot of ways that we can actively be doing things to help extend our lifestyle that's not just a pill, you know, and things that we could be doing today. And when you look at the hierarchy of what you think is most important, right, and let's say, you know, someone is living a very unhealthy lifestyle. To you, what is the, you know, what should be priority one on getting down the right path of healthy aging and living your best life?

19:13Yeah. So, you know, there's no question that heavier weight is, you know, becomes a major contributor to a lot of basically accelerating the onset of a lot of aging associated related diseases. So, and it's hard, like, you know, obesity is, you know, there's a lot of time there's a blame the victim situation. And there are very real genetic predispositions. There are metabolic pathways within individuals that are really hard to overcome. What I've personally found is, is when I'm, you know, going down like a non-healthy path, which has happened a couple times in my life. And I really want to turn things around, right?

19:59You know, we live in a society today where you're over inundated with information on, all right, do this to be healthy and this to optimize longevity and this to optimize healthy aging. What I've found is like, it all starts with diet. And if I can get my diet going in the right direction, then everything else will follow. So like while working out obviously has amazing effects, if I'm not eating well, then working out gets thrown out the window. And so, you know, the strategy that I've used is, all right, I'm going down an unhealthy path. I'm going to start with seven days of healthy breakfast.

20:38Okay. I'm going to eat a true healthy breakfast for seven days. I'm going to ignore everything else, but just get that seven days of healthy breakfast right. then once I get seven days in a row I add lunch and then boom I'll get 14 days of healthy breakfast healthy lunch and then I'm two-thirds of the way there around healthy eating once that two-week period kind of goes by I feel like you can kind of trip and fall into half your dinners being healthy half of them being unhealthy but then you know you're sitting at 80 plus percent of your meals being healthy, which then makes working out much less of a, um, like when I think about the gym and I think about the workout class, I'm not looking up at, um, at climbing a mountain.

21:24It's feels just a lot more, more accessible, but I view supplements personally as like, they're the, they're, you know, the number three in, in the hierarchy. Right. So I go eating once my eating is dialed, I go working out. Once my working out's dialed, I go supplements. And so, you know, how does this all sit and land with everything you've seen and learned? Very consistent. So yes, a diet, exercise, and then I'll throw it into that equation, sleep. And because we're understanding that getting high quality sleep feeds into all of this as well. And what's nice is it can all complement each other, right?

22:10Because as soon as you get that positive feedback loop, because for a lot of us, it's like, oh, how do you get started? How do you get started and then stick with a routine so that then it's you're feeling good. And then now you want to do it. So, you know, key thing with exercise is it doesn't have to be, you know, find the physical activities that are actually rewarding for you. For me, it's riding the bike at night, which is it goes against what everybody says, but it works really well for me because I'm done with my stuff for the day. I ride on the bike. I don't like exercising. I'll be totally honest, but I do like the ability to sit, put my headphones on and binge watch my shows.

22:50And so I will do that while I'm on the bike. And so that then becomes positive reinforcement for me because I'm getting my exercise in and my weights while I'm watching my show. And so for me, that enables exercise to work. And then once you get into the routine, then it's like, oh, I want to exercise because when I exercise, I then sleep better. And so then you get a deeper, higher quality sleep. And then, like you said, it's critical, essential, right, to be able to get healthy diet involved. And you have to stick with that. There does have to be enough dedication to be able to do it long enough to be able to start get that positive reinforcement.

23:31It's not necessarily the scale, right? So it's not being obsessed about what happens to the pounds of what you weigh. A great guideline that's often used is like, do you fit in the clothes that you have a size or a time in your life that you have clothes that maybe you put in the back of your closet because they don't fit the way they used to? You want to work to where you fit in those clothes again, right? And it's like the distribution of where, because if you're gaining muscle, that actually weighs more potentially than the fat that you lose. So don't be so fixated on what the scale says. It's just more about how you feel.

24:11And then when you get these three going, then you really get into this healthy cycle that then you are seeking, right, that you want to maintain. And that's where, you know, supplements do come in, not for everybody, but for the intent and the word supplement means truly to supplement our diet, to supplement our, you know, our health routines, not to replace it. And, you know, that's why with different supplements can be individualized for different people. You know, for us, like, for example, with C15, people, we have 70 % of our customers report feeling better within 16 weeks. And so we have a 95 % monthly retention rate.

24:57They love the science and they love all the, you know, the heavy hitting science behind it. But in the end, you stay on it. People stay on it so much because they're feeling better. They have a calmer mood. They're sleeping better at night. For me, I was getting tennis elbow, and I don't play tennis. Menopause just hit, and all my joints started hurting. And for me, as has been reported by other people, that for me, Fatty 15, the supplement, helped take the edge off of that pain. So finding things that help you feel better are really important to getting into that good, healthy routine. Absolutely.

25:47And one of the things that you just said, which really landed on the working out front and that I found has had the most impact on me is finding the physical activity that I love not that other people suggest, but that I love because like going to a gym, it's like a basic gym with dumbbells like that to me, the minutes go by like hours versus you put me in a workout class with like the stereo, just absolutely blasting. And you have the energy of a bunch of people. I'm a very, very happy person. And that hour goes by and what feels like, uh, what feels like minutes, same thing, like walking with a weighted vest and listening to, um, to a podcast or, or to music or taking calls, like love that versus, um, you know, consistently going for runs just very hard for me.

26:46And so that, that really landed around finding the workout for me, not the workout that everyone, everyone suggests. So, you know, now kind of taking it, assuming, you know, you're, you're on track with, with your health or you're on track with your eating and you're on track with, you're working out and you're on track with, um, with your sleeping, you know, okay, boom, the big, um, and we start supplementing. Uh, I think that from my perspective, like you, you just hear, there's like, and you mentioned a few like NAD and the different peptides and it gets very overwhelming. And, you know, I found that if I ever have more than three supplements in my routine, I just stopped taking them because they feel like a chore.

27:42So I feel like people are telling me to take 10, 15, 20 things. But, you know, for me, three is best case. And so if you're looking to live your healthiest, best life, what are the three supplements that you would suggest people take? Right. And it's with a caveat that it's going to be tailored for different people, right? Based upon what they need. Of course, I'm not saying, of course, I'm going to start with C15, mainly because of, you know, where the science has been landing that when we, it is, right, it is leading the category as a healthy aging and longevity nutrient. It taps into these longevity pathways.

28:22It physically, it is a stable fatty acid that physically strengthens our cell membrane against age-related breakdown. And it's so important that if we don't have enough C15 in our cell membrane through our diet, right, through our food, and it could be diet, it could be through supplements. If we don't have enough, which is specifically less than 0.2%, or at least 0.2 % of the fatty acids in our cell membranes being C15, they become fragile and break down. This new form of cell death was discovered by researchers back in 2012. They discovered an entirely new way that our cells were dying. This is like a huge deal in the science world.

29:07They called it baroptosis. And it was the same year we were discovering this form of cell death in the dolphins. What we're now understanding is that deficiencies in C15 are maybe, in fact, the driver for this new form of cell death that then accelerates aging, right? So foundationally, getting C15 into our world, again, as a supplement, right? Because to supplement our diet is increasingly important, and that helps with healthy aging. I will also share that it tops into this really cool thing called the cell membrane pacemaker theory of aging. And this guy, AJ Holber, he did this fascinating work where he wanted to answer the question, how do, So if you look at a mouse and you look at a human, they're both mammals, right?

30:01They both have the same organs and everything. And so the whole question is, how does a human live 30 times longer than a mouse? And so he looked at the makeup of the cell membranes of these different species. And what he showed was the more stable the fatty acids in the cell membrane, the longer, the lower the oxidative stress in the body, the longer the species lived. So C15 is tapping directly into this evolutionary enabler of longevity. So for all of those reasons, obviously C15 would be served as a base of that health stack. And then, again, depending upon what individuals need, I am a big fan of creatine if you're working out.