| Very interesting study just came out. It used a multivitamin supplement in older adults to see if it would improve their cognitive function. Spoiler: it did. Most multivitamin studies are disappointing. Either they’re too short, use a bad supplement that would never work anyway, give a random assortment of standard boilerplate nutrients, or look at the wrong outcomes. This one was in older people—folks over the age of 65. They tracked them for 3 years, quite a long time as far as randomized controlled trials go. Those who took a multivitamin for three years reduced their rate of cognitive aging to a tune of 1.8 years. Overall, cognitive decline “declined” in the multivitamin group by 60%. They used Centrum Silver, a fairly standard, somewhat low-quality multivitamin. Centrum Silver has low doses of most nutrients, poor forms of most vitamins and minerals (synthetic folic acid versus naturally bioavailable folate, for example), and very few antioxidant compounds (it only has lutein and lycopene). Here are some of my takeaways: - Imagine what would happen if you used a higher quality multivitamin that included better forms of the nutrients, higher doses, and more antioxidant compounds. You could use something like my own Master Control Damage Formula, with more and better nutrients, and probably see better results.
- Most interestingly, something called “global cognitive function” increased steadily over the first 2 years in the multivitamin group. 2 years! How often do people take a supplement for a few weeks, “feel nothing,” and stop? It’s a good chance that the people in this study weren’t “feeling anything” either, but they were steadily stacking benefits to their global cognitive function, a marker for overall brain function—the “ability to think clearly and effectively.” Lots of times benefits accrue under the hood without being apparent.
- The effect was most pronounced in the participants with a history of heart disease. In other words, the people with a baseline background of inflammatory, degenerative oxidative stress saw the most benefits.
It’s possible that the multivitamin was just a “catch all” and there are specific nutrients that are responsible for the effect. Regardless, a high quality multivitamin can be an effective insurance policy for older people who aren’t eating the best diet. Valuable info. I’m glad it came out, and I hope we get more research along these lines. | 
