Ask your doctor if the upside potential outweighs the downsides. Don't do anything with this until your doctor informs you of their analysis. Of course you have no clue what is in the vitamins you take.
The supplements in the US have zero guarantee of purity or efficacy due to the fucking stupidity of the US Congress passing the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA).
Study finds potential link between daily multivitamin and improved cognition in older adults
(CNN)Taking a daily multivitamin might be associated with improved brain function in older adults, a new study says, and the benefit appears to be greater for those with a history of cardiovascular disease.
The findings did not surprise the researchers -- rather, they were shocked, said Laura Baker, an author of the study and professor of gerontology and geriatric medicine at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
"I have to use the word 'shocked,' " Baker said.
The
researchers -- from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, in
collaboration with Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston -- analyzed
cognitive function in older adults who were assigned to take either a
cocoa extract supplement containing flavonoids, a multivitamin or a
placebo every day for three years. No one, not even the researchers,
knew who was assigned to which daily routine until the results were
revealed.
"We
really believed that the cocoa extract was going to have some benefits
for cognition based on prior reports of cardiovascular benefit. So we're
waiting for that big reveal in our data analysis -- and it was not
cocoa extract that benefited cognition but rather the multivitamin,"
Baker said. "We are excited because our findings have uncovered a new
avenue for investigation -- for a simple, accessible, safe, inexpensive
intervention that could have the potential to provide a layer of
protection against cognitive decline."
But
she added that she and her team are not ready to recommend that older
adults immediately add a daily multivitamin to their routine based on
these results alone.
The findings, published Wednesday in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association, are not definitive and cannot be generalized to the public. More research is needed to confirm them.
"It's too soon to make these recommendations," Baker said. "I feel like we need to do this in one other study."
Finding connections in brain health
The
new study included 2,262 people, 65 and older, who were enrolled
between August 2016 and August 2017 and followed for three years. The
participants completed tests over the phone annually to evaluate their
cognitive function. They were scored on recalling stories, showing
verbal fluency and ordering digits, among other tests.
The
researchers analyzed function, based on test scores, among those who
took cocoa extract daily compared with a placebo, and among those who
took the daily multivitamin compared with a placebo.
The
researchers found that three years of taking the multivitamin appeared
to have slowed cognitive aging by 1.8 years, or 60%, compared with the
placebo. Daily cocoa extract supplementation for three years did not
affect cognitive function, the researchers wrote.
The
study -- supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National
Institutes of Health -- also found that multivitamins were most
beneficial for older adults who had a history of cardiovascular disease.
"It's
well-known that those with cardiovascular risk factors could have lower
levels in their blood of vitamins and minerals. So supplementing those
vitamins and minerals could improve cardiovascular health and, by virtue
of that, improve cognitive health -- and we know that there's a strong
connection between cardiovascular health and brain health," said Dr.
Keith Vossel, a professor of neurology and director of the Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer's Research and Care at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Thanks
to that connection between cardiovascular and brain health, taking
steps to prevent cardiovascular disease or other chronic diseases --
such as maintaining a healthy diet and exercise -- can benefit the brain
too, said Vossel, who was not involved in the new study.
"If we can really eliminate or really prevent chronic diseases, we could prevent dementias," he said. "Roughly up to 40% of dementia could be prevented with just better preventative measures throughout life's span."
The
specific factors driving this link between a multivitamin and cognitive
function are unclear and require more research, but Baker and her team
think the findings might be connected to the way multivitamins can
benefit people who might be lacking in micronutrients such as vitamin C, vitamin E, magnesium or zinc.
"With
aging, the situation can get worse. A lot of our older adults do not
have adequate nutrition for a number of reasons," Baker said.
"As
we get older, we are more likely to have medical conditions that can
compromise micronutrient sufficiency," she said. "The medications that
we take for these conditions can also affect micronutrient sufficiency
by interfering with the body's ability to absorb these essential
nutrients from the diet."
'We've been down this road a little before'
Other
studies have had mixed results in the association between certain
vitamins and supplements and dementia risk, Vossel warned.
"We've
been down this road a little before with vitamins and dementia
research. For many years, dementia specialists were recommending vitamin
E based on some early promising results with vitamin E and cognition, and especially those with Alzheimer's disease. But then, the results have been mixed since then," Vossel said.
Older adults should talk to their primary care physician before starting a vitamin or supplement routine, he added.
"Supplementing
is usually safe, but it needs to be monitored carefully, especially for
those who have memory loss, because overdosing with vitamins can be
very dangerous," Vossel said. "Even with vitamin E overdosing or taking
high levels of vitamin E can increase the risk of bleeding. So these are
just some considerations."
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Overall,
the new study's findings are encouraging, said Heather Snyder, vice
president of medical and scientific relations at the Alzheimer's Association.
"There's
certainly follow-up work that we need to see happen -- particularly
independent confirmation in studies that are in larger and more diverse
populations -- but this is encouraging," she said. "There is more
research that needs to be done to understand what it might be in the
multivitamin that may have a benefit."
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