Aging and Dolphins

Scientists are looking at dolphins to study ways to delay the aging process in “humans.” We learned more from Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson of “Epitracker“, a life sciences company, and Dr. Nicholas Schork of Phoenix-based T-Gen.

Dr. Venn-Watson talks about how she thought of the idea of dolphins. It was during her time working with the Navy and studying dolphins in the Navy’s hands and dolphins in the wild. That’s when they discovered that dolphins in the Navy are living 50% longer than dolphins in the wild. As they’ve been monitoring their health, they’ve realized that older dolphins show the same signs of aging as humans do. This includes high cholesterol, chronic inflammation, and even Alzheimer’s.

This groundbreaking theory resulted in a study that’s working so far. How it works is that they take 44 markers you find in your annual physical and measure them compared to a dolphins lifetime.