Daily multivitamins have been the subject of debate over the past couple of decades. Now there’s new science suggesting that multivitamins can help older adults control their blood pressure… It appears nutrient ‘gaps’ may contribute to hypertension…
Daily multivitamins come in all formats: Pills, capsules and even gummies…
What they did
A team from Mass General Brigham conducted a secondary analysis of data from the COcoa Supple-ment and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS).
An abstract of the study report explains: “COSMOS is a randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial that examined how cocoa extract and multivitamin supplements affect health outcomes in older adults in the United States. For this analysis, researchers focused on 8,905 older adults who did not have hypertension at baseline and who were randomly assigned to take either Centrum Silver or a placebo every day.”
What they found
The data-mining survey revealed that, across the full study population, the investigators did not find differences in self-reported new-onset hypertension between the multivitamin and placebo groups. However, when they examined diet quality, they saw that multivitamin use was linked to a lower risk of hypertension among participants with relatively poorer diets.
The takeaway
“The authors note that additional studies are needed to assess how a daily multivitamin might affect blood pressure in younger and middle-aged adults, as well as in different populations defined by their nutritional status.”
My take
If you’re a faithful reader of this blog, you’ll be aware that a sharp divide exists between supporters of multivitamins and those who say they do nothing, and are a straight-up waste of your hard-earned cash.
My family physician doesn’t trash multivitamins, but she doesn’t push them either. Instead, she says the current practice is to identify any unhealthy nutrient shortfalls and prescribe targeted supplements.
Even Harvard University – a world-acclaimed authority on almost everything – says, “Americans […] spend $35.6 billion [per year] on dietary supplements. That’s a lot of money for products that show little, if any, evidence of benefits.” Most Americans, the school says, simply don’t need them. Proces-sed or not, the foods you eat provide the vast majority of the vitamins and minerals you need.
But some folks may not be getting their full dose of certain vitamins and minerals due to illness, poor diet or other factors. For them, I would think a daily multivitamin would help keep them sparking on all cylinders.
Nevertheless, the National Institutes of Health report: “[Multivitamins] are currently taken by an estimated one-third of all adults in the United States, and one-quarter of children and adolescents.”
Makes me wonder if we’ve all been taken in by an elaborate marketing hoax perpetrated by the supplement makers, to keep us buying multies in perpetuity…
~ Maggie J.