I’ve been a skeptic. A hardened one.
For years, I’ve treated the supplement aisle with suspicion. Based on past reporting and my own common sense, I decided that most pills do nothing. Some, frankly, do harm. I make exceptions only when biology forces my hand. Vitamin D? Yes. I live far enough north that winter sunlight is essentially a myth. But come spring, I stop. Folic acid if I were planning a pregnancy. Omega-3s if I refused to eat oily fish. B12 if I cut out all animal products.
Everything else? Waste of money.
Or so I thought.
The recent New Scientist podcast episode featuring JoAnn Manson changed that narrative. Just a little.
Manson leads preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She joined the show to discuss the COSMOS study and its findings on multivitamin supplements for brain health. The results were… unexpected. Specifically, they suggest that daily multivitamin use might slow cognitive decline in older adults.
Does this mean you should raid the medicine cabinet? No. Not quite. But it does mean the story is more nuanced than the usual “pills don’t work” dogma.
The Multivitamin and Brain Health Connection
Let’s look at the data from the COSMOS trial first. It ran from 2015 to 2023. Massive scale.
Researchers recruited over 21,000 participants aged 60 and older. They were split into groups. Some got a daily multivitamin plus cocoa extracts. Some got just the multivitamin. Some got just cocoa. Others got nothing.
The primary goal was straightforward: would this cocktail reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease or cancer?
Spoiler: It didn’t.
However, digging through the data revealed secondary wins. One focused on brain health. Another, published earlier this year, looked specifically at aging in general.
How Biological Age Measured in Multivitamin Studies
Here is where it gets interesting. A subgroup of 958 people had their biological age measured at the start and again after two years.
The results showed that those taking the daily multivitamin aged more slowly than the placebo group. Cocoa extract had zero effect. The multivitamin group showed an average difference of just one or two months over that two-year period.
Seemingly small, right?
A month here, a month there. It feels negligible. But over decades, compound effects matter. If you can slow the biological clock by a few months annually, that adds up to significant healthspan potential over a lifetime.
Which Anti-Ageing Supplements Have Evidence?
If you are shopping for longevity, the market is crowded. And mostly, it is a scam.
An academic book titled Supplements and Drugs for Healthy Longevity, edited by Suresh Rattan of Aarhus University, offers a stark reality check. The expert panel reviewed more than 250 compounds. They looked at everything from vitamins and minerals to hype-heavy contenders like NAD+, coenzyme Q10,spermidine, and dasatinib with quercetin (D&Q).
They used a strict definition for success: “solid, reproducible and trustworthy.”
Did any compound meet the highest standard?
No. None.
A few reached a secondary tier of evidence. The conclusion was brutal: relying on supplements for anti-ageing is mostly “an act of faith and hope.” Not data-driven strategy.
Interestingly, the book did not evaluate alpha-ketoglutarate. That’s because the author previously tried it for a story. Their biological age dropped. But anecdotal evidence from a single journalist doesn’t count as a clinical trial.
The Omega-3 Surprising Findings
If multivitamins aren’t enough, what else shows promise?
A study from the University of Zurich published last year challenges the old advice that omega-3s are useless unless you are deficient.
The researchers looked at people aged 70 to 90. Traditional wisdom says if you eat oily fish, flaxseeds, chia seeds, or walnuts, you don’t need the pill. Zurich researchers say they might be wrong.
Over three years, participants taking omega-3 supplements aged biologically three months less than the placebo group.
Want more benefit? Add vitamin D and strength training. The effect jumped to four months of biological age preservation.
Is this enough to justify the cost? Maybe.
Why Biological Age Isn’t the Whole Story
Despite the intriguing numbers, I haven’t completely abandoned my scepticism.
Not yet.
The primary flaw in both the COSMOS data and the Zurich study is the reliance on biological age markers. These metrics are notoriously unreliable. They are proxies, not guarantees.
More importantly, neither study found a meaningful improvement in the actual health of the participants.
Slowing biological aging doesn’t automatically translate to better quality of life. It doesn’t necessarily increase healthspan. You might be “younger” on paper but still sick.
JoAnn Manson herself admitted on the podcast that there’s another explanation. The participants in the multivitamin study might simply have been deficient in certain vitamins to begin with. The supplement didn’t add health; it just corrected a deficit. It brought them back to baseline, not beyond it.
The Verdict on Longevity Supplements
So, are anti-ageing supplements a waste of money?
For the hype-driven compounds like NAD+ or spermidine? Likely yes. The evidence isn’t there.
For a standard multivitamin? It’s complicated. It may slow cognitive decline. It might shave a month or two off your biological age over a couple of years. But if you eat a balanced diet, you aren’t likely missing those basics.
The Zurich study on omega-3s suggests a targeted approach could work. If you aren’t eating oily fish regularly, the supplement might actually do something.
But let’s be clear. There is no magic bullet. The “gold mine” of information Rattan’s panel reviewed largely came up empty-handed for high-evidence recommendations.
At present using one or more nutritional and other supplies… is mostly an act of faith and hopes, rather than being based on strong evidence-based data.
Maybe that’s the reality we have to live with. We take the pills. We pray for the best. And we hope that somewhere in that chemical soup, something sticks.
But until the trials show that these supplements actually extend healthy years—rather than just shifting a number on a clock—we remain in the dark.
You still have to eat the fish. And exercise. And sleep.
The pill is just an accessory.
