Blog#238- 3/28/25
THE POWER OF VITAMINS
By
Richard Davis
During my college years I took a nutrition course that taught me a lesson that I have carried throughout my adult life. As the importance of vitamins to the proper functioning of the human body was spelled out it became clear to me that very few people would be able to take in an optimum amount of vitamins on a daily basis.
When you are young you tend to think you are immortal, but I felt like I could use a little help with my immortality so I started taking a daily multivitamin. Over 50 years later I am still taking vitamins and I continue to believe that they have made a difference in my life. The reason that I am thinking about this now is because I read a study that has revealed some very credible new information about the benefit of vitamins.
Of course, there are many people who are diligent about their diet and believe that they are able to calculate what they need and eat accordingly. But I think very few people are able to do that. Vitamins are only one part of the dietary, mix but they are a vital part.
The study I am referring to was described on the Medscape web site and states, “…the Cocoa Supplement Multivitamins Outcomes Study (COSMOS), addressed whether daily multivitamin supplementation, in a randomized clinical trial setting, could slow biological aging as measured by DNA methylation in epigenetic clocks.”
They go on to note that, “.. multivitamins have shown benefits for reducing risks of several chronic diseases …total invasive cancer was reduced with multivitamin supplementation. Further, multivitamins were also associated with a reduced risk of cataracts in the Physician’s Health Study II and with significantly slower age-related memory loss and cognitive decline in three separate placebo-controlled studies of the COSMOS trial.”
It seemed amazing to me that so many types of health problems may be prevented just by taking vitamins. The claims that this study are making seem almost unbelievable because they show that the aging process can be slowed with the daily use of vitamins.
They explain, ‘In all five epigenetic clocks, there was a signal for slower aging in the multivitamin compared with the placebo arm. For the two second-generation clocks (PCGrimAge and PCPhenoAge), there was significant slowing of biological aging in the multivitamin arm compared with the placebo arm, with an average of about 10%-20% slower aging with daily multivitamin use over the 2 years of the intervention. This equated to about 4 months of aging that seemed to be averted or prevented. Among participants who had accelerated aging at baseline, the reported benefits were even greater.”
The scientists do make it clear that vitamins are only a piece of the puzzle and they emphasize that vitamins should not be a substitute for a healthy diet and a health lifestyle. Daily vitamin use is one pill that has almost no side effects for most people. They may not be a prescription drug but they are essential to a healthy body. One could even make the case after reading this study that a daily multivitamin is the closest thing we have to the fountain of youth. And vitamins are a lot cheaper than most other supplements and remedies for ailments. Something that is rare in today’s world.
