Studies have shown that taking multivitamins won’t extend your life expectancy. According to a recent report published in the journal JAMA Network Open, researchers have shown that healthy people who take multivitamins regularly are no less likely than those who don’t to die of any cause.
Thus, there is no connection between taking multivitamins and a lower chance of dying.
Multivitamins generally consist of a mix of essential vitamins and minerals. While the specific ingredients can differ among brands and formulations, they commonly include vitamins A, C, D, E, and K, various B vitamins, and minerals such as calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, and manganese.
“In the United States, nearly 1 in 3 adults report recent multivitamin (MV) use. Prevalence of use is higher among older adults, women, non-Hispanic White individuals, and those with a college education. Motivations for using MV include maintaining or improving health and preventing chronic disease; consequently, understanding the relationship between MV use and mortality is critically important to public health guidance,” the authors wrote in the paper.
Researchers examined data from over 400,000 healthy American individuals over 20 years, none of whom had a history of cancer or chronic illness. They found no correlation between the use of multivitamins and a lower risk of mortality from any cause, such as cancer, heart disease, or stroke.
“In this cohort study of 390,124 generally healthy US adults with more than 20 years of follow-up, daily MV use was not associated with a mortality benefit,” they explained.
“In contrast, we found that daily MV use vs non-use was associated with 4% higher mortality risk,” they added.
According to the authors, this might be due to the sort of people who take multivitamins: those with age-related health difficulties may be more likely to do so.
“It could be argued that those who are sick or older than 65 years are more likely to initiate MV use. This phenomenon could result in a non-causal positive association since these individuals have a higher risk of mortality than their healthier or younger counterparts,” they wrote.
The researchers updated their study to account for different confounding factors such as race and ethnicity, education, and food quality, as well as the possibility that healthy people are more likely to consume multivitamins.
“First, it is an observational study and residual confounding by poorly measured or unmeasured confounders (e.g., health care utilisation) may bias risk estimates. Second, there is the possibility for non-differential exposure misclassification owing to faulty memory of sporadic MV usage,” they wrote.
(With inputs from agencies)