Do Multivitamins Help You Live Longer?
While we want most of our nutrients to come from food, many people—about 1 in 3 adults in the United States—take a multivitamin to help fill nutritional gaps in their diet1. And while it has been shown that taking a multivitamin may help delay cognitive decline and improve brain function in older adults, many take multis hoping they will help them be healthier and live longer. But will they?
Researchers from the National Institutes of Health wanted to know, too. Here’s what they found from their study published on June 26, 2024, in JAMA Network Open.
How Was This Study Conducted & What Did It Show? Researchers took data from three large U.S. cohort studies: the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study (NIH-AARP); the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial; and the Agricultural Health Study (AHS). A total of 390,124 participants were included, about 55% of them male and 45% of them female, with an average age of about 62.
Excerpted from Eating Well
