Recent research has found that taking multivitamins daily may help significantly slow the aging process.
According to a study published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine, older adults who took multivitamin supplements daily for two years experienced a slowing of aging effects by about four months compared to those who did not take the supplements.
According to a co-author of the study, through this research scientists are not only trying to understand how people can live longer, but also how they can live better.
Researchers say that although it would be premature at this stage to directly link this data to clinical outcomes, the effects of multivitamin use over two years point in that direction.
Steve Horvath, an expert in the scientific study of aging, described the research as very interesting.
He said that among the general public there is a strong desire to know whether commonly used daily supplements can actually slow the aging process, and this research provides some of the most reliable evidence available so far in this regard.
For the study, scientists examined blood samples from 958 healthy individuals over the age of 70.
To estimate the biological age of the participants, researchers analyzed five epigenetic clocks present in the blood samples. These are biomarkers of biological aging that accurately measure the patterns of DNA methylation, which are molecular markers on DNA at specific locations in the genome.
With increasing age, the levels of these markers change at specific locations in a predictable manner.
The results of the study showed that taking a daily multivitamin significantly slowed the indicators of aging in two out of the five epigenetic clocks, which may also be related to the risk of death.
Although the effects of daily vitamins on biological aging are relatively limited, according to Steve Horvath such consistency across different epigenetic clocks is exactly what scientists expect to observe.
