Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - The Science of Aging Well: What Dolphins Can Teach Us About Human Health | Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

How did studying military dolphins lead to a breakthrough in human health?Our guest today, Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson, is a scientist, entrepreneur, and veterinarian with a remarkable story �� one that begins with dolphins and leads to groundbreaking discoveries about human health. Her research with Navy dolphins led to the discovery of C15, an essential fatty acid with the potential to revolutionize how we think about healthy aging and longevity.I’ve been fascinated by the role of fatty acids in the aging process for a long time... Today, we explore C15’s critical role in maintaining healthy cells, and how it may even help fight against diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and even Alzheimer’s.What I love about this conversation is how Stephanie brings the science to life – showing us how the simplest discoveries can have profound implications for our health and well-being.Our mission and values are so aligned that we partnered with her breakthrough C15 product, Fatty15. Stephanie and the team at Fatty15 are reshaping the world’s approach to healthy aging, and I’m thrilled to support their mission of advancing human health through cutting-edge science.Try out Fatty15 for yourself and receive 15% off when you visit https://fatty15.com/FINDINGMASTERYThis is one of those conversations that makes you rethink how you care for your body, what you eat, and what truly supports healthy aging. So whether you’re on your own mission to change the world or simply interested in practical ways to live a healthier life, this conversation with Dr. Stephanie is one you won't want to miss._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Finding Mastery is brought to you by Remarkable. In a world that's full of distractions, focused thinking is becoming a rare skill and a massive competitive advantage. That's why I've been using the Remarkable Paper Pro, a digital notebook designed to help you think clearly and work deliberately. It's not another device filled with notifications or apps.

It's intentionally built for deep work. So there's no social media, no email, no noise. The writing experience, it feels just like pen on paper. I love it. And it has the intelligence of digital tools like converting your handwriting to text, organizing your notes, tagging files, and using productivity templates

to help you be more effective. It is sleek, minimal. It's incredibly lightweight. It feels really good. I take it with me anywhere from meetings to travel without missing a beat. What I love most is that it doesn't try to do everything. It just helps me do one very important thing really well,

stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. How did studying military dolphins lead to a breakthrough in human health? Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist. And I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist, and I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Stephanie Van Watson to the podcast for this week's conversation. Stephanie is a scientist, an entrepreneur, and a veterinarian with a

remarkable story, one that begins with dolphins and leads to a groundbreaking discovery about human health. Her research with Navy dolphins led to the discovery of C15, an essential fatty acid with the potential to revolutionize how we think about healthy aging and longevity. Today, we explore C15's critical role in maintaining healthy cells and how it may even help fight against diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and even Alzheimer's. What I love about this conversation is how Stephanie brings the science to life, showing us how the simplest discoveries can have profound implications for our health and well-being. Our mission and values are so aligned that we partnered with her breakthrough C15 product, Fatty 15. Stephanie and the team at Fatty 15 are reshaping the world's approach to healthy aging.

And I'm thrilled to support their mission of advancing human health through cutting edge science. This is one of those conversations that makes you rethink how you care for your body, what you eat, and what truly supports healthy aging. So with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Dr. Stephanie Van Watson. Stephanie, I am so looking forward to this conversation. You hold an intersection that I'm really interested in, science, entrepreneurship, and animals. And so I'm really excited to have this time with you. Michael, it's great to be here.

So before we get started, let me just check in. How are you doing? I'm doing great. It's a super exciting time. We are in the midst of a global movement in which we truly have an opportunity to improve global health. And Michael, this all started thanks to helping dolphins. So it kind of doesn't get better than that. Yeah. Okay. So let's start at the beginning.

When somebody asks you about your life history, you know, about your life, what are the main points that you bring forward? Yeah. I think most important is, you know, so I grew up in 1970s, you know, suburbia, Denver, outside of suburbs, outside of Denver. Did you drink out of a rusty hose as well? I drank, exactly. No, I did not drink out of it. Maybe I did. I didn't realize it was rusty. And, you know, orange tag carpet, wooden walls, you know, all that good stuff. Were parents on the hippie side or are they more kind of?

Oh, they're probably on the straight and narrow. Straight and narrow. Straight and narrow side. My dad was head of finance and budget at the university. And so he would come home with these books, old books filled with numbers, like budget numbers. And me being the weird kid would then take the books down to the basement with a flashlight, with a pencil and start circling patterns. I would look for patterns in numbers. Like at a young age.

Yeah. And so like six, five, four or five, six years old. And so Michael, there's so many things I don't do well, like ride a bike or walk and talk, but I do know how to find patterns and it's just been, you know, a joy ever since. So from there, I, yeah, this is, you know, um, to find, to recognize that you had something at a young age that was different. And then to, I could imagine that that could have been tricky in grade school, right. If you're not walking and talking and, you know, like, yeah, right. But to, to, to look back and have a fond appreciation that in an early age, you loved pattern recognition. Okay. So just do me a favor

and fast forward that to now we're going to come back and get the meat of your, your upbringing, but fast forward that to now, how has the pattern recognition as a wildly successful person been important for you? It's been critical. It's been everything. So because the joy of pattern recognition is that you're looking for things that other people haven't seen, but it's right there, right in front of you all along.

And that's what becomes so fun about it. It's just, you just need to open your mind to removing blinders of preconceptions that we have. I'm a scientist, so follow the data. And when you look at the data and you allow yourself to look at the data and be open to what the patterns are telling you, there's so much still to be discovered. We think that the simple discoveries are already done. And as we'll talk about today, absolutely not. There's so much exciting. There's so many exciting things. It's actually your entire adventure in life and especially what you're doing now is really invigorating that it's not all done. We're not replaying the same records,

whether it's science or whatever. It's really really an exciting, you're, you are in many respects, an emblem for the frontier. And that's, that's really why I wanted to have you on here. And so, okay, let's go back. So in the basement pattern recognition. Okay. So, yeah, so there I was. And then, um, moved to, I did most of my growing up in the Valley. So I picked up the very, sorry, it serious valley girl accent, which then I had to lose quickly. And I went to undergrad at University of California, San Diego, thought I was going to fast track my way to medical school. And then I read this book from Laurie Garrett called The Coming Plague. And I was like, are you kidding me? There is a job called an epidemiologist where their whole job is to find patterns to use math. I'm like, this is what I want to do. And so I thought I was going to go to medical school first

to do that. And then I ended up encountering and interacting with a veterinary epidemiologist, which I didn't even know they existed, chatted with him. And he said, staff, if you really want to understand disease, patterns of disease, don't learn it in one species. Learn it across multiple species. And to do that, you've got to go to veterinary school. Very cool. And so it's amazing how one conversation can shift. Oh, yeah.

I hadn't even thought about that. It's pretty remarkable, right? Like that right time, right statement, right opening for, you know, your approach to life. And that sounds like interesting. And then, so you're already in San Diego, which, you know, there's, it's a, it's a good lifestyle down there. So and did you stay at UCSD? I went, so I finished at UCSD, then went to Boston, to Worcester to go get my veterinary degree at Tufts University. So I did that and then went down to Atlanta, got my master's in public health to pick up the epidemiology component. So I worked for CDC, World Health Organization there. when, Michael, I was recruited by the Navy and the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center to then

hop over to the military side and understand not just human population health, but Navy dolphin population health, took on a job as well as a DARPA agent. And while doing, when you combine those experiences, that's where I learned that with science, you can do just about anything. But following the critical rules of the military is that the science has to translate within years to effectively have a benefit to our men and women and dolphins out in the field. You learn to fail fast. What does that mean? What does that mean? It has to be effective within years. So, you know, a lot of times research, right, especially in the academic setting. Oh, you're talking about the long tail from the laboratory to application is too long,

right? And so especially with DARPA and maybe you can open up DARPA's mission and the kind of ridiculous constraints that are put on the innovation arc. And it's super inspiring. I've had some friends that have come through that network and it's like, you know, I mean, it's ridiculous what you guys do. And so, and our nation, I think is far better for it, but maybe you can just open up what, what your experience at DARPA was and maybe the purpose and mission of DARPA. Yeah. You know, DARPA. Wow, that was really impressive. So yeah, so DARPA's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is the research arm of the Pentagon. And so they've renamed it since then. But back then, that's what it was called. And I was attached to a group called

the Brain Machine Interface. Brain Machine Interface. An amazing technology, just as exactly to what you're speaking to, Michael, is it's thanks to the work that was done through there is helping people who are paraplegic be able to move their limbs. I mean, this is thanks to DARPA. Was that the exoskeleton? It was. Was that one of the first innovations? Yeah. Yeah.

Really exciting. I was exposed to some of that from some of the special operators that were using that in rugged land where they wouldn't be able to navigate as well. That's right. Not that they were not disabled in any way. It was an exoskeleton that had the ability to help them go faster, longer. Pretty amazing. Yeah, pretty amazing. For both for folks that needed it for mobility and for folks that wanted it for extreme performance.

Yeah. So DARPA exactly as you said. I'm sorry. Oh, yeah. No, it's good. And, and, and, and, and, and. There's so many other things that DARPA's done. Yeah. The spin out. And so with DARPA, exactly like you said, it is they will put a large amount of money into a project and it starts with a need, right? So this is a need by the military, which

is always needed in the public health realm and the public space realm as well. But the driver is something that's needed by the military. Then scientists are then able to put in applications and to say, hey, I think I can solve it. But the challenge is, okay, you have to solve this within three years. And if you don't show meaningful evidence is, okay, you have to solve this within three years. And if you don't show meaningful evidence within one year, you're done. So you learn to fail fast and you follow the data. And that's how we've been able to really, you know, our whole story with the discoveries around C15 has been completely following that model. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing

environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort. It takes a real caring about your people. It takes the right tools, the right information at the right time. And that's where LinkedIn Sales Navigator can come in. It's a tool designed specifically for thoughtful sales professionals, helping you find the right people that are ready to engage, track key account changes, and connect with key decision makers more effectively. It surfaces real-time signals,

like when someone changes jobs or when an account becomes high priority, so that you can reach out at exactly the right moment with context and thoroughness that builds trust. It also helps tap into your own network more strategically, showing you who you already know that can help you open doors or make a warm introduction. In other words, it's not about more strategically, showing you who you already know that can help you open doors or make a warm introduction. In other words, it's not about more outreach. It's about smarter, more human outreach.

And that's something here at Finding Mastery that our team lives and breathes by. If you're ready to start building stronger relationships that actually convert, try LinkedIn Sales Navigator for free for 60 days at linkedin.com slash deal. That's linkedin.com slash deal. For two full months for free, terms and conditions apply. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat, and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals, on a demanding day certainly, I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars.

And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein,

just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein

goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. That's David D-A-V-I-D protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Before we go to C15, let's go to how you found your way to dolphins, because that's the link between C15, which is a fatty acid that you found. And there wasn't a fatty acid that you and your team probably, to be fair, but you are the one that is able to bring this forward to us. And do I have it right, 90 years? Is that right? 90 years before a fatty acid has been found?

Yeah, so exactly. So C-15 is a fatty acid. So we talk about fatty acids that was known since the 1950s, but it was just written off as a minor saturated fat present in very low levels. Therefore, it didn't really have any meaning. And so it was really only because of our work with the dolphins that we then discovered that C15 is not only a meaningful fat, but the first essential fatty acid to be discovered in over 90 years since omega-3 and omega-6.

Yeah. Okay. So, okay. I can't wait to get to that. Why dolphins? And why the military is interested in dolphins? And how did DARPA get to dolphins? It's all connected.

It's all connected. So, yeah, I could help out with that so so uh so so the navy has cared for a population of about a sustained population about 100 bottlenose dolphins for over 60 60 years six wait 66 around 60 years 60 years yeah and so they've been taking care of this population uh they live in the open ocean in San Diego Bay, go out into the open ocean every day. Every day, Michael, they choose to come back. It's amazing. So dolphins in the wild typically live to about 20 years old. Dolphins at the Navy routinely live into their 40s, 50s. And now I was just told last week, even into their 60s. Wait, wait. Okay. So they're wild

dolphins. Do I have that language correctly? So initially with the program, they were wild dolphins, but since probably the late 1980s, it's their own program. So they have no problems with the male and the female dolphins within the Navy's population getting together, hooking up, having babies. It's a very prolific population. Okay. And so there, is there a safe harbor for them that they return to? So they, they, of course they're going to like a safe harbor, but then they're, they're free to go out and they go out and during the day, I'm just making up, they go out and explore and do their thing that dolphins do out in the wild. And then they come back to the safe harbor daily, whenever, weekly, whenever, whenever they want to every day, they come back. Yeah. Every day they come back. Okay. harbor daily, weekly, whenever they want to. Every day they come back.

Yeah, every day they come back. Okay. So they're all tagged. They're monitored. And you're studying these dolphins. Yeah. And in fact, they're not even tagged. So it's truly – it's also dolphins are – they're homey animals.

What does that mean? They're like home? They have their home base. They have their pod. They have their family. And they stay. I mean, even when Deepwater Horizon, Deepwater Horizon happened, oil spill happened, you know, wild dolphins in the area, even though there was oil, they still stayed in the oil because that to their home base. The Navy dolphins have it great, right? Because they're being fed. They have the humans entertain them, you know, who are working with them every day. They're human counterparts. And that's a big reason why they live a lot longer. Dolphins in the wild, they get to have access to health care, you know, all the things. It's almost like saying wild dolphins are in a developing country and Navy dolphins are in a developed country.

It's the same type of health difference. Well, that's great because if I and you were transported in a country that didn't have modern medicine and we couldn't have access to it, it feels like there's an energy around we need to go back to get more connected to Mother Earth and those practices. But still, if you get a toothache, if you get some sort of early treatable disease, you know, that you pick up a bug here or there, that, okay, I totally get that. Now, make the link between dolphins and the military so the dolphins if we go way back um there were these uh this program called the aquanauts and there was actually a toy set for the yeah my son yeah yeah that's really good i have no i had no understanding this is part of the

military project yeah and yeah there were there's astronauts There were aquanauts. And it was more to understand deep water sea survival and how your body changes as humans. But the humans that were living down there, they were Navy people. They needed supplies. And it's hard to go to deep water up and down multiple times for people because we get the bends. So there was actually a Navy dolphin named Tuffy, the first Navy dolphin. And they figured they found out, hey, dolphin Tuffy hangs out with us. Easy peasy in the wild. And Tuffy is happy to bring the supplies to the aquanauts. Can we train Tuffy?

Yeah. And they did. So Tuffy did it happily. And basically from there, they learned that dolphins can help, you know, find undercover underwater objects, enemy swimmers. And so they're really good at it. It's very natural. And again, because this is, it only works because it's a healthy cooperative environment. And that is why they reproduce, why they live a long time is it is as a veterinarian, I didn't know how I'd feel about dolphins at the Navy, to be honest. I went there, Michael, and from day one, I knew that this was just a really incredible environment that was healthy for the dolphins by all measures and visually. And it was, yeah. Okay, so the wrong image is the backlash that SeaWorld and other wildlife zoos have recently gotten.

That this is a terrible place for captivity of the wild animals, right? That was the, and I don't know the narrative. I saw a documentary. I don't know enough of what I'm saying. So I want to be careful here. But the idea of wild animals captive does make my blood boil a little bit. Like I, you know, I won't go to a zoo for that reason. And maybe I'm being too rigid and I don't know enough, but I do need to learn more to better understand how to support or not support that movement. But, and I'm sure there's pros and cons to both, but that's not the case here. They, they, they can go out into their habitat and come back anytime they are trained specifically for, I don't know, call it missions or projects for the

military. And as you were studying them, how did you make the link between them and these insights that you hold about human longevity? Right. So what was happening was because Navy dolphins live so much longer than dolphins in the wild, because the wild's not so great these days, right? So, and that's caused by us um you know as far as getting to the not wanting to go back too deep with regard to the discussion

about dolphins in the wild versus you know under human care that the wild is kind of messed up and we've done that and so i think some of the roles is understanding how can we take care of these animals it under human care and have that translate then to improving conservation efforts. So for example, a lot of the work and lessons we've learned from the Navy dolphins has directly translated to helping dolphins in the wild. So let's do more of that. Yeah. So it's actually full circle, right? You're helping a small pod of how many, 60, six zero dolphins dolphins and then that might help humans that might in return also help um dolphins in the wild or other animals exactly yeah so how bad is our ocean like

the ocean has given so much to me i grew up surfing um i've i've spent um a decent amount of time supporting the ocean but i don't have a real sense of what's happening like is it as bad as you're painting a picture it's you know it's it's the fisheries is is and it's for various reasons but you know there are less so one of the reasons with regard to the discoveries and we'll talk about aging and dolphins and that's important um parallel But one of the drivers was, you know, the Navy had been giving the dolphins fish that had been actually were actually called candlefish for a long time. They were so fatty that you could literally dry the fish, stick a wick in it and light it. It could be a candle. Okay, so it's a good source of.

It's a really good source of fat. Yeah. Those became overfished because of fishing practices. And so not only did the world not have access to the candlefish, that included the Navy dolphins. And so those types of things are happening globally where we're seeing changes in fisheries. There's still almost the same abundance of fish, but the fish are changing. And so a big thing that this showed was that we were seeing that as dolphins have less fat in their fish, they were getting less certain levels of fatty acids.

We use this advanced technology called metabolomics to figure out which small molecules could predict the healthiest aging dolphins. And that's where we found C15 as the top predictor of healthy aging dolphins. So speaking of aging, which was your question, that as Navy dolphins were getting older, like geriatric dolphins, right? We were finding that they were developing things like high cholesterol and chronic inflammation, the full suite of changes in the brain consistent with Alzheimer's, fatty liver disease.

So aging dolphins, some of them were aging like us while others were getting older and were not developing these. So that led to this study to say, what's predicting these healthy aging dolphins? What's the difference? So the question that you just said is important. You were looking at what's predicting health as opposed to what is the predictor for disease. So you purposely went to a positive indicator as opposed to the deficit.

That's right. Yeah. So that's not a traditional medical model. So I really appreciate that. Right. Okay. So the research question was, what's different about these healthy ones? And from a population standpoint, what percentage were healthy and what percentage were

aging? Maybe we were called normally, but unhealthy. What was the difference between the two? So it was about one in three. We're going to hear this number a couple of times. So about one in three dolphins were aging and were developing aging associated conditions, while two out of three were not. So we had a decent size cohort to be able to work with. And we had information that was health information collected on these dolphins throughout their entire lifespans. And when they do pass away, you know, often from these aging associated diseases, just like people, we had all the

tissues. So we were able to really, this was an unprecedented clean population. Dolphins don't smoke, they don't drink, they don't have different socioeconomic status. I mean, this is the perfect patient population to really cut through a lot of the noise that we have in humans to understand healthy aging and longevity in a long-lived large brain mammal. And in this case, it was the dolphins. Very cool. How close are the two species, humans and dolphins? And whatever the right name for dolphins is. Yeah, dolphins. Dolphins? Yeah, dolphins.

So how close are they in crossover in the way that we operate? It's a great question because if you look at the evolutionary tree, it's not like we were like, oh my gosh, humans and dolphins just spun off two years ago. So it's not the case. We're very different. Dolphins are actually ar adactals. They used to be land mammals, kind of like cows. And they made their way back to the ocean. Back to the ocean. So they started in the ocean, found their way to land. How many thousands of years ago? This is about 13 million. 13 million. Yeah. So thousands is not quite the right framing. 13 million years ago, they were on land.

Yeah. And then they went back into the ocean and said, hey, this is where we want to be. So very different than humans that way. Right? Isn't this crazy? Yeah. It's just really mind-blowing. So then with, but- Wait a minute. They had legs. Dolphins had legs so when you go the next time you go to a museum and you see a skeleton right like of a whale and you look at the fins right so whatever the fins are they have lunges they do oh my goodness yeah kind of cool wait whales didn't walk

whales walk too yeah they all came from, they were all, look at that. Yeah, that is my, okay, what's the leading idea of why they went back to the ocean? We don't know, but there could, it could be with regard to beneficial food sources, competition. How long does it take to make that change? Like, okay, we're walking around on two legs and one day we're going to be swimming around and we lose our legs and have like these fins. Like, is that a couple million years? Yeah. A few million years. Yeah. It's kind of fun. My first, one of my dearest mentors, Gary de Blasio said to me, he goes, Mike, you know, this was, I was like in my early twenties. He says, you know,

you really matter in people's lives. I said, thanks, Gary. He says, you know, in the big scheme of things in the, in, in how long the planet's been around, you don't really matter that much. And so I want you to keep both of those in, in your mind, you know, that you matter and you don't in the grand scheme. So when you bring this forward, I'm like, yeah, Gary was really right. It's both, but it is both, right? It is both. So, so humans, what we have found though, despite that difference of dolphins and humans is that if you look at human chromosome one, for example, which is our largest chromosome, it has import, lots of important genes related to longevity. I don't know what chromosome one is. So we have, you know, so we have a bunch of chromosomes in our DNA.

The first one is called human chromosome one. It's in their number. So it's the largest one out of all the different chromosomes. I did not know there were sizes. Yeah, which is kind of funny. I always thought they were the same. Yeah, and there's even a specific order, not only the genes, but a specific order of genes.

What Illumina and others have found is that- And who's Illumina? So they're a big DNA company. They've done a lot of really great work with regard to DNA chromosomes, understanding comparisons between species. And what they showed and published were that dolphins, specifically bottlenose dolphins and humans, have identical human chromosome one,

which is mind-blowing because every, like you were talking about, we're evolving, different animals are evolving all the time. How the heck did dolphins and humans have this highly conserved, very important chromosome, which is the same? The only other animals that have this highly conserved chromosome are bottlenose dolphins, humans, two-toed sloths, and gorillas. And that's it. Well, we kind of get the gorilla one, but the two-toed sloth. So maybe that's the next area of discovery. I had to wait for one to cross the road down in, I think it was Costa Rica or Nicaragua.

I can't remember. It was a while. They're so sweet. They're really slow, though. Yeah, Okay. So yeah. So lots of the importance. So that's the chromosome one? And I mean, how many chromosomes are there? So 28.

Okay. It's not 23 in me? Well, 23, right? Sorry. Humans, 23. And 28 in other? Yeah. It can vary from other species. And then and then, and then other parallels are that, you know, as far as a high glucose demand in the brain that has that results in humans and dolphins having a lot of similarities with regard to glucose metabolism, insulin resistance, type two diabetes, these types of things that then we started seeing parallels between humans and dolphins. So there's a health correlate as well. Okay. So that's what we're going to get to. And I just

know that when I was, I spent a lot of time surfing, that when there was a bunch of dolphins around, we knew that we were safe. Yeah. It's kind of nice, isn't it? Yeah, because the sharks and dolphins don't actually mess with each other. Is this accurate that a pod of dolphins can swarm and attack and like defend themselves well against a shark? They can. Yeah. Which is like, it's kind of cool.

So what are some of the things before we go to your innovation? defend themselves well against a shark? They can. Yeah. Which is like, it's kind of cool. So what are some of the things before we go to, um, your innovation, what are some of the things that you love about dolphins that are really important for humans to better understand about living a great life? Yeah, that's a great question. Um, the, um, when, uh, a female dolphin is about to have her baby. Um she has her own pet her own area right in in the bay where she's getting ready to have her baby um and a calf and all of the female dolphins in the area are all gathered around watching come on yeah and they're watching and it's the older ones and just as importantly, the younger ones. And they are, they watch the process and we've learned that. And then, you know, the baby calf is born, calf, you know, latches onto mom, gets its

milk. And they've learned that when dolphins are, have seen that process, they are better at having a baby and having that baby latch than the ones who haven't watched. And here's some of the two other coolest things that when if mom isn't producing milk because she's older, then the other females will lactate to support that baby. How great is that? And then the last thing a lot of people know is that dolphins have hemispheric sleep. And so they can sleep one side of their brain at the time.

So they can actually stay awake and be vigilant 24 hours a day and decide that sleeping is literally its eye is closed. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday. What you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentous. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this

was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people achieve performance for life. And to do that, they developed what they call the Momentus Standard. Every product is formulated with top experts and every batch is third-party tested. NSF certified for sport or informed sport. So you know exactly what you're getting. Personally, I'm anchored by what they call the Momentus 3. Protein, creatine, and omega-3.

And together, these foundational nutrients support muscle recovery, creatine, and omega-3. And together, these foundational nutrients support muscle recovery, brain function, and long-term energy. They're part of my daily routine. And if you're ready to fuel your brain and body with the best, Momentus has a great new offer just for our community right here. Use the code FINDINGMASTERY for 35% off your first subscription order at livemomentous.com. Again, that's L-I-V-E, momentous, M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S, livemomentous.com, and use the code FindingMastery for 35% off your first subscription order. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Felix Gray. I spend a lot of time thinking about how we

can create the conditions for high performance. How do we protect our ability to focus, to recover, to be present? And one of the biggest challenges we face today is our sheer amount of screen time. It messes with our sleep, our clarity, even our mood. And that's why I've been using Felix Gray glasses. What I appreciate most about Felix Gray is that they're just not another wellness product. They're rooted in real science. Developed alongside leading researchers and ophthalmologists, they've demonstrated these types of glasses boost melatonin, help you fall asleep faster, and hit deeper stages of rest.

When I'm on the road and bouncing around between time zones, slipping on my Felix Grays in the evening, it's a simple way to cue my body just to wind down. And when I'm locked into deep work, they also help me stay focused for longer without digital fatigue creeping in. Plus, they look great. Clean, clear, no funky color distortion. Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to felixgray.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the

code FINDINGMASTERY20 at felixgray.com for 20% off. Oh, no way. I would love to be able to do that. Yeah. Would you want, you would want that adaptation? Though I love sleeping. So, you know. I like the whole brain shutting down. Like it's like, yeah.

Okay. But the idea is they probably need to do that because they are in the wild. There's predators. Yeah. And so that's like, yeah, they can, who can who are who who are they prey to uh i mean sharks and then is probably the biggest prey the biggest is if they're weak if they become weak um and they're really good at masking their illnesses um so you know it's it's uh and how many types of dolphins are there there are a lot of different yeah so we're we're talking about for the most

part our atlantic and pacific bottlenose dolphins. And bottlenose, you can see those because they've got a relatively long beak that's coming out at the end. Yeah, it kind of goes down and then it has a little bit of a shorter trunk. They have some kind of long ones. Are these the ones that you can play with in the wild? If they come to you and interact like the surfers, right? Yeah, right. But we don't go after them. No, no, no.

But they come up. They come really close. I've surfed plenty of waves with them and they'll just kind of hang, you know, like I'm on a wave and they're on a wave. It's really, you know, kind of cool. So, okay, enough of that piece. Take us to what you found.

Yeah. So there we were, right? Seeing healthy aging dolphins and faster, slower and faster aging dolphins. Found that C15, we thought for sure my goal is going to be omega-3s because all dolphins eat our fish. So when we did that metabolomic study to look at thousands of small molecules to predict

the healthy ones, we figured we were unfairly biased towards saying that it was going to be omega-3s that predicted the healthiest aging dolphins. Luckily, again, data, pattern recognition, the study looked at 465 different molecules. We didn't say, let's just look at omega-3s. Very cool. Because I do the same blood draw. I do the same type of thing, same company as well. And this is what most people do that are doing some sort of nutritional blood draw. But we're only looking at like, I don't know, 75, 50 maybe is a pretty big panel. And you did how many? 465 different molecules. So this is a blood draw, correct? It's a blood draw, yeah. Okay. And that's a huge, how much does that cost by the way? Well, gosh, back then, oh, I guess. It was

like 10,000 with a study. Yeah, it was really expensive. Yeah. Okay. Now it's like under a couple hundred. It's gotten much cheaper. Okay. So big panel, how did you at that time crunch that data? How did you find those patterns? You didn't print them out and get your red pen out. Close. There was definitely some red penning situations. Some of the work was done by the company that did the metabolism. It's not like I was in the lab. Right. They were scanning. So they did some of the upfront work with regard to finding certain hints. And then I was able to go in and now because of CDC and all that experience, there's software programs were old school SAS folks. So whoever's out there does SAS.

Would you do your dissertation on it? I think it was like SAS 7 or something. I can't remember what it was. Yeah, it was 7, wasn't it? You remember this, so you know SAS. Yeah. That's a research nerd moment for sure. I love it. So, and I still use it.

And so it was USAS to then be able to incorporate and bring these data in. And then that's where the fun stuff happens, the basement with the flashlight of just searching for patterns. You see a certain pattern, you dig in further, and then you dive further. And then the big thing that's important about epidemiology and all of our science is you need to see the same story pan out when you look at it from 10 different ways. You can't just say, hey, we found this analysis, C15 was the winner, and that's it. Right. It won over omegas or whatever, you know, krill oil maybe or whatever the thing, or not oil, but. So you found the one, you looked at it from multiple angles to verify. And C15 was a thing that was the

main differentiator. I'm sure there was some secondary differentiators, but this was the main differentiator. It's a fatty acid. And then help ground, help put C15 fatty acid in context to all fatty acids, if you can, so that we can have a mental model of where that sits in the landscape of fatty acids and where fatty acids sit in the landscape of human health. Absolutely. So, oh, that was a simple question. That's the easy answer. Yeah. Yes. So we talk about fatty acids. It's, uh, you know, wait, wait, hold on. Are you always this fun? Uh, like is this your green tea? I think it's not the green tea, but is this, is this your default energy level? Oh, yeah. So you are silly, fun. You have a lot of energy about you.

And you can quickly get down to the seriousness and the details. So is that kind of like your makeup? That's me. Should we ask your husband? Is it close? That's true. How do you guys argue? Do you leave the toothpaste, the lid off the toothpaste?

No? You do. Okay. But this is not an issue for you because you're thinking about bigger things. Is that what I'm hearing? If you're arguing about the toothpaste, you probably don't have enough going on in your life. Yeah. Is this true?

And Michael, this is it. So this is a military family. Because we've been to war and we as an Eric, Navy physician husband, he's been deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia at the height of war. Come on. Right? And so- Perspective. Perspective. Is rich in your family. And so this thing started bubbling up. Literally, we're like,

no one's dying. Wait, were you on the front in some of those or like more in support on the back? Both. Right at the height of it. You guys are like, you think of a powerhouse couple or whatever.

A power couple is people. This is a whole new level for science and and humanity. You know, when Eric was deployed to Afghanistan, especially because it was the height in Helmand province, height of the war, we had a two and a half year old at home. And in I don't know if a lot of people know this, but during the time they would actually send the families, the wives, a list every morning and it would tell you who died in their area, but they don't give names. They give age, gender, and rank. And I spent every morning, which was stupid looking back, opening that up and every morning seeing, because at that time there were anywhere between two to 15 people dying a day

where Eric was. And so I would open up and see, is there a match with Adrian? And, and obviously for two years, you did that. He was deployed. That was a six month deployment. How did you manage that anxiety? Um, it, uh, maybe you didn't. Yeah. I lost it. Yeah. I didn't. I'm I'm, I was down to 98 pounds. And, you know, to be honest, I had a two and a half year old boy. Let me add that in. And luckily we had a military. Ben, our son, was being cared for during the day at a military care center. And Michael was amazing as they said, Ben knows what's going on. He's two and a half years old. Don't hide it from him. And we were able to just, you know, it's like they told Ben dad's deployed. Dad may not come back. And this is why mom's having a hard time. You're all in this together. And so now it's like, it's created who we are today. So do we fight? We do, but we're always like, I just appreciate this part. this part because, you know, it's so easy to, for me and the listener to see this amazing mind, this amazing contributor to science and humanity and longevity and an innovator and an entrepreneur and a physician and like it can all almost if we're not careful um be too much

and then the reflection for me and others would be like what am i doing with my life look at her you know like jesus like get it together like you're you are a loser they were right i'm joking but like you too have faced struggles yeah and so much so that you didn't necessarily know how to manage those. And there was a, because of the way you were thinking in a, let's call it a disordered way. You didn't know how to have an order of this chaotic catastrophe that was maybe right on the other side of an email or whatever the website was. That you, it costs you your health. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. You're welcome. I mean, on the back end of it, then when you survive it, right, you're, you have such a healthy perspective

that, you know, when we have then, you know, as you were advancing the science and as you could imagine a dolphin veterinarian saying, Hey, we found a healthy saturated fat that's not only healthy, but it's essential. And if you don't get enough of it, it's going to cause a nutritional deficiency, and it's going to make our kids age faster. The amount that you need to, the amount of grit you need to have to stay in the game, because we're following the data and the patterns continue to show. Your you're talking at this point when you were struggling and you had this revolutionary potentially revolutionary idea yeah it becomes easier of doing you know teddy roosevelt's quote of being in the arena right it's not the critic who counts it's the person who's

in the arena who's bloodied and marred and bruised. And because you know that you're pursuing, you have the opportunity to pursue something great, whether you fail or not. Do you feel like you're in the arena right now? Oh, yeah. We haven't been out of the arena for about 15 years. Is that on the entrepreneurial side? It is. I do feel it's more kind of like we're in the arena, but now the arena is filled with cheering fans. Yeah. And we have lots of people in the arena with us.

Okay. So it's a different world. That is a different world. So it's different. It must feel very different than it was when he was deployed. But okay, so let's go back to the finding. And it's really important. You just mentioned it, but I just want to highlight an essential fatty acid and it happens to be essential saturated fatty acid so essential i

understand that means i need this thing that's right okay and if i don't get it from consumption of food i need to get it in some other way right okay so when i read your research on this i was like how did i not know so So thank you. And then secondly, you're providing a source for it, which is really important. I want to get to that later. Get to the context first of like why fatty acids, how they sit and then how they're, where fatty acid sits in the, in, I'm sorry, where C15 sits in all the fatty acids and where fatty acids make a difference for human health. Gotcha. So with fatty acids, so when we think about nutrients, let's start from that perspective of what's in food and things that we need, right? There are lipids, carbohydrates, and proteins.

We were going to be really simple about it, of the macronutrients. And so within the lipids, it's the fatty acids. So we're used to hearing, and it used to be seen back in the 1920s, all fats were bad. Sorry, fats were meaningless. All they did was provide calories. And then they went to this world of all fats are bad. And then we started learning that as we understood different types of fatty acids, that they have different roles. And that's where people started understanding things like polyunsaturated fatty acids, like omega-3 and omega-6, have a lot of these health benefits. So we're going to get nerd out a little bit with regard to chemical structure.

No, please do. Okay, great. Please do. No, this is really important. That if we look at the chemical structure of a fatty acid, that completely determines its role in our bodies. So if it's an unsaturated fat, then it just means that it has a double bond in it. Unsaturated equals there's a double bond.

Every time there's a double bond in that structure, it's able to bend. So it creates a bending point, which is great because it provides flexibility. It's why they're oils. Like an omega-3 oil. Exactly. And then a polyunsaturated fatty acid means it has multiple double bonds. So that's all good, except for the fact that each of those double bonds is a weak point for oxygen to attack it to undergo lipid peroxidation, which is what we know is rancidity. And that's why that I think the, call it the skin of the oils that I take,

right, like in the supplements are so thick. That's right. Yeah. And it's not easy to get in the supplements are so thick. That's right. Yeah. And it's not easy to get down sometimes. That's right. That's right. So risk of rancidity. And as we get older, it's not just in our bottle,

but as we get older, these fatty acids, all fatty acids play a really important role in our cell membrane. So our cell is surrounded by its own skin, right? Its own armor called the cell membrane. That cell membrane is made out of fatty acids right? Its own armor called the cell membrane. That cell membrane is made out of fatty acids. Yeah, myelin is a good example in the brain.

And then all of our cells, whether it's a heart cell, liver cell, they all have these cell membranes. So the myelin and omegas are really important. Nervonic acid and omegas are really important for brain health. And that's one of the reasons I run that panel for nervonic acid as wellic acid and omegas are really important for brain health. And that's one of the reasons I run that panel for nirvanic acid as well, but certainly omegas for heart health, but for brain health. And we also found this is 10 general to your, to the main point I want to get from, from this conversation, but we also found that, um, so myelinization is the, the, the fatty tissue around dendrites, right? And when people do mental imagery,

it also strengthens the myelinization of the nerve bundle that you're wanting to activate, which is wild. How great is that? Wild to think about. It's changeable. Yes, but if you don't have the right substrate, meaning the fatty acids to support the myelinization, let's call it the rubber tubing around your electricity in your brain,

that you're not going to run smoothly. Yes. And so you need the substrate from a supplement or nutrition or some sort of source. And you also need to do expert movement. And you need to do maybe some mental imagery. And the three of those combined is like a pretty cool recipe for thinking about being really proficient with a well-grooved movement or set of movements. And all of a sudden it's malleable, right? This is the important point. Yes. Yes.

So fatty acids play these different roles. Now, saturated fats are mean they have no double bonds. So they're just a string of carbons. So it could be C15, C16, C17, string of carbons in which they have no double bonds, no bending points. They're just straight structured fatty acids. And because they don't have double bonds, they're highly resistant. In fact, they're resistant to attack by oxygen. So within saturated fatty acids, we've always been taught saturated fats are bad, which is why we shouldn't drink whole fat milk and eat butter is because of these saturated fats. What the world now is coming to understand, Michael, and this is many, many, many studies repeatedly showing the same thing, which is there are two types of saturated fats. There are even chain saturated and odd chain,

simply based upon the number of carbons. C15 is an odd chain saturated fatty acid. C16, C14, these are higher present in much higher levels in the foods, are kind of our naughty foods, like 40% higher in these foods. These continue to be, these are even- This is like red meat type of stuff? Yeah. Okay. These continue to be associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease. These are pro inflammatory saturated fats. So it's not that we got it all wrong. It's just that there were these little trace odd chain saturated fat, specifically C15

is this Goldilocks odd chain saturated fatty acid. That's so important. That's essential to have in our cell membrane to serve really a lot of different roles. But one of the main ones is to just stabilize our cell membranes so they don't get fragile and fall apart. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines

into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to run warm at night and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently, which has made a meaningful difference in how I show up the next day for myself, my family, and our team here at Finding Mastery.

It's become part of my nightly routine. Throw on their lounge pants or pajamas, crawl into bed under their sheets, and my nervous system starts to settle. They also offer a 100-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty on all of their bedding, which tells me, tells you, that they believe in the long-term value of what they're creating.

If you're ready to upgrade your rest and turn your bed into a better recovery zone, use the code FINDINGMASTERY for 40% off at CozyEarth.com. That's a great discount for our community. Again, the code is FINDINGMASTERY for 40% off at CozyEarth.com. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Caldera Lab. I believe that the way we do small things in life is how we do all things. And for me, that includes how I take care of my body. I've been using Caldera Lab for years now. And what keeps me coming back, it's really simple. Their products are simple and they reflect the kind of intentional living that I want to build into every part of my day. And they make my morning routine really easy.

They've got some great new products I think you'll be interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair serum. With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding more. It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high-quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding So big takeaway for me is that we do need saturated fat. And C15 is one that helps to support cell membrane.

It's the last thing that you just said. And the reason that cell membrane is so important, the integrity of cell membranes are so important is because cells really run the whole show. That's it. Right. And so if you have a weak cell membrane, what ends up taking place? So it's called, it's a new, well, we have always known that if the cells become more fragile, our cell membranes become more fragile, it's the process of aging. So it's really the more fragile our cells become, the more accelerated the aging process happens. Our mitochondria stop working as well. Our tissues, our organs stop functioning. Which is the energy source.

Exactly. Our organs stop functioning. So it's like you took a Benjamin Button situation. So it's more like if you took aging and then you accelerated it. So when you have a weak cell membrane. When you have a weak cell membrane, which if you don't have the right saturated fat structure, because it's not double bond, would you say single bond? Single bond. Is that right? That's right.

Did I say it right? Yeah, single bond. Yeah, single bond. There's no oxidization. And so it's a stronger unit, if you will, that binds on the cell membrane. Okay. This feels, when you said Goldilocks, it feels like a eureka moment. Like, wait a minute, where are we getting the C15? Now,

where were the dolphins getting it? From those candle, what'd you call it? Yeah, the candlefish. The candlefish? Is that where they were getting it? Yeah, the eulacons way back when. It ends up that not all- Wait, what'd you call it? Eulacons. Eulacons. Eulacons. And they're not in the wild anymore. They're kind of not a lot.

Is krill the replacement? Are they saturated? They have some, but not a lot. So fish ends up not being a great resource anymore for C15 because fish in general have less. Sardines as well. Sardines could be okay. And salmon could also be a good source. You have to eat so much salmon to get the right. Yeah.

And it's in the skin and the heads. Yeah. I was going to say, I almost feel like this right, like, yeah. And it's in the skin and the heads. Yeah. I was going to say, I almost feel like this is, we've been sold a bill of goods. Cause when I look at the skin in the heads and I don't eat skin in heads, I'm like, okay. So I don't know how much salmon I need to eat. And then I'm, you know, I don't know. So I feel like, I feel like if you're going to eat salmon, make a choice to eat fresh or wild salmon, not a choice to eat fresh or wild salmon.

Absolutely. Not the farm corn fed stuff. But okay. So can we get enough fatty acids just from salmons? Probably not. Correct. That is correct. And so our, so while the dolphins were getting their C15 from certain types of fish.

Which ones? They were getting it specifically from pinfish and mullet. Sure. So again, not fish. And again, skin and heads. again, skid and heads. So that's just for dolphins. For us, our primary source of C15 has been whole fat milk and butter. And we took it out. Yeah, we have demonized both of those.

And so we know now. For good reason, I think. Yeah, so again, like I said, it wasn't that the whole story was wrong, but it was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And so we know now that as our C15 levels have gone down, like in the 1950s, average American drank two cups of whole fat milk per day. Should my 16-year-old son, my wife is like, have you had a glass of milk today? And I'm like, I don't know.

This seems like it's really old for my son to be drinking whole milk. I'm not asking you for advice for my 16-year-old directly, but is that an old idea? Or would you give your 16-year-old a glass of milk a day? As I'm saying it, this seems ridiculous. I'm asking you this, but- If my 15-year-old would drink a glass of high-quality whole fat grass-fed milk, I would want him to do it. He won't drink milk. But a few things have happened. So not only have we – so we know that our C15 levels have been declining population-wide. I like how you pivoted. We know how – and I will get to this.

I'm going to get to your answer. And we know that we need 0.2% of C15 in our cell membranes. Say it again, 0.2%. 0.2% of total fatty acids in our cell membrane to keep those cells stable. If we don't, we have a deficiency syndrome called, it's a nutritional deficiency syndrome called cellular fragility syndrome. We just

published in the peer review journal. CFS. So C15 deficiency is called cellular fragility syndrome. So fragile cells through this paper, we help explain it's a culmination of 10 years of research showing that decreasing C15 is leading to more fragile cells, accelerated aging, and in fact, maybe explaining why we're seeing increased aging associated diseases, things like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease in younger and younger people. I love this for a lot of reasons. One is like, I'll just see if I can frame it this way. When there's an airplane disaster, it's not just one thing. And it's not certainly the last thing that you would look at, right?

Like the pilot fell asleep or like there was a fuse that went, you know. It's something further up the chain that we can point to like, oh, I think there's the origin story. And there's multiple events that take place. So we're going way up the chain, not to overuse the word here. An odd chain. An odd chain, right. Yeah, 15 of them maybe to be able to say, hold on, this thing, the Goldilocks idea, this thing is missing.

And there's this downstream effect that's taking place. And the culprit is our self-structure is losing its integrity. That's right. Okay. And then if you were to take it, let me see if I have this right. If you were to take an octogenarian that is doing great, an 80-year-old that is like really thriving, and we looked at their cell structure, and they don't have type 2 diabetes, and they don't da-da-da-da-da.

So health is not the absence of disease, right? But in all practical purposes, they're doing great. Would we say in that person, there's a strong likelihood that their C15 is also healthy? Yes. You would make that leap? Oh, it's not even a leap. So there are, from a couple angles, so there are multiple studies called meta-analyses where it's studies looking at other big studies and pulling all the data together.

There are multiple meta-analyses showing that the higher the level a C15, higher the level C15 people have in their blood, the less likely they are to have type 2 diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease, certain types of cancers. They live longer. And that gets to your question with regard for an 80-year-old. We do know that as we get older, our C15 levels decline. For what reason? We don't know.

We're not drinking at all. So is it because we're less likely to absorb C15? And you don't think this isn't something you get in the sun? This is not something you get from? It's completely from the diet. It has to be consumed. And so when from the diet. It has to be consumed. And so when we look at Sardinia, right, which is a longevity blue zone, they- So is Arcadia right up the street?

Yeah. That's right. There is, you know, we can do that. Yeah, that's right. Arcadia is a good- Let's be exotic for a minute. We'll do Sardinia. Yeah.

I do think they are a special case. And so what they've, so what a study showed with Sardinians, and this is where most men are likely to live beyond 100 of anywhere in the world. And they're less likely to die because they aren't dying from heart disease. So when we look at C15 in this population, and they were in this age range of 65 to 80 years old, they had C, they have C15 levels of 0.6. So we're talking, let's not have 0.2 to be deficient. The average person in the United States maybe has 0.22% of C15. So they're doing okay. Sardinians have three times more C15. They're living longer. And a large study came out from Harvard, separate study showing that people who have higher C15 levels, 0.4 to 0.6, less likely to develop heart disease.

So, you know, it's more than just a job. So if you want to be in the strike zone, 0.4 to 0.6 is what we're looking at. You do have it? I am. I'm at 0.42. So, you know, so again, I take nutritional high performance blood draws twice a year. And I don't think I've ever seen a C15 marker. I don't think that I've ever pulled it. So this is something I can, of course, omega-3, 6, nirvanic acid, oleic acid, and, and, and.

But I've never pulled C15. So you can ask for it. Yeah. So I'm going to from now on. Absolutely. I'm going to send it to you. Good. Please do.

You're going to have to specialize my dosing. We're going to monitor. Yeah. So I am taking, I do take two capsules a day. And so, and that's what I'm taking to right now of your product. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Fatty 15. Yep. And so I'm taking two and I mean, I need to get the evidence to see, you know, and I and do you notice anything when you take it or is it, okay, what do you notice? Yeah, so when we first brought, so working again, this is with the Navy, the task was to develop a pure C15 supplement that could help then the Navy dolphins. Offset.

Yeah, basically continue to age well. This was all funded by the Office of Naval Research. Our dolphins getting it way, you know, 10 years before the human population. So that was the intent of the research. As we started developing and as this came out as essential fatty acid, our own medical advisors were saying, listen, Steph and Eric, you have a moral obligation to bring C-15 to the world. Like this is before we even knew about the deficiency syndrome. So when we brought it to the world, we had so much science behind it.

And then now lots of countries have been brought in bringing in more and more science supporting. When did that crest? I'd say 2022 is probably when all of a sudden the world was like, and so every three weeks, there's a new study coming out on C50. Yeah. So I caught my radar maybe like 18 months ago. Yeah. And I felt like I was late to the game. You're, you're still on the cusp. Yeah. And so you, well, you are, you're definitely early. So it's, this is really exciting for me for a lot

of reasons. And I do want to make sure I'm hitting some of the point counterpoints. I think the narrative is very clear of what it is. I have no idea my baseline of what I'm taking. I wish I would have taken it before. I know. Well, so you can start now. And you may be able to go back because you may have some of those panels that you were doing before may have actually measured C15.

Can you ask? You can go back and ask. They don't keep those, do they? They, oh, they, yeah. They keep them. They might have them. Oh, that's really cool. Okay.

So I will do that. Yeah. Okay. Now, let me go, let me do counterpoint stuff to make sure I'm not missing some tricks here. Because I think we would all agree that there's upsides downsides double-edged swords there's like there's nuances to to just about everything in life so my my family has a history of cholesterol issues so I manage mine um intelligently and so um sugars and carbohydrates mainly sugars are the ones that I I'm paying way more attention to than I am fats.

Right. Okay. I think that that's what literature would suggest. Okay. So that being said, I am thoughtful. I don't eat red meats for a cholesterol reason. But the main reason I don't eat red meat is because I like to pet cows. And so there's a compassion.

They're pretty awesome. They're my favorite, to be honest. Next to dolphins, of course. I would not eat dolphin meat because I feel like I'd want to play with dolphins as well. So I don't eat dog meat because I like my dog, you know, like, so I don't have a, I don't have a feeling around chickens though. So, so yeah. Okay. So I'm, I'm eating chickens. All right. Enough of that. So if I'm going to take a saturated, I don't take them. I don't supplement with omega-6. I do threes. And I think that you would nod your head that that's probably a good choice.

And then, so why would I supplement with a saturated fatty acid? Right. And so that you can get just the Goldilocks fat. Just the Goldilocks. Yeah. Because everything else- Just for cellular structure is what you're suggesting. For cellular structure. We didn't go into the whole meat, maybe not the right word to say, but we didn't go into the-

Good link. The deep, the depth of it. Dive in. How about that? We didn't dive into all the science behind C15, but it's actually- Still a pun, but I appreciate it. It's still a more appropriate one.

Yes. But it is a very promiscuous molecule. It taps into multiple longevity pathways. It activates AMPK. It inhibits mTOR. Well, hold on. Let's do this. It does all kinds of stuff. Can. It taps into multiple longevity pathways. It activates AMPK. It inhibits mTOR. Hold on. Let's do this.

Can you go there? Yeah, yeah. I can go there for sure. Yeah, yeah. So the first one is it makes cells stronger, which is good. Okay, check the box in critical for what we just talked about. And before we go to these other benefits, I'm getting the Goldilocks when I'm taking C15. That's right. Fatty 15 is your product name. And I'm not getting some of the downstream negative effects from saturated, other saturated fats. That is exactly it. And the biggest question we get, Michael, is come on, like just drink milk,

just eat meat and you can get your C15. You could get the same amount of C15. And the reason we developed it, the reason why the Navy funded this work is because when you look at studies for drinking whole fat milk, you do not see it. There's zero consistency in saying drink two cups of whole fat milk and you will have a lower risk of diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease. So there is not that link. There is not that link. You can find a paper, but then you can equally find a paper saying that it has an increased risk or that it has no effect at all. And the same thing for meat. There was a group that met specifically to address this question of dairy fat versus

ingredients within it that have benefits, have health benefits. They met in Copenhagen. And the result is they came out of that meeting saying that in most cases, the best way to get your nutrient is from eating whole food. The exception appears to be dairy fat because very specific ingredients like vitamin D, right, and C15, they do exceptionally well in the lab on their own. But when you mix them with dairy fat, that it dilutes the effect. There was a study done in which they actually gave a mouse model of type 2 diabetes, C15, C17 sister molecule and whole dairy fat. And what they found is C15 had remarkable benefits, lowering insulin, glucose, liver fat. Lowering insulin.

Yep. In a good way. C17 had some benefits, anti-inflammatory, but not as good as C15. Okay. And the whole fat dairy made it worse. Pro-inflammatory, pro. So the whole point is, know it's it really genuinely it's not a spin you know it's genuinely this was developed to enable us to get that benefit and i

love that you just said that this is not a spin you're not spinning research to say you don't have time for that no okay so yeah you probably would find some relief in that it like look we need to get back the campaign is to get back to milk. And you're saying that, yeah, there's a place maybe for it for my 16 year old. Especially kids. Yeah. Right. I didn't know about C15. I was just thinking bone health and like, I didn't, but you're saying yes for cellular integrity, cellular, not cellular integrity, but cellular structure and the lining of the cells. What is that called?

Yeah. The cell membranes. Cell membranes. Cell membrane integrity. All right. So, okay. Let me hit another one is on cholesterol. So saturated fats and cholesterol. Let's go back to that just for one more time is you're saying this is the Goldilocks effect, no issues. Right. So let's go talk about the history of saturated fats and cholesterol. So 1977, right, a lot of older men were dying from heart disease. Way too many men were dying from heart disease. It really was extraordinary numbers. The culprit was that they attributed to was high cholesterol. And they said, what's causing high cholesterol? Butterfat, milk, saturated fats. And so by decreasing that, we can help fix the problem. So even chain saturated fats and so by decreasing that we can help fix the problem right so um even

chain saturated fats can increase cholesterol uh levels and that is so there has been some backing with regard to that when it comes to the i chain fatty acids when we looked at the dolphins when we looked um when we moved c15 into the lab we did eight studies over three years to really understand mechanisms of action how does it work what? What dosing? It lowered cholesterol, LDL cholesterol. And there was a recent study that just came out of Singapore in which they'd used this pure C15 supplement, the same ingredient, fatty 15, at 300 milligrams among women who were overweight, had fatty liver disease and high cholesterol, and it lowered their LDL cholesterol. So in models, in this model of people who have high cholesterol because of this syndrome, everything points to it supports lowering that LDL cholesterol. Will it do that for every phenotype? I think that's where like familial, the studies just have to be done.

So, and for folks that get confused because it's easy, LDL and HDL, this is an oversimplification of it, but LDL is considered, I don't even want to say bad because it's old. It's like left brain, right brain. That's not how we really think about things anymore, for functionality at least. But these are the ones that tend to, of course, correct me if I'm wrong, tend to be an issue for calcification. Yeah, a couple of things. And the really important part you're getting to, Michael, is that what we're understanding about LDL cholesterol is especially things like oxidized LDL cholesterol. So remember we're talking about oxidation, rancidity, when that happens and then the particle size, the smaller the size of the LDL cholesterol, think of it as a bullet instead of a snowball. And if you have bullets going

through your blood, it can penetrate through your, into your vessels, set up inflammatory responses and that increases the risk. So just like you said, it's no longer. It's size. So it's like how much small LDL cholesterol that I have versus fluffy LDL cholesterol and how much of it is oxidized. If it's oxidized, it's So everything we do know of C15 with regard to like oxidation, that it's going to lower oxidative LDL, right? So which are exactly the bullets, the dangerous ones. And there was an association. So epidemiological studies showing that people with higher C15 had, again, the safer levels

of the healthier, if you want to call it LDL cholesterol. Okay. So C15 and LP little a C15 and APOB. Yeah. So those, it, it lowers both. So, which is, can be good in some cases you want to see one go up and the other go down or change. I don't know.

So I'm out of my lane a little bit, but apob you you for the most part you want that to be that's one of the strongest indicators i think of of events cardiac events right so yeah i'm trying to get my apob down so it does both and ideally like when you talk about therapeutics it's something that's specifically targeting apob and it lowers that it's an equal opportunist with regard to LDL. It is. So, you know, again, trying to understand causes, you know, we talk about C15 being this really important uproot thing.

And so it's figuring out if it's a genetic problem, does it help with that? We're still figuring that out. Okay. But this is not something that somebody with a high APOB or a high LP little a would be concerned like this this you wouldn't say writ large you wouldn't say uh this could be an issue like you'd say no these are probably gonna it's probably gonna have a beneficial effect to those two indicators yeah and what we always say right is take it work get your blood work beforehand get it afterward work with the physician and work with a physician. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, for sure.

Because we're all different. We're all different bodies. And there is no one shot that fixes everybody. Okay. I've got to ask you, why the name? Fatty 15? I know. Yeah.

So where did that come from? Yeah. Well, we went to a great crew with regard to branding. How do we bring this out to the world? Because we're veterinarians and physicians, right? And not marketers. But the goal is how do we increase awareness? How do we bring C-15 to the world?

And so they laid out a bunch of different names for it. They said, let's bring it out as a supplement to have accessibility. Let's build the world of C-15 or the rest of the world. So they laid out a bunch of cards. There were probably 50 cards. And in the middle, like Oceana and see something or all kinds of fun stuff.

And there was one that just said fatty. And we took it and we're like, OK, well, not that one. And then we just started talking about we probably spent an hour. I don't know, Eric, talking about fatty. And it generated so much conversation, Michael, that we said, it's time to own it. Like, why were we afraid of using the word fatty? It is a fatty acid.

So we said, let's do fatty 15 so that we can help add the scientific part to it. It's a 15 carbon fatty acid. We can evangelize the word fatty because my mom, when she heard the name fatty, she's like, she was almost in tears saying, this is reminding me of my childhood when kids would make fun of me. How could you possibly name a product after this? And we said, mom, we're going to evangelize fatty 15. So the word fatty is no longer an insult and that won't happen to kids here forward. And she's like, I get that. And so ever since then, it's so we've, and it's happened. It's fatty, fatty 15 is fatty 15. We very rarely get people asking the question.

It just is. And it's a beautiful world of nerdy do-gooders. It is. Yeah. Oh my God. And fatty acid. So I mean, I completely get it. And yeah, hey fatty. Yeah. And you're like, you're pushing that right in the brain. Well, not that the nine-year-old kid that is being bullied in that way is going to say, I have my C15. That's not what- It doesn't work. Yeah. but I totally get what you're doing and I really appreciate that. Great. Thanks. What are the other important fatty acids for us to pay attention to? Yeah. So I think it's, it's, it's an understanding that we need to learn more about all fatty acids. We have just scratched the surface of understanding activities of polyunsaturated versus unsaturated versus saturated fatty acids.

And so I don't have a short list. My goal of saying, hey, pay attention to these ones today. I think we've learned, like, for example, the metabolite is pentadecanol carnitine being an endocannabinoid. What? Like that was never known before. So what we're really encouraging is let's use the science that's been used to advance pharmaceuticals. We have amazing screening tools to understand

mechanisms of action, pharmacological activities, doses in new molecules that have never existed before. We need to apply those same technologies to understand the fatty acids that are sitting right in front of us. And that is how we discovered C15. It's how we can really start being able to, you know, separate the wheat from the chaff with regard to fatty acids. And to be able to look at, we have Jekyll and Hyde fatty acids out there, too, that they could be good in some ways and bad in others. The best way to understand that is to apply these pharmaceutical screening techniques. And it's not hard. Finding Mastery is brought to you by iRestore. When it comes to my health, I try to approach

things with a proactive mindset. It's not about avoiding poor health. This is about creating the conditions for growth. Now, hair health is one of those areas that often gets overlooked until your hair starts to change. That's when people pay attention. That's why I've been loving iRestore Elite. It's a hands-free red light therapy device that helps stimulate dormant hair follicles, helps to support regrowth. It's a clinical grade device.

It's simple to use. It fits right into the rhythm of my day, whether I'm meditating, reading, prepping for one of our clients here at Finding Mastery. It's really simple. Now, red light therapy has some pretty amazing research behind it when it comes to cellular energy, tissue repair, inflammation control, as well as healing. iRestore is using those same principles to help your hair thrive i really like this product i use it last night i use it on a regular basis they also offer a 12-month money-back guarantee so if you don't see results they'll refund you no questions i love that they have real confidence

in their product and because you're a member of the finding mastery community right now they're offering our listeners huge savings on the iRestore Elite. When you use the code FINDINGMASTERY at iRestore.com slash FINDINGMASTERY. Again, that code is FINDINGMASTERY at iRestore.com slash FINDINGMASTERY for exclusive savings. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Lisa.

Sleep is one of the foundational pillars of high performance. There's no arguing that. And when we have great sleep consistently and deeply, we give ourselves the best chance to operate at our best. Physically, cognitively, emotionally, sleep affects it all. That's why I care about the environment that I sleep in so much. And of course, a great mattress, it matters.

One of our teammates here at Finding Mastery has been sleeping on a Leesa mattress for over a year now, and it's made a noticeable difference. They specifically chose one from their chill collection because they sleep hot, something I know many of us can relate to, myself included. What are they reporting back? Fewer wake-ups, deeper rest, and feeling more recovered when they jump into their work here at Finding Mastery. Lisa has several models to choose from. So whether you're a side sleeper, a stomach sleeper, or somewhere in between, there's a fit designed specifically for you. And what I appreciate most is their purpose. They've donated over 41,000 mattresses to people in need. I love that. So right now you can get 25% off all mattresses at lisa.com plus an extra $50 off when you

use the code finding mastery at checkout. That's lisa.com. The promo code is finding mastery for 25% off and then plus an extra $50 on us because quality sleep is just too important to leave to chance. C15 and mTOR and some of the other indicators that you were pointing to. Can you just speak a little bit to those that folks, this is for the listener who really does enjoy this level of detail for optimizing health. And so can you get into some of that where C15 will be supportive or facilitive for this part?

Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk C15 and longevity. Yes, thank you. We start with nutrition. Let's not fall apart. Okay, good. Yes, yes. Great. Now, all the support of C15, not only as just getting back to baseline,

but we can actually optimize it so that we could live longer. Because our cells are healthier. Yeah. And so there's actually this thing called the cell membrane pacemaker theory of aging, which came from A.J. Holbert. Not not me. There are so many smart people that came before dolphins and us.

But they A.J. Holbert, what he found was he did this fascinating study where he showed the stronger the cell membrane in a mammalian species, the longer it lived. So humans have stronger cell membranes that are more resistant to lipid proxidation than mice. Ha! He just discovered like the key to longevity of how we can live while humans live 37 times longer than mice, stronger cell membranes. So it's one of many theories, but C15 fits into that. So that's part one. Before we get down into the weeds one more time is what are some other ways to increase the health integrity of cell membranes? I mean, we are what we eat. So the really good thing

is that within days we can actually completely change the structure of our cell membranes based upon the fatty acids that we eat. Isn't that awesome? No way. Yeah. So if you're ripping beer and pizzas and then next day you're eating organic whatever's like it's starting to... You can influence those. Ideally, you want to stay on the healthy track so that you can actually keep a healthy cell to have its long-term effects. But we really are what we eat when it comes. So the healthier, the better the balance of fatty acids that we have. When we talk about omega-3s and omega-6s, we do need to make sure they're not oxidized. How do you make sure they're not oxidized? Eat fish.

Yeah. So what about supplementation? You know, it's about, about fit reliably about 50% of omega-3 supplements on the market, regardless of the price or where you get them, um, have some level of oxidation. It's just, there's, it's not the manufacturer's fault. It's the structure that as soon as it gets exposed to oxygen, it has this effect. So the best way to get omega-3s because they're so fragile is fish and nuts and fish eyes. You can just get fish. Good fatty fish is good. Have you had fish eyes? I have not had fish eyes. And my dad is Asian, Chinese. And then the person of honor at the

table used to always get the eyes and the head. And now I get it. Now you understand. They didn't even understand it was a C15 bolus. Yes. Okay. But anyway, so longevity. So, yeah. So high integrity cells, high integrity food, check.

I'm sure you're going to point to some sort of movement or nutrition. I'm sorry, movement or exercise. Yeah. Yeah. So, so other components that help with regard to, so example, well, for food, Sardinia, they moved away from meat. They've actually replaced meat with cheese. And it's cheese that they make from locally grass-fed sheep and goats. The cheese that we know the most from them is Pecorino.

It has twice as much C15, like these good cell- know, cell stabilizing fats as like butter from. So I love cheese. Like it's like, I really love a cheese board and I always, my thinking when I'm eating it, which is, and I know that this impacts the way I even metabolize food is I'm like, ah, this is like probably not that healthy, but I really enjoy it. I wonder if I can maybe start, because the way that you think about what you're doing actually influences so much of the processing of it. So if I change it, like, hey, I might be getting some C-15s in here. Like this way. So yeah. Okay. All right. I do. I, to be honest, I have cheese and

whole grain crackers is my snack. I think that's how I have sardinian level C15 levels is because it's both the supplement. So fatty 15 paired with cheese, I think it takes, you know, it's, it's, it's the combined effect. And I, I do, our family does eat cheese, uh, like goat and sheep cheese over cow cheese. Yeah. And grass fed. That's right. Um, fat has twice as much C15 as corn fed, um, animals with corn fed fat. So it's, how do I know if it's, so if the. And grass-fed fat has twice as much C15 as corn-fed animals with corn-fed fat. So it's, again, another reason. How do I know if the cheese says grass-fed, you know, sheep, whatever? Yeah.

And Pecorino is required, actually. What is Pecorino? Oh, what is Pecorino? It's a sheep cheese. And it's a very hard- This is not a brand. This is a type? It's a type of cheese.

And in order to be called Pecorino, it has to be grass-fed sheep. I think for the first time, we just had Pecorino. Like, this was last weekend. We had some friends over. Yeah. So I'm going to go. And we loved it. It was like, yeah, it's tasty. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And good for you. So, and then the other, other, um, behaviors with scrap this scrap fatty fatty 15, let's go build a pecorino cheese. That'd be a lot of fun too. Right. Yeah. Right. So, you know, fatty 15 and then take some pecorino cheese and then a whole grain cracker and you've got your c15 yeah right you got your c50 your cell membrane covered this is how i'm going to help you yeah and so we would not do red wine because i think there's a gig up on red wine it's not actually a longevity i am reserving judgments on that michael but and and

here's something very real that's happening we know um you know because of c15 deficiencies affecting one in three people globally our cells are becoming more fragile uh we talked with a we just had a clinic not we a clinical trial with fatty 15 just came out two weeks ago from dr jeff schwimmer he's a leader in fatty liver disease in children pediatric fatty liver disease now present in one in 10 kids globally. Didn't show up. One in three people have fatty liver disease. It didn't show up until 1980 after we started taking C15 out of our diet. So Jeff's been pursuing for the past 10 years because of our initial dolphin work, our C15 deficiencies, a cause of why fatty liver disease showed up in the first place. So this latest clinical trial, he showed that when people took, 18 to 24-year-olds took

fatty 15, and they were able to get their doses above nutritionally deficient, so they're nutritionally sufficient, it successfully lowered their liver enzymes. These are people with history of fatty liver disease. My goodness. So we have an opportunity to be able to fix that. And so through, again, through multiple avenues, we also talked about, so with regard to behaviors, there was a study in pregnant women showing that if they exercise, they also had higher levels of C15. And we think it's because they were releasing C15, which is stored in our fat.

So when you exercise. You can release it and you can get, you know, get those benefits. And long-term benefits, you know, we've talked about with regard to supporting ourselves, our long-term metabolic heart and liver health. There were unexpected near-term benefits that I have felt and that about half of our customers feel within two weeks. And that is better, deeper sleep, calmer mood, and less joint pain. We were not, this was a what? Is this subjective report?

Well, yes, subjective report. But not clinically studied? Not clinically studied. And we're like, this is placebo effect. I said, come on. And I realized I was not wandering the hallways anymore between two to four in the morning, which I used to do. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

This is an issue. You would wander, you would get out of bed and wander the hallways? I'd be like that ghost mom, you know. You would. Were you lucid? Just, I was, I was awake. I was awake. Oh, so you were, you were definitely like, you knew what you were doing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so this was not like. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. I know. I need to tap into you here. Okay. So not sleeping side, I would reliably wake up at two in the morning. So that went away. I had joint pain that was starting to kick in because of menopause, the joint pain went away. And so there's some of these things where I'm like, I don't know. So as the research was continuing, we then discovered that our bodies use C15 to make a second molecule called pentadecanoil carnitine or PDC, which is the second ever discovered full acting endocannabinoid. Activate CB1 and CB2 receptors fully. Only the second ever. Better sleep, calmer mood. Yeah. Less joint pain. So we still need to study it more. Endocannabinoid endocannabinoid

yeah so suddenly we had an explanation and the difference is maybe of how much people make so in jeff's study he did show that when people took fatty 15 that there was a significant increase in their pdc levels so more needs to be done on that. And like you said, clinical studies with regard to these. But I do think they're real. I have felt them myself. We have enough people reliably reporting these types of benefits. And it's saying, how well do we make these metabolites? It may differ from person to person. Amazing.

So anyway. I feel like I could keep going and going and going. So I have, and I want to honor your time. and I want to celebrate what you've done. Um, and I do have one more question around kidney health. So, um, have you found anything around kidney support? You mentioned liver, you mentioned heart. We're going to support to, um, you know, brain health at some point, probably. Um, but do you have any indicators around kidney health? We haven't seen a lot with regard around kidneys. And I don't know, Michael, but that's because there haven't been a lot of studies. We ourselves haven't focused on kidney research. There was a paper that came out, we were chatting about it beforehand from another

group that showed that people with higher C15 levels less likely to develop chronic kidney disease. It's association, so we have to be really careful about that versus understanding these mechanisms. So yeah, so stay tuned. Amazing. What an exciting phase right now. And let's do a round two on mTOR and some of the other kind of get into the deep dive. And maybe you could take us home with your wild adventure in life. If the listener or I knew what you knew about living well, what would you point to? How would you capture some of the insights that you've learned over your decades? I think a lot of this is getting back to the basics.

It's going to sound so boring, but over and over it holds true. We have to balance, right, our lives. Don't take away everything of anything and don't do anything in too much abundance. Exercise, whether you like it or not, is an absolute enabler of quality of life, of longevity. And I know you'll appreciate this one in addition to having a healthy diet, in addition to exercising, because it has very real benefits that get repeated over and over again, is a healthy social environment and structure. And that that, along with sleep, needs to be seen as just as critical as to what we're often saying on a medical standpoint,

that our social sphere is so critical to enabling all of those things. And I think it's the one that gets the most abandoned. That comes full circle right back to the dolphins, the women or female dolphins, the female dolphins watching birth, that community. When you were sharing that story, I don't know what happened, but I felt like this real large lump in my throat. I wanted to talk about it. And then we kind of moved on like that feeling of being part of something that's bigger. And, and then I had that feeling in my, in my throat, when you were talking about all of the benefits that you've learned from dolphins, from the C-15 specifically, I had this impulse. I almost said it and I moved on that I really want to hug your dolphins. Oh.

Like this sounds so lame at some level. But like what a gift they have provided not only the military ops, but you and maybe, you know, the cell structure for the integrity cell structure for millions of people. So what a gift that they've given in so many ways. And they feel like loving creatures anyway. And so maybe that's just me putting on a little bit of a show for my appreciation for dolphins. Oh, I love it. You have it spot on.

This is all thanks to dolphins. And imagine if more of us, and as we get these really smart people working in all these great areas, if we turned our attention to how we can help animals beyond humans, man, that came right back to us to help humans. We're able to help both and that we can live in this world, have one health. And I hope that this inspires that this is just the beginning. There's no way it was just Stephanie and an accident with dolphins. The hope is that this opens up the world,

that there's so much more to discover and may this inspire others to do the same. Amazing. And I want to say thank you for us aligning in a partnership between your company and our podcast and our community. And the reason we don't do many of these, and I want to just really highlight what you're doing. You're standing for human longevity and health. You're standing for research and evidence-based innovation, entrepreneurship, a vivacious, fun way of living with a great relationship, you know, like, so the whole thing, and then you were able to talk about, you know, that you faced your dragons with anxiety and health. And so this whole thing feels honest and organic and frontier pushing. And that's why I'm like, really, I hope

that our community stands up and says, okay, look, I'm not exactly sure. It sounds like I need it. And buy 15 bottles for 15 friends. You know, like I just, come on. Like if we're not standing for this, I'm not sure what we're doing. And so what is the price per, like how is the business structure? I hope that you're doing a subscription model. We do. It's critical. right and so kind of get how it helps us get on a program and so um what what is the the basic kind of subscription is it like yeah it's annual it's uh so it's like it would be equal to a dollar 33 a day uh so and when you it please we invite people to please go to fatty15.com go to the reviews and i think you guys have also yeah go to the reviews because that's where you really get to learn it.

And if you want to super nerd out, because I know that we have fellow nerds here, go to discoverc15.com. And that's where all the peer-reviewed science that we put. So a lot of places to go, but the reviews are just such a fun and wonderful place to truly understand what the dolphins have gifted us with. And I think our business people have sorted out a discount for our community. So I'm assuming it's fatty15.com forward slash finding mastery and to take benefit of being part of our community as well. Whatever that is, I'm not sure exactly. Yeah. So I'm so stoked. I just hope that we stand

up and do right by your company so you can keep doing research and you can keep pushing on the frontier. Oh, thanks, Michael. We're, we're so proud to be a part of your world too. Oh my God. That's great. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're

listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to findingmastery.com slash newsletter to sign up. The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously. And the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those deals at findingmastery.com

slash sponsors. And remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend

and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need,

one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.