Dr. Zorba Paster: New research shows multivitamins help preserve memory

For years, I’ve been on the fence on multivitamins. Actually, I’ve been against them for a while.

There have been studies, published in reputable journals, that have shown time and again they don’t do much. They don’t stop heart attacks. They don’t stop strokes. They don’t stop cancer. Yet we keep taking them.

Americans spend billions of dollars a year on multivitamins. I’m not talking about all the other supplements we take, just the old-fashioned multivitamin like my mom used to give me.

When I was a kid, I remember she gave me liquid vitamins — which I can still taste in my mouth today. I think they contained cod liver oil. For those who remember, it was about the worst thing you had to swallow as a child. Yuk!

Anyway, it’s been said Americans have the most expensive urine in the world. We just gobble vitamins. We excrete them, and they do little for us.

We do need vitamins, especially kids. Lack of Vitamin D causes rickets, and milk has vitamin D concentrate added to it. Lack of niacin causes pellagra; there were 250,000 cases a year in the U.S. in the 1930s. And lack of thiamin causes beriberi.

These problems were eliminated by adding vitamins to enriched flour, something the Wonder Bread Co. did in collaboration with the U.S. government in World War II. And now we have folate added to flour, which has reduced neural tube defects, spina bifida, dramatically.

So clearly, we need vitamins. But what about that daily capsule?

About a decade ago, I was in a study where 50,000 men and women took a multivitamin and a vitamin E capsule. When the results of the study became known, 10 years after the study started, it didn’t show either of these vitamin products did anything as far as life and death, heart attacks, strokes and cancer were concerned.

That’s when I thought, why am I swallowing this stuff? A multivitamin is cheap. You can buy a year of Centrum, one of the top-selling brands, for maybe $20. Cheap. But why take it?

Well, new research shows that maybe, just maybe, there is a benefit. A study out of Harvard showed that a daily multivitamin appears to slow age-related memory decline.

The study involved 3,500 men and women 60 years old, randomly assigned to take a daily multivitamin or placebo for three years. At the end of each year, participants performed a series of online cognitive assessments at home designed to test memory function of the hippocampus, an area of the brain affected by normal aging.

This is part of a longitudinal study called COSMOS — the Cocoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study — designed to see if a multivitamin or cocoa flavanols will improve health. It’s ongoing. The jury is still out on cocoa.

By the end of the first year, memory improved for people taking a daily multivitamin, compared with those taking a placebo. The researchers estimate the improvement, which was sustained over the three-year study period, was equivalent to about three years of age-related memory decline. The effect was more pronounced in participants with underlying cardiovascular disease.

These results are consistent with other COSMOS results that show a daily vitamin appears to improve overall cognition, memory recall and attention — more sustained in folks with underlying cardiovascular disease.

Researchers speculate, “People with cardiovascular disease may have lower micronutrient levels that multivitamins may correct, but we don’t really know right now why the effect is stronger in this group.”

My spin: I’m going to start taking a multivitamin; a tablet, not the liquid my mom used to give me. I’m convinced the upside is possibly significant, and the downside is zero. Stay well.

Dr. Zorba Paster

This column provides general health information. Always consult your personal health care provider about concerns. No ongoing relationship of any sort is implied or offered by Dr. Paster to people submitting questions. Any opinions expressed by Dr. Paster in his columns are personal and are not meant to represent or reflect the views of SSM Health.

Dr. Zorba Paster is the co-host of “Zorba Paster On Your Health,” which airs at 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. Saturdays on the Ideas Network of Wisconsin Public Radio, in Madison on WHA 970 AM. Paster, who practices family medicine in Oregon, also appears regularly on WISC-TV Ch. 3.

Send questions to [email protected] or write Wisconsin State Journal, Attn: Health Column, 1901 Fish Hatchery Road, Madison, WI 53713.

The study involved 3,500 men and women 60 years old, randomly assigned to take a daily multivitamin or placebo for three years.

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