There has been a fight for decades about multivitamins. People have questioned whether the nutritional supplements are beneficial or a racket.
Now, a long-term randomized, controlled trial found the strongest evidence yet that multivitamins do move the needle on health. The study, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, compared a placebo, a broad-based multivitamin–multimineral (MVM) and 500 milligrams of cocoa flavanols. People who took the multivitamin for two years showed slower biological aging. The cocoa flavanols made no difference to aging. The study was called COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS). It used almost 1,000 people who had an average age of around 70.
It’s essential to remember that there are two kinds of aging: chronological and biological. Chronological age is how long a person has been alive. Biological age is the state a person’s body is in in relation to how many years they have been alive. If something slows biological aging, it gives a person more years of good health and a lower risk of age-related illnesses.
“Within COSMOS, we are fortunate and excited to build upon a rich resource of biomarker data to test how two interventions may improve biological aging and reduce age-related clinical outcomes,” said senior author and epidemiologist Howard Sesso of Mass General Brigham.
The people who took the multivitamin were four months “younger” compared to the people in the placebo and cocoa groups. The result was the most pronounced for the people with the fastest aging at the start of the study. They may have had more nutritional deficiencies to begin with.
“Nutritional status may partly explain the results, but these epigenetic clocks may reflect other age-related risk factors,” said Dr. Sesso.
And, Dr. Sesso said that the results don’t mean that multivitamins add four months to a person’s lifespan. “What it means is that your trajectory of health moving forward should stand to benefit. It’s hard to know what those four months truly translate to.”
As the study was only two years long, everyone participating remained relatively young and largely healthy. A longer study would allow for more aging and deeper insight into how multivitamins may impact the body. Another drawback of the study is that most participants were white and healthy, free of chronic diseases. It’s hard to tell if these results would transfer over to other races and people with health concerns.
Dr. Sesso concluded by saying that the team’s work “doesn’t take anything away from the importance of a good, balanced, diverse, colorful diet.” Whole foods remain the best way to get all of your vitamins and minerals. However, if you do take a multivitamin already, you may feel some comfort knowing there is now more research on its side.
