Taking A Daily Multivitamin Might Help Slow How Fast You Age

A pill that tens of millions of Americans already take every morning may do something scientists have long hoped to prove: slow the biological clock ticking inside their cells.

A large randomized clinical trial published in Nature Medicine found that adults who took a daily multivitamin-multimineral supplement for two years showed measurably slower biological aging compared to those who took a placebo. Researchers tracked the effect using epigenetic clocks, molecular tools that read chemical marks on DNA to estimate how fast a person’s body is aging, independent of how many birthdays they’ve had.

The effect was modest, not dramatic. But in a field where most anti-aging research involves extreme interventions like severe caloric restriction or experimental drugs, the idea that an over-the-counter multivitamin could register a detectable change in the biology of aging is worth taking seriously.

What Epigenetic Clocks Actually Measure

As people age, chemical tags accumulate on their DNA in predictable patterns. Scientists have learned to read those patterns as a kind of biological age, one that can differ meaningfully from a person’s actual age. Two 70-year-olds can look quite different at the cellular level. One’s cells may behave like those of a 65-year-old; the other’s may behave more like those of a 75-year-old. Those differences are linked to real health outcomes, including cognitive decline, cancer risk, and cardiovascular disease.

Researchers focused on two well-validated epigenetic clocks, PCGrimAge and PCPhenoAge, both trained to predict mortality and disease risk rather than simply estimate age. Adults taking a daily multivitamin-multimineral supplement, specifically Centrum Silver, showed a slower rate of increase on both measures over two years. Over that period, the difference translated to roughly two and a half to five months of reduced biological aging compared to placebo. That’s a small number, but it’s a number produced by a supplement most older Americans can walk into any pharmacy and buy for under $20.

Who Benefited Most From Daily Multivitamin Use

The data held a particularly interesting finding for people who were already aging faster than their chronological age at the start of the study. Among participants whose biological age was running ahead of their actual age, the multivitamin’s effect was considerably stronger than it was in the rest of the group. For those with the most accelerated biological aging at baseline, the slowing effect on PCGrimAge was considerably stronger than it was for participants whose biological age was tracking normally, while those in the normal or decelerated range saw little to no benefit at all.

A pattern in the nutritional data may help explain why. Participants with accelerated biological aging tended to have lower levels of key nutrients like folate and lutein at baseline, and multivitamin use appeared to raise those levels over time. One reasonable interpretation: when nutritional gaps are quietly driving faster cellular aging, filling them in may ease some of that biological strain. Since COSMOS participants were generally healthy older adults, the benefit could be even more pronounced in populations with poorer diets or greater nutritional deficiencies.

The trial also tested cocoa extract, rich in compounds called flavanols that have shown cardiovascular benefits in other research. Despite earlier lab-based signals that flavanols might influence DNA methylation, the cocoa extract had no meaningful effect on any of the five epigenetic clocks tested. The researchers suggested that its cardiovascular benefits, which have been documented in the broader COSMOS trial, may operate through biological pathways that these particular aging clocks don’t capture.

How The Multivitamin Study Was Run

The findings come from COSMOS, a large randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial that enrolled more than 21,000 adults across the United States. For this specific analysis, 958 participants, women 65 and older and men 60 and older, were randomly selected for DNA methylation testing, with blood samples drawn at the start of the study and at one and two years of follow-up. Their average age was 70, and roughly half were women. Compliance was high throughout, with more than 91 percent of the multivitamin group still taking the supplement as directed at the two-year mark.

Five epigenetic clocks were evaluated in total. Statistically significant slowing appeared only in the two second-generation clocks, PCGrimAge and PCPhenoAge, though trends in the right direction were visible across most of the others. The third-generation clock, DunedinPACE, which measures the speed of biological decline across multiple organ systems, showed a nonsignificant trend toward slowing in the multivitamin group as well.

Whether these epigenetic shifts ultimately translate into fewer heart attacks, longer healthy lifespans, or other concrete health benefits remains an open question. Earlier work from COSMOS did link multivitamin use to slower cognitive decline and modestly reduced cancer risk. Post-hoc analyses in this study suggested that changes in the epigenetic clocks may partly account for the cognitive benefits seen in prior COSMOS research, though those results didn’t reach statistical significance and should be treated as preliminary.

What the data do suggest is that the daily multivitamin, long viewed mainly as nutritional insurance, may be doing something at the cellular level that goes beyond filling gaps in a diet.

Disclaimer: This article is based on a peer-reviewed study published in Nature Medicine. It does not constitute medical advice. Consult a healthcare provider before making changes to your supplement regimen.

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