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As
nutrition research advances over time, occasionally
scientists discover new nutrients or facts that upend previously held
truisms.
It doesn’t mean
that anyone was
intentionally trying to delude us: It just means that science often
moves
slowly, hypothesizing, studying and fact-checking before major
announcements
are made.
Because we often rely on
prior
knowledge to build new paradigms, it’s a big deal to identify
something
entirely new.
For
almost a century, scientists had identified only two
fatty acids (see below) the consumption of which were essential for
health.
A fatty
acid is a long chain of carbons
with an acid
tip that attaches to an alcohol. It
is
technically incorrect to call them fats, since they are only part of
triglycerides, which are only part of fats and oils.
Some
fatty acids are saturated, and others
are unsaturated or monounsaturated, depending on how their carbons are
linked.
A triglyceride
consists of three fatty acids (not
necessarily the same type) attached to each other through a sugar
alcohol
backbone.
This is the form of fat that
is made in the liver and circulates in the blood.
Fats
and oils are fatty mixtures
which differ
according to the sterols, types of fatty acids in triglycerides, and
fat-soluble nutrients they contain.
“Essential”
nutrients are ones not made in our bodies
and without which our bodies can’t function normally, so we
need to acquire
them from food or through the skin.
Human
life depends on all the essential nutrients: Thirteen
vitamins, multiple minerals, nine amino acids and the essential fatty
acids,
which we must ingest in food, since our bodies don’t make
them.
The previously known
essential fatty acids
have chain lengths of 18-carbons, called linoleic and alpha-linolenic
acids
(both responsible for various immune and cellular functions, and found
in
vegetable oils).
Two others, EPA
(eicosapentaenoic
acid, with 25 carbons) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid, with 26 carbons),
are
found in fish oil, and are necessary for nerve cell function and infant
brain development
but also may predispose to bleeding. Scientists believe other, mostly
saturated, fatty acids are rich sources of calories for energy, rather
than
having specific metabolic purposes.
In
2014, a Canadian group of scientists identified an
unusual saturated fatty acid with an odd chain length.
Fatty
acids made in the body have an even
number of carbons.
The newly identified
fatty acid has only 15 carbons, so it’s called C15
(pentadecanoic acid), and
was identified in the blood as being a marker of dairy fat intake. Subsequent
scientists discovered that C15 is
essential for maintaining integrity of cell walls throughout the body,
especially as we age.
The human liver
makes extremely small quantities of it, which makes it essential to
consume it
in the diet.
Food sources are full-fat
cow, goat, or buffalo dairy foods like cheese and butter, seal and
sunflower
oils, lamb and to a lesser extent other fatty animal foods.
C15
fatty acids become part of complex cell wall components
that help maintain the integrity of cells throughout the body,
including those
that comprise our vital organs.
Since
our tissues naturally lose integrity as we age, entrepreneurs,
including a few
scientists, jumped on the C15 fatty acid bandwagon to make claims for
it
improving heart, immune, metabolic and liver health, because those
organs and
systems are only as healthy as are their cells.
No one has yet proved that
C15 is the fountain of youth or that our
cells would implode, dissolving into a puddle of scum if we
didn’t consume it.
I
haven’t found direct proof of C15 prolonging life, but no
one was measuring or studying it prior to 2014, and studies documenting
that
something is associated with longevity don’t happen that fast. Instead,
in the case of C15, scientists study
surrogate measures of health, assuming that, if it can produce chemical
changes
similar to those associated with drugs,
like metformin for diabetics, aspirin for people with arterial disease
and
rapamycin for worms and flies, it too must be life-prolonging.
Rapamycin works
by blocking mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin), which regulates
growth in
cells.
C15 does the same in test
tube
experiments, but we are not test tubes.
Over
the years, I’ve seen multiple studies comparing dairy
foods to single nutrients, such as vitamin D or calcium, which, in
general,
showed better results in those subjects consuming dairy foods. I’m
now wondering if the C15 in those foods
may have been at least partly responsible (along with the happiness
factor of
eating ice cream), or if there is some other yet unidentified substance
in
full-fat dairy foods that is healthy.
In
summary, there is no good human data supporting prolonged
life or better health with C15.
I’ve
decided to hedge my bets by reintroducing into my diet a little butter,
goat
cheese and sunflower seeds/oil but not seal oil, rather than take
abusively
expensive C15 supplements ($150 for 90 capsules. Think about it: $150
can buy a lot of cheese, milk
and sunflower oil), because I
have an ethical
antithesis to scientist-entrepreneurs taking advantage of people with
price-gouging nutritional products and I still trust that consuming a
diet of a
variety of whole foods, plus getting adequate sleep, doing regular
exercise and
having an outlook as calm as possible prolong healthful life in the
absence of
supplements.
I look forward to learning
much more about C15, hopefully from well-designed clinical studies.