A Large, New Study Finds This Daily Habit Could Reverse Aging in the Brain by 3 Years

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Americans have been taking multivitamins since the 1940s, which have become increasingly popular over the years—now, an estimated one-third of Americans take them daily.

Although nutritional experts, doctors and other healthcare workers have always been divided as to just how beneficial they actually are, a new study claims that taking a particular multivitamin every day may keep memory loss at bay.

For the study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers analyzed data from 3,500 older men and women, some of whom were given Centrum Silver daily, and others a placebo. What they found is that those who took the multivitamin demonstrated better memory than those who were administered the placebo (more about that below). “We estimate that the effect of the multivitamin intervention improved memory performance above placebo by the equivalent of 3.1 years of age-related memory change," the study authors write.

What To Make of the Results

Study co-author Adam Brickman, a professor of neuropsychology at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, called the results “very, very encouraging.”

“Cognitive change and memory loss are a top health concern for older adults,” he has said. “And we don’t have many strategies to mitigate the changes that come with aging. So it’s encouraging that a supplement can help address one of the main health concerns older adults have.”

The findings were part of a larger study dubbed the Cocoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS), which involved 21,442 older men and women and hoped to find a link between cocoa supplements and multivitamins on cognition and the risk of cancer and cardiovascular events.

Related: Want To Improve Your Brain Health? Experts Agree This Is the Most Important Supplement To Take

Researchers used a web-based test, which evaluates their immediate word recall, to assess participants' memory at the start of the study and the one and three-year marks. They found that those who were given the Centrum Silver did significantly better on the test, estimating that the multivitamin improved memory performance by about 3.1 years compared to the placebo.

“I think it’s a pretty cool study. It’s an interesting topic,” says Dr. Kenneth Koncilja, MD, a geriatrician from Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Geriatric Medicine, who was not involved in the study. He explains that the most compelling part of the study is the connection between nutrition and cognition, referring to it more as a “gateway study” to encourage more research in the future.

He does note that the memory testing conducted by the researchers was done over the phone or computer and not the type of in-office memory clinic cognition testing most doctors would do, which takes up to three hours per session. He also points out that there are many aspects to memory, and the study “didn’t show benefits for most domains of memory,” including long-term memory or delayed recall, he points out, “only immediate recall, like memorizing words.”

Related: Here's How Many Minutes of Exercise You Need a Day to Keep Your Memory Sharp

“One domain of thinking was improved among people who received the supplement after one year,” he said, noting that the same difference was sustained over three years. “That’s pretty cool to see a difference, but I wouldn’t say that a multivitamin could prevent dementia.”

Dr. Koncilja does agree that “nutrition is important for brain health” and sees the merit in the study. However, he believes the most important takeaway is the impact nutritional deficits can have on the brain. Also, diet and daily exercise “prioritize brain health better than any supplement,” he maintains.

In fact, Dr. Koncilja doesn’t recommend taking a multivitamin to his patients unless they have nutritional deficits, perhaps from an underlying health condition or alcoholism, for example. He also recommends meeting with a nutritionist to discuss your health concerns, getting lab work done and exploring nutritional options before taking a multivitamin. “Food as medicine is more important than supplementing with pills,” he says.

Next up: Eight Memory-Boosting Tricks to Fuel Your Recall

Sources

• National Institutes of Health: “Multivitamin/mineral supplements”

• The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition: “Multivitamin Supplementation Improves Memory in Older Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial”

• Kenneth Koncilja, MD, a geriatrician from Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Geriatric Medicine