Every once in a while, some research team comes along and suggests that multivitamins are useless. A waste of money and a waste of minerals that you’re just going to pee out and will do relatively nothing notable to improve your health. But a new set of research suggests that it might be doing something rather valuable: slightly slowing the aging process.
Just not by a whole lot. But it is doing something.
Researchers studying older adults found that people who took a multivitamin showed small but measurable improvements in two biological indicators associated with aging. Over about two years, the supplements slowed these “epigenetic clock” measurements by roughly 1.4 to 2.6 months compared with people taking a placebo.
Again, it’s not like it’s adding decades to your life, but the scientists say that this hints that something as simple as an over-the-counter supplement is readily available at a drugstore can measurably extend your life.
Multivitamins Aren’t the Fountain of Youth, But They’re Not Useless Either
The findings come from a large randomized clinical trial known as COSMOS, which followed more than 21,000 adults with an average age of 72 between 2014 and 2020. Participants were assigned to take a daily multivitamin, a cocoa extract supplement, both, or a placebo. The new analysis, published in Nature Medicine, focused on about 1,000 volunteers who provided blood samples so researchers could track biological aging through changes in DNA patterns known as epigenetic clocks.
These “clocks” attempt to estimate how quickly someone is aging at a biological level instead of just counting their birthdays. When researchers compared the blood data, people taking multivitamins showed slower changes in two clock models called PCPhenoAge and PCGrimAge as compared to people taking a placebo. The effects were so pronounced that participants who appeared to be aging faster at the start of the study showed the greatest improvement by the end of it.
While this research goes to show that multivitamins might actually have a benefit by providing you with a little extra zinc and whatnot every day, the researchers still urge a little caution. Epigenetic clocks are still a relatively new toolset, and scientists aren’t exactly sure how closely small changes in these markers translate to real-world benefit. Also, the study only focused on people over 70, and it’s unclear whether the same effect would be noticeable in a younger person. All that said, multivitamins may not be the fountain of youth, but they are probably helping you eke out a little more time.
Even so, the trial’s size and rigorous design make the results harder to dismiss than many supplement studies. The takeaway is less about finding a fountain of youth and more about incremental progress: aging can’t be stopped, but small lifestyle changes may nudge the process in a slightly better direction.
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