July 31, 2024

C15

HI ,

I have been super excited the last couple of weeks over the discovery of what appears to be a new essential nutrient for human health. To put a context around that, it has been over 75 years since the last such discovery; vitamin B12. Essential means that if we do not get enough of the essential nutrients, we develop a deficiency disease. Scurvy is an example of not enough vitamin C, or beriberi can occur from not enough vitamin B1. Many neurological symptoms result from not enough vitamin B12. The list goes on. The point is that if we as a society deviate from a traditional well-rounded diet that contains all the nutrients we need, we get sick. 

As an example, beriberi was the result of the fad preference for polished white rice as a food source. Ages ago the royalty in China decided that they liked the appearance and taste of rice that had the bran removed and had been polished. Unfortunately, all the vitamins were in the bran. As the common people followed this fad of polished rice, the deadly beriberi disease started cropping up. The royalty had enough variety in their diets that they got the vitamins they needed from other sources. But the middle class would indulge in eating just the white polished rice and as a result, they ended up with a vitamin B1 (Thiamine) deficiency. This produces various symptoms such as loss of feeling and paralysis or vascular and heart issues.

Part of the fun in the story about the discovery of this new essential nutrient is in how it was discovered – dolphins. The US Navy has two dolphin research programs, one in San Diego and one in Florida. About 15 years ago the researchers started noticing that the dolphins in San Diego were developing fatty liver disease and metabolic syndrome, but the Florida dolphins were not. The order was made to figure it out and fix the problem. After a few years, it was discovered that the fish they were feeding the dolphins in San Diego did not have enough of an odd-length saturated fatty acid called C15:0 (pentadecanoic acid). The warming of the oceans has reduced the formation of this fat in the fish they were using to feed the dolphins on the West Coast, but the fish being fed the East Coast dolphins had enough of this stuff in them. When they supplemented extra C15 into the diet of the West Coast dolphins, their fatty livers healed up and the metabolic syndrome went away. Hooray!

These studies take time and lots of money. It will be years before human studies have been replicated and reexamined from a dozen angles before enough data will be amassed before some consensus will be reached establishing that C15 is indeed a necessary vital nutrient for human health. Then the regulatory agencies will come on board establishing that this should be put in baby formula and if the politicians allow it, eventually it will be recommended that foods containing it be consumed on the food pyramid.

This last step is a big problem because it is precisely because of the food recommendations issued by the government that we are facing an epidemic of metabolic and degenerative diseases. Why is that? The answer is because of where we find C15 in the diet – butter. That's right, precisely what the government has been telling us not to eat for the last 50 years. The huge push to eliminate full-fat dairy from the American diet on the belief that it contributes to heart disease is killing us with early degenerative disease. Over the last 20 years, there has been an actual epidemic of metabolic diseases like non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. The first 20 cases of this were only reported by Harvard back in 1980. Now one-third of the US population is reported to have this disease. That is a real epidemic. Young adults in their 20s are showing up with diseases that 50 years ago only showed up in old people. Just like the polished rice fad, our low-fat fad has created a massive deficiency disease state in America today.

So what is C15 and what does it do? C15 is a saturated fat with 15 carbon atoms in a straight line. This straight line is important. It makes it stiff and rigid. Unsaturated fats have bends in them that make the molecules curl around. Every cell in our body has an outer layer called a membrane. That membrane is made of fat; a mixture of hard plates of saturated fat tied together with flexible loops of unsaturated fat. The strength of the membrane comes from the saturated fat plates while the flexibility of the membrane comes from the action of the unsaturated fats. You need both in just the right amounts or the whole thing just does not work right. Part of that mix needs to be the C15 fat, not very much, but it is essential. Without it the cell membrane becomes fragile and ages very rapidly. For average health, you need 0.2% of the fat in your cells to be the C15 type. SuperAgers, like the 110-year-old men in various blue zones, will show C15 levels as high as 0.6 in their blood. Right now children in America are averaging half the minimum necessary for average health.

Simply put, we have fragile cells because of our current low-fat diet fad. The result is our epidemic of metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, autoimmune disease, obesity, kidney disease, and so on. Every part of the body is affected by fragile cells. We simply age faster. Despite the thousand-fold growth in our medical knowledge, our average lifespan has actually decreased lately. Our health span is getting even shorter. Dementia used to be exclusively an old person's disease. Now we are seeing it show up in folks in their forties. How amazing it would be if all this grief came down to a simple dietary deficiency! That would be amazing.

I am standing in an early adopter position. It will be 20 more years before all the science will be decided on this, but so far, all the science is pointing in this direction. We have a C15 deficiency in this country. So is the solution to simply go back to eating more butter? That would be a delicious answer, but a very slow answer. Plus it is unlikely that we could undo our current dairy ranch management practices. The levels of C15 in dairy are determined by what you feed the cows, sheep, and goats. Grain does not do the trick. They need grass, and higher-elevation grass appears to be even better. You see, animals do not make C15. It is made by particular gut bacteria that only eat particular fibers from particular plants. 

A conference of scientists looking at this issue concluded that for reversing disease, specific supplementation was the best route. If this were 100 years ago, simply eating 3 teaspoons of butter per day was enough to solve this problem. Starting your infants on good sources of C15 to build their cells properly from the get-go is an excellent idea. But for those of us who have already built our cell walls without enough C15 onboard, we need a little bigger push. Currently, the belief is that 100 to 200 milligrams of C15 per day will gradually reverse our damage. I am going for 300 mg per day. My testing says that more than that will not be utilized by my body. 

So why isn't everyone hearing about this? Why aren't the store shelves lined with this stuff? As I said, the science is still very young on this subject, and so far only one company has produced a C15 supplement. Unfortunately, since they are the first to market, they are charging a lot for their product. One bottle, which contains less than 1 teaspoon of C15 is $39 to $49. Their product is called Fatty 15. I am currently in contact with 6 different manufacturers of C15 in various countries to see what kind of price I can get it for. I am interested in how it will benefit me, but if enough interest is expressed by my patients, then I will see about getting the raw material for them as well. Exciting times!

Ellen

I think it has been months, but we finally got out to see a movie. It has been a real dry spell for movies that need to be seen on the big screen. But Deadpool 3 qualified as just such a movie. It was hilarious. It is definitely not child friendly due to the language and comic book violence, but beyond that it was a super hero movie's fan trip down memory lane with characters from many old forgotten super hero favorites.

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