Transcriber: sarah muyumba Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Throughout history, dolphins and humans have been inextricably linked.
Perhaps because of our long lives, big brains, big smiles.
And we as humans have been uniquely gifted
with the ability to combine compassion with innovation
to improve life not just for ourselves but for other species, too.
This is where our story begins,
and how helping dolphins may just help save the world.
I am a veterinary epidemiologist, and back in 2001
was invited by the US Navy to help improve the health and welfare
of the Navy’s dolphins through a population health program.
And through this work,
we got to work with older dolphins,
finding that dolphins live longer in the wild in the Navy
than they did in the wild,
and as we did this, we came to understand
that older dolphins age a heck of a lot like older people.
Now, you may have some questions about Navy dolphins, right?
The Navy has dolphins?
They live in San Diego Bay,
go out into the open ocean every day, and every day they choose to come back.
While dolphins in the wild live on average to 20 to 30 years old,
dolphins at the Navy live on average into their upper forties and even fifties.
And so it was through this work between 2001 and 2011
that we came to understand that older dolphins age
a heck of a lot like older people.
This includes things like high cholesterol,
chronic inflammation, arthritis.
Sounding familiar?
(Laughter)
This full suite of changes in the brain consistent with Alzheimer’s disease.
And so the thing that was interesting to us with regard to this
was that while these dolphins were in the same population
getting the same health care,
some did not develop these aging-associated conditions.
And our question here was why?
So we gathered a super-smart team of do-gooders
to see if we could apply advanced technologies intended for human health
and use them to help dolphin health too.
And in 2015, one of these technologies was metabolomics.
Now, metabolomics is a study of thousands of small molecules in our body
that help make us work.
And of those, we identified
about a hundred that helped predict the healthiest aging dolphins.
Now, these 100 molecules are present in both dolphins and in humans.
And from there, among the top,
there was a nutrient called pentadecanoic acid or C15:0
And when we gave dolphins that were less healthy aging,
and we gave them a diet higher in fish-based C15:0, they got better.
We published this work in the “Public Library of Science,”
and we had the shocking conclusion that goes as follows:
We had estimated, we had assumed
that the changes in the healthiest dolphins would be due to Omega 3s.
Right? Because all dolphins eat are healthy fish all day long.
And it wasn’t Omega 3s, it was C15:0, which is a saturated fat.
Now, while dolphins get their C15:0 from specific types of fish,
our primary source of C15:0 is whole-fat milk and butter.
So which is great, for me, because I love whole-fat milk and butter.
It ends up that we as humans have undergone our own 40-year experiment
of methodically removing C15:0 from our diet.
Let’s go back to 1977.
I was five.
There were a lot of older men dying of heart attacks,
and Congress made a rare move of releasing dietary recommendations
where they focused on decreasing the intake of saturated fats
and especially foods high in saturated fats like whole-fat milk, and butter.
Right? And it worked.
I mean, I grew up on watery blue milk and vegetable-based margarines,
and generation after generation since 1977
have increasingly avoided drinking whole-fat cow’s milk.
Now, what has happened since then?
We as a population haven’t really gotten healthier; we’ve gotten sicker.
There’s a higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes,
heart disease, and fatty liver disease,
especially among younger and younger people.
And dozens of studies have come out for over the last 10 to 15 years
showing that, in fact,
higher levels of even-chain saturated fats like C16:0 and C18:0,
which are present at much higher levels in whole-fat milk and butter
are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease
and type 2 diabetes.
However, all these studies had a caveat.
And that was that higher levels of odd-chain saturated fats like C15:0
were associated with a decreased risk of these exact same diseases
just like we found in the in the dolphins.
So while these papers were coming out,
we were in the lab spending three years to do eight studies to see if C15:0
wasn't just associated with better health, but was in fact the cause.
And here’s what we found:
C15:0 specifically targets three hallmarks of aging:
Now, these are mechanisms that define how we break down with age.
First, C15:0 helped make our cell membranes more resilient
and more resistant against age-related breakdown.
Second, it helped to improve mitochondrial function.
Remember those powerhouses for cells from third grade?
Keeps more energy going as we age.
And it also helped to naturally target and activate receptors
found throughout our brain and our body called PPARs alpha and delta
that are known to regulate our immunity and metabolism,
but also our mood, sleep, and appetite.
In relevant models of type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease
C15:0 successfully reduced glucose, cholesterol, inflammation;
it treated anemia; and it decreased the severity of liver disease.
Ooh!
So we bundled all of those studies up into one huge paper,
published it in “Nature Scientific Reports,”
where we concluded that C15:0 isn’t just an active and beneficial saturated fat,
but that it was meeting the rare criteria of being an essential fatty acid,
and that means that we need certain levels of it in our body to stay healthy.
Our bodies don’t make it, therefore we have to get enough C15:0 from our diet
in order to just maintain baseline health, especially as we age.
This discovery makes C15:0 the first essential fatty acid to be discovered
since Omega 3 and Omega 6, 90 years ago.
It’s basically the discovery of a new vitamin!
Go dolphins!
(Laughter)
So, that paper came out; we published that in May of 2020.
And then over the next 18 months, by the end of December 2021,
over 24 papers came out from prestigious institutions throughout the world
showing that higher C15:0 is associated with better health in humans,
and then a second team coming in and saying yes, indeed,
we can corroborate that C15:0 is an essential fatty acid.
Which was fantastic.
(Applause)
Thank you!
(Applause)
Thank you!
I’m going to spread that applause to my team.
So the leading hypothesis now is that C15:0 nutritional deficiencies
that are being driven by your changes in diet may actually be driving
the pandemic of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and multiple chronic conditions.
The good news is that this is fixable.
My husband, Eric, is a Navy physician,
three-time war veteran fellow entrepreneur,
and he didn’t want me to say this, but my bestest friend.
I said it!
(Laughter)
And as a military family, along with our son Ben,
who’s a bit bigger than this, if you saw him at the break,
we are a family of creative innovators.
So we worked with the Navy cooperatively to develop a pure powder,
stable and sustainable, vegan-friendly, plant-based,
C15:0 ingredient that can be used to fortify foods throughout the world
to help fix these C15:0 deficiencies.
We are now also working with leaders in healthy aging, longevity,
medicine, and nutrition to help revisit the guidelines around saturated fats,
so that we can bring the good odd-chain saturated fats back into our lives,
and while we’re at it, we’re also going after trying to help negate
all the negative feelings around the words “fat “and “fatty.”
Let’s neutralize those terms, understand there are good and bad ones,
and those don’t have to be insults or things that we need to fear anymore.
So all of this happened, I can say as a nerd who doesn’t know how to swim:
Who knew that I’d be working at the Navy with dolphins?
This has been the most incredible, unexpected journey over two decades.
It's been quite an adventure.
Now, all of this happened because of the pure intent
of wanting to help older dolphins live the longest, healthiest lives possible,
showing that if we as humans combine compassion with innovation
to improve life for other species, we can improve life for all.
And as we often say at the end of our team meetings,
you know who you are:
“Save the dolphins, save the world!”
Thank you.
(Applause)