 The results of a long-term human study are now in, and three fatty acids, including a very common supplement, have been found to be highly correlated with longer life, while a fourth fatty acid is shown to be a sign of shorter life. I'm your host, Ryan O'Shea, and we'll get you the details in this episode of Lifespan News. A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has shown that a model built on the concentration of four fatty acids predicts mortality in older people, at least as well as a model that uses smoking and diabetes. Many of the results were unsurprising. For example, smoking was shown to decrease average lifespan by 4.7 years. Diabetes decreased average lifespan by 3.9 years. Other findings were a bit more surprising. Of the 28 fatty acid metrics analyzed by the researchers, four were found to predict mortality by substantial amounts. Myristic acid, which is found in coconut milk, dairy, and some baked products, was shown to increase average lifespan by 1.4 years per quintile, meaning that the 20% of people with the highest levels of myristic acid in the bloodstream lived an average of over 5.6 years longer than people in the bottom 20%. Previous research has shown that behenic acid, which is found in peanuts, macadamia nuts, and canola oil, in addition to being produced in the human body, is negatively correlated with coronary heart disease. In this study, the people with behenic acid levels in the top quintile lived an average of nearly 3.2 years longer than people in the bottom quintile. Next is the popular supplement, omega-3, commonly found in fish. The 20% of people with the highest levels of omega-3 were found to live over 4.7 years longer than the lowest 20%. While the three previous fatty acids were positively correlated with lifespan, palmitilaic acid, which is found in macadamia oil, has a strongly negative correlation. People with levels of palmitilaic acid in the bloodstream in the upper quintile were found to have a lifespan an average of 6.6 years shorter than people in the lower quintile. The researchers used their data to build models of mortality prediction. They found that, after controlling for age and sex, a model built on these four fatty acids was at least as effective a predictor of mortality as a model that only took smoking and diabetes into account. Combining smoking, diabetes, and the four fatty acids led to a predictive model that was significantly more effective than a model built around only the known common risk factors. It's worth noting that the levels of these four fatty acids are strongly correlated with one another, so if you have beneficial levels of one, you are likely to have beneficial levels of the others. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to add together the years of lifespan associated with each fatty acid. Additionally, the data from this particular study only applies to people roughly 65 to 76 years of age. It is quite rare to see any wide-scale study of a large human population cohort for lifespan as it requires a tremendous amount of time and effort to get usable data. Analyzing the biomarkers of over 2,000 people and then conducting follow-up monitoring over the next 11 years is no small feat. But while it might be tempting to assume that this study means that coconut milk, peanuts, and canola oil will increase lifespan, while macadamia oil should be avoided, it's far too early and there are far too many variables to draw those conclusions. There are important questions that this study does not answer, such as why these correlations exist and what the causation is. So it's up to other studies to build on this work. And when those studies are conducted, you can expect that we'll be featuring them here on Lifespan News. So make sure to subscribe, share this video with someone you think should see it, and we'll see you in the next episode.