The Longevity Diet: Everything You Need To Know

Most of us know we should be eating a healthy diet and getting plenty of exercise, but we’re also curious if there are other effective ways to increase our healthspan and lifespan. Is it possible for us to live healthier, longer lives through our diet? Proponents of the Longevity Diet say yes.

We’ll discuss what this diet is and what science says it can do for our bodies. We’ll also discuss another biohack that can increase your healthspan: a nutrient that many of us are deficient in that could be causing our cells to age faster than they should. 

What Is the Longevity Diet? 

The Longevity Diet was developed by Dr. Valter Longo, an Italian doctor of gerontology who studied populations of people with the highest concentration of centenarians (people who lived to be 100 or older). He studied these people, their lifestyles, diets, and habits, and compiled his research into what is now known as the longevity diet. 

What You’ll Eat on the Longevity Diet

The Longevity Diet bears a striking resemblance to the Mediterranean Diet, but unlike the Mediterranean Diet, the Longevity Diet has slight changes to protein requirements after the age of 65. It also carries a provision for eating all food within a 12-hour period, creating a type of periodic fasting referred to as intermittent fasting. 

You’ll eat a primarily plant-based diet that includes whole grains, legumes, and beans. You’ll also consume sparse amounts of fish, but most of your protein intake will come from chickpeas, nuts, lentils, and beans. Olive oil is used for sauteing and cooking. 

While the Longevity Diet is not a vegan diet, you’ll consume much less red meat and very limited dairy. The dairy that is recommended for this diet comes from goats, not cows. 

What You’ll Avoid 

In addition to limiting red meat and poultry, you’ll also avoid processed, refined foods. The Longevity Diet includes foods that are single-source, nutrient-dense, and rarely processed. 

The carbohydrate foods included in the diet come from sources like whole grains, vegetables, and in-season fruits. It’s important that your carb sources come from whole food, fiber-rich sources. 

You’ll also avoid added sugar on the Longevity Diet, opting instead for a low-sugar diet that consists of sugars from fruits and vegetables only. 

The Science of the Longevity Diet

The research behind the Longevity Diet is remarkable. We’ve known for decades that the Mediterranean Diet is beneficial for promoting weight loss, lowering cholesterol, decreasing body fat, supporting lower blood pressure, and decreasing risk factors for heart disease. 

The Longevity Diet’s approach expands the benefits of the Mediterranean Diet by focusing on the source of the aging process: our cells. Aging begins in our cells, and researchers have identified 12 hallmarks of aging that specifically occur within the cells. 

You might notice that the Longevity Diet is a much lower protein diet than many of the diets that are popular today (consider the Carnivore Diet or the Keto Diet). This is because Dr. Longo discovered that a higher protein diet was associated with stimulation of two growth hormone pathways that are known to accelerate the aging process. These pathways are known as TOR and IGF-1.

In addition, Dr. Longo discovered that inducing a fasting state helped cells reach autophagy, a type of cellular housekeeping that allows cells to remove waste and recycle cell parts to keep them functioning properly. By decreasing protein and inducing a fasted state, the Longevity Diet helps support cellular health, allowing us to stay healthier longer. 

A Giant Plot Twist

If you’ve decided the Longevity Diet is for you, that’s great news. You are well on your way to supporting a healthy lifespan. However, there is a newly discovered plot twist that you should know about, and it involves a nutrient deficiency that may be affecting one in three people worldwide.

Nutritional deficiencies are rare in developed countries. It isn’t likely you know anyone who suffers from scurvy due to vitamin C deficiency. However, a newly discovered nutrient deficiency has not only been discovered in developed countries, it directly impacts the health and aging process in our cells.

The nutrient is pentadecanoic acid or C15:0, and it was first discovered by a veterinary epidemiologist. 

Pentadecanoic Acid: What It Is

Researchers studying longevity in bottlenose dolphins found that populations of dolphins who had a higher level of C15:0 had a lower rate of age-related illness. C15:0 is a stable, odd-chain saturated fatty acid primarily present in whole-fat dairy but can also be found in some types of fish and plants. These scientists took their research further and discovered that the same age-protective benefits that C15:0 had for dolphins were also available to humans. 

As published in Nature in 2020, C15:0 has the ability to support our cells by:

• Strengthening cell membranes (up to 80%)
• Improving mitochondrial function so our cells have the energy to carry out processes
• Reducing ROS inside our cells
• Lowering “bad” LDL cholesterol
• Improving liver enzymes
• Supporting gut health
• Targeting 6 out of the 12 hallmarks of aging.

People with lower levels of C15:0 have a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and NAFLD. Interestingly, people who live in Blue Zones have much higher levels of C15:0 than the rest of the world. In fact, as many as one in three people globally have C15:0 levels that are so low, they qualify as a deficiency. 

Cellular Fragility Syndrome

Having a deficiency in C15:0 can be serious. In a recently published paper in Metabolites, having a C15:0 level of ≤ 0.2% total fatty acids was linked to a condition called ferroptosis, a type of cell death that we’ve known about since 2012. This type of cellular death is associated with faster aging, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and liver disease, especially in younger adults. 

The fact that C15:0 deficiency has been directly associated with ferroptosis has led researchers to name this specific nutrient deficiency the Cellular Fragility Syndrome. When cells are fragile, our bodies become fragile, our aging accelerates, and we experience a decrease in our health span. 

In addition to adopting principles from the Longevity Diet, we also need to address our deficiency in C15:0, but that isn’t easily done with dietary adjustments. 

Diet + C15:0

If people in Blue Zones who follow principles from the Longevity Diet have more C15:0, then it stands to reason that if we also follow this diet, our C15:0 problems will be solved. 

Not so fast. A recent study followed participants on a Mediterranean-style diet (along with caloric restriction) with and without supplementation of C15:0. 

The results were astounding. 

• As expected, people who followed simple caloric restriction experienced weight loss, lower blood pressure, and better insulin regulation.
  
  
• People who adhered to caloric restriction and a Mediterranean-style diet experienced these benefits and a greater reduction in body weight, BMI, and liver fat, even lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels, and a reduction in liver enzyme GGT.
  
  
• People who followed the Mediterranean diet with caloric restriction and supplementation with pure C15:0 received all of the above benefits plus significantly lower total fat mass, visceral adipose tissue, and subcutaneous adipose tissue compared. This group also had lower LDL cholesterol levels compared to both groups. 

The caloric restriction for this study was significant and not recommended for long-term health, which means that increasing our C15:0 intake is an important and addressable long-term solution. Additionally, it’s important to realize that our levels of C15:0 have been lowered over time, with a gradual decline in the consumption of foods that contain this nutrient. 

C15:0 is found primarily in whole dairy products like whole milk and full-fat butter. However, dramatically increasing our consumption of these foods is not an ideal solution, because we’d be consuming excess calories and sugars. 

The people living in Sardinia, Italy, a high longevity Blue Zone, have C15:0 levels that are approximately 0.64% of their total fatty acids, but they get their C15:0 from high C15:0 content cheese made from local, mountainous grazing goats and sheep. Most people living in America don’t have access to this type of dairy product, not to mention, it’s not a vegan-friendly option. 

The only way to know for certain if you’re deficient is by ordering the fatty15 C15:0 at-home test or having your doctor perform a blood test. Additionally, you can determine the result of increasing your C15:0 levels by monitoring your complete blood count, fasting lipid panel, and liver enzymes.

C15:0 levels should be above 0.2% of your total fatty acids to prevent nutritional deficiencies and Cellular Fragility Syndrome. It’s worth noting that in blue zones (where people consistently live to be 100), C15:0 levels usually measure between 0.4% and 0.6% of total fatty acids.

A solution? Fatty15.

Fatty15: The Solution for C15:0 and Cellular Fragility Syndrome 

Fatty15 is the first and only supplement that contains FA15™. FA15 is the pure, vegan-friendly, highly bioabsorbable, award-winning version of C15:0. There are a few reasons why considering a C15:0 supplement is a better way to increase your circulating levels of C15:0 than attempting to do so from a dietary standpoint. 

• First, it's made ready to absorb. In milk (and other foods), C15:0 is attached to branches of lipids called triacylglycerides, aka triglycerides. That means our gut has to use digestive enzymes to break down these triacylglycerides to release C15:0 as a free fatty acid. Once C15:0 is released, it is ready to be absorbed. These multiple steps can make our absorption of C15:0 from foods less efficient. In contrast, FA15 in fatty15 is our proprietary pure, powder C15:0 ingredient already in free fatty acid form. Less work for the gut, more good C15:0 for our bodies.
  
  
• Second, FA15 is not mixed with bad saturated fats. While the good C15:0 fatty acid is present in whole-fat dairy products in trace levels, there are much higher levels of 'bad' even-chain saturated fatty acids that continue to be associated with poorer health. Fatty15 provides just the good fat without the bad fats.
  
  
• Third, it skips the cows and the calories. Whole dairy packs a ton of calories that aren't exactly supportive of a weight loss diet or even a weight maintenance diet. In addition, consuming dairy doesn’t fit with a plant-based approach to nutrition. Plant-based milks are completely void of C15:0, and many non-vegans regularly consume these milks in lieu of cow’s milk. Fatty15 provides the C15:0 you need at only one calorie per dose and no cow involvement. 

Taking fatty15 once per day and adopting facets of the Longevity Diet are two ways you can improve your healthspan and even increase your longevity. It’s a smart decision that will pay dividends in your future.

Eat Well, Get Fatty

We all want to access the Fountain of Youth, and adopting the Longevity Diet and taking fatty15 are two ways to hack the system and live a longer, healthier life, no fountain required. Improving your health is multifaceted, but starting with your cellular health is a good way to experience big differences in your ability to continue doing the activities you love longer. 

Sources:

Scientific Articles | Valter Longo

Hallmarks of aging: An expanding universe | PubMed

TOR and IGF-1 | NCBI

Effect of an Asian-adapted Mediterranean diet and pentadecanoic acid on fatty liver disease: the TANGO randomized controlled trial | ScienceDirect

Pentadecanoic Acid (C15:0), an Essential Fatty Acid, Shares Clinically Relevant Cell-Based Activities with Leading Longevity-Enhancing Compounds

The Cellular Stability Hypothesis: Evidence of Ferroptosis and Accelerated Aging-Associated Diseases as Newly Identified Nutritional Pentadecanoic Acid (C15:0) Deficiency Syndrome

Effect of an Asian-adapted Mediterranean diet and pentadecanoic acid on fatty liver disease: the TANGO randomized controlled trial | ScienceDirect