"Don't Waste Money on Vitamins"…Daily Users Actually Have Higher Mortality Risk

"Multivitamin Intake Not Associated with Mortality Improvement"

A study has found that taking multivitamins regularly does not help improve health or extend lifespan.

On the 26th (local time), according to JAMA Network Open, a journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Erica Loftfield and her research team from the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) analyzed data from about 400,000 American adults over more than 20 years and revealed that there is no correlation between mortality improvement and multivitamin intake. It was also found that taking multivitamins daily does not reduce the risk of death from other diseases such as heart disease or cancer.

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The researchers conducted the experiment targeting generally healthy individuals with no history of chronic diseases, with the median age of participants (the age of the person in the middle when all participants are arranged by age, which is different from the average age) set at 61.5 years.

During the early period of the study, about 165,000 of the approximately 390,000 participants died, and it was found that healthy people who took multivitamins daily had a 4% higher probability of death during the study period compared to those who did not take vitamins. Regarding this, the researchers said, "This may reflect the harm that multivitamins can cause or the tendency of people to start taking multivitamins when serious illnesses occur." They also advised not to "waste money" by following the trend of nutritional supplements such as vitamins and minerals.

However, in certain cases, multivitamins were found to be useful. Dr. Neal Barnard, a professor at George Washington University School of Medicine and co-author of a commentary published alongside the paper, said, "Historically, sailors were able to escape scurvy with vitamin C," and added, "Beta-carotene, vitamins C and E, and zinc slow down age-related macular degeneration, which can lead to vision loss."

For the elderly, multivitamins may help improve memory. According to a study published in May last year in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by a joint research team from Columbia University, the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and Brigham and Women's Hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School, people who took multivitamins were confirmed to have a slower rate of memory decline compared to those who did not take them.