A Multivitamin A Day: Study Finds Daily Pill Slows Down Biological Aging

An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but could a daily vitamin really help to prevent biological aging? Chronological aging is inevitable – you can’t avoid a birthday, but you can circumvent premature biological aging – especially if you want to enjoy healthier years ahead. So, is there a magic pill that can help you achieve that? Well, according to a recent study, the answer is yes.

Multivitamins: A Pill For Biological Aging?

As people are living longer, the definition of aging continues to shift, especially because while you may not look your age, what’s going on internally can be a completely different story.

Biological aging is based on epigenetic clocks, which estimate your age based on changes in your DNA, and these changes can lead to greater morbidity and mortality.

“I think of biological aging as the progressive loss of the integrity and resilience capacity of cells, tissues, and organs with the passage of time,” explains Daniel Belsky, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University.

“Happens to all of us. It’s the leading cause of almost all chronic disease and death.”

Now that multivitamins are becoming the most common dietary supplement in the United States, the science of what they can do for our health remains mixed, especially because they have yet to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Yet, a recent study suggests that these very pills may be the magic pill to slowing down biological aging.

The study

Using data from the COcoa Supplement Multivitamins Outcomes Study (COSMOS), Harvard and Mass General Brigham researchers examined the effects of taking a daily multivitamin (a Centrum Silver supplement) over the course of two years on five measures of biological aging, as these five measures are the most common ways to summarize the different ways that people age.

They did so by evaluating the analyzed DNA methylation data taken from blood samples of 958 randomly selected healthy participants with an average chronological age of 70.

The participants were randomized to take a daily cocoa extract and multivitamin, a daily cocoa extract and placebo, a placebo and multivitamin, or a placebo only.

A Magic Pill?

According to the findings, published in Nature Medicine, the multivitamin caused about four months of slower biological aging over the course of two years, and people who were biologically older than their actual age at the start of the trial happened to benefit the most.

“It was exciting to see the benefits of a multivitamin linked with markers of biological aging. This study opens the door to learning more about accessible, safe interventions that contribute to healthier, higher-quality aging.” – Howard Sesso, senior author

While they have yet to understand why the multivitamin worked the way it did, Sesso, who is also a preventive medicine specialist at Mass General and a Harvard Chan School epidemiologist, hypothesized that since a daily multivitamin contains all essential vitamins and minerals, as well as a few other bioactive compounds, this may be the reason behind its effects.

Time to take a pill a day?

Despite the study’s incredible findings, Sesso maintains that more work still needs to be done to better understand the exact role multivitamins can play in promoting longevity. He also adds that the results don’t necessarily mean a multivitamin adds four months to a person’s lifespan.

“What it means is that your trajectory of health moving forward should stand to benefit,” he said. “It’s hard to know what those four months truly translate to.”

Sesso admits that multivitamins are a low-risk, safe, and cost-effective option, yet he still stresses the importance of adopting healthy lifestyle habits,

“It’s very important to focus on eating a nutritious diet, getting a good night’s sleep, and staying physically and socially active. A multivitamin can be a positive addition to your daily regimen, but it shouldn’t be looked at as a replacement for those vital lifestyle habits.”

Want to know more?

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), about 1 in 3 adults admits to taking multivitamins to promote and protect good health, and one study suggested that multivitamins may work as a memory drug. 

References

Li, S., Hamaya, R., Zhu, H., Chen, B. H., et al. (2026). Effects of daily multivitamin–multimineral and cocoa extract supplementation on epigenetic aging clocks in the COSMOS randomized clinical trial. Nature Medicine, 32(3), 1012-1022. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-026-04239-3