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

Michael Gervais (0:01)

How did studying military dolphins lead to a breakthrough in human health? Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist, and I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Stephanie Venn-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 ground-breaking 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 Venn-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.

Stephanie Venn-Watson (1:57)

Michael, it's great to be here.

Michael Gervais (1:58)

So before we get started, let me just check in. How are you doing?

Stephanie Venn-Watson (2:02)

I'm doing great. You know, 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. Yeah.

Michael Gervais (2:19)

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?

Stephanie Venn-Watson (2:28)

Yeah, I think most important is you. So I grew up in 1970s, you know, suburbia, Denver, outside of suburb.

Michael Gervais (2:37)

Did you drink out of a rusty hose as well?

Stephanie Venn-Watson (2:39)

I drank out of it.

Michael Gervais (2:40)

Exactly.

Stephanie Venn-Watson (2:40)

No, I did not drink out of it. Maybe I did. I didn't realize it was rusty. And, you know, orange shed carpet, wooden walls, you know, all that good stuff.

Michael Gervais (2:48)

Were parents on the hippie side or are they more kind of Oh, they're pretty much straight and narrow. Straight and narrow.

Stephanie Venn-Watson (2:53)

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.

Michael Gervais (3:16)

Like at a young age.

Stephanie Venn-Watson (3:17)

Yeah. And so, like six, five, four, 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 a joy ever since. So from there, I-

Michael Gervais (3:34)

Wait, wait, wait. Yeah, yeah. This is, you know, 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 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 upbringing. But yeah, fast forward that to now. How has the pattern recognition as a wildly successful person been important for you?

Stephanie Venn-Watson (4:15)

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.