--- title: Multivitamins Are Linked to Slower Brain Aging description: A study builds on data showing that multivitamins can keep the aging brain healthy. canonical: https://time.com/6564179/multivitamins-slow-brain-aging/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-01-19T15:39:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-01-19T10:34:24.000Z article:section: Health og:title: Multivitamins Are Linked to Slower Brain Aging og:description: A study builds on data showing that multivitamins can keep the aging brain healthy. og:url: https://time.com/6564179/multivitamins-slow-brain-aging/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt31b5b7416eae7b5a/698a4401457a520c45d6854d/GettyImages-537567565.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: GettyImages-537567565.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Multivitamins Are Linked to Slower Brain Aging twitter:description: A study builds on data showing that multivitamins can keep the aging brain healthy. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt31b5b7416eae7b5a/698a4401457a520c45d6854d/GettyImages-537567565.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Multivitamins Are Linked to Slower Brain Aging > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Microplastics in Bottled Water At Least 10 Times Worse Than Once Thought [Watch (HLS stream): Microplastics in Bottled Water At Least 10 Times Worse Than Once Thought](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/OqOCGC2i.m3u8) (2:00)  _Published 2024-01-09. Bottled water has long been marketed as a safer alternative to what comes out of the tap—if it doesn’t come straight from a mountain spring, it’s at least purified and chemical free. But a new study by scientists at Columbia University and Rutgers University demonstrates that bottled water may be far worse when it comes to microscopic plastic pollutants capable of passing into the bloodstream._  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Updated: Jan 19, 2026 10:34 AM UTCPublished: Jan 19, 2024 3:39 PM UTC  Centrum silver is multivitamins for people over 50 years old. It has nutrients to help support the heart, brain and eyes. Centrum silver is multivitamins for people over 50 years old. It has nutrients to help support the heart, brain and eyes. Moment Editorial/Getty Images  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Updated: Jan 19, 2026 10:34 AM UTCPublished: Jan 19, 2024 3:39 PM UTC Aging is inevitable, but that doesn’t stop us from trying to slow it down. And the easier the intervention, the better. In a [study](https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165%2823%2966342-7/fulltext) published in the _American Journal of Clinical Nutrition_, researchers report that taking a multivitamin that you can buy at the pharmacy can slow cognitive decline associated with aging by as much as two years. The trial is part of a series led by scientists at Mass General Brigham that compared people 60 years or older taking Centrum Silver to those taking a placebo. It was funded by the National Institutes of Health and Mars Edge—a branch of the food company Mars, Inc.—and Haleon, the maker of Centrum, donated the vitamins. None of the sponsors or funders were involved in the design of the study or analysis of the results. [Two previous studies](https://time.com/6282259/multivitamins-improve-memory/) in the series had evaluated the participants over two to three years via phone or web interviews, and those results revealed that people taking a multivitamin daily scored higher on cognitive tests than those taking the placebo. In this latest study, which involved 573 people who were tested in person by the research team, the scientists saw the same benefit. Taken together, all three studies, which involved more than 5,000 volunteers, show that people taking a daily multivitamin for up to three years slowed cognitive brain aging by two years. “These findings of consistent benefit of a multivitamin in three separate placebo-controlled studies are compelling and exciting,” says Dr. JoAnn Manson, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and co-director of the study, which was conducted with scientists at Columbia and Wake Forest University. “They could even be considered stunning.” ### More From TIME **Read More**: [_What the Science Says About the Health Benefits of Vitamins and Supplements_](https://time.com/6171584/are-vitamins-supplements-healthy/) Manson says that each of the three studies showed slightly different magnitudes of benefit on different cognitive tests, which included memory skills such as recalling word lists both immediately and after a delay, naming animals and vegetables, and subtracting numbers backwards. All three trials showed particularly strong benefits for memory. The results are a first step toward better understanding how vitamins and nutrients—especially the 20 essential micronutrients included in most multivitamins—can keep brains healthy. But questions remain: for example, is the multivitamin supplementing already adequate levels of these vitamins and nutrients in older people, or is it addressing deficiencies? Manson says the research team has some health information on the participants’ diets, which ranged from poor to good, and are planning to investigate that issue further. “We have some indication that people with lower diet quality showed greater benefit, but we need to delve into those questions in more detail,” she says. “It’s possible that in study populations with lower diet quality, or lower educational levels and lower socioeconomic status, there would be greater benefit, because it’s likely that there are more nutritional deficiencies in those groups.” They will also be exploring whether specific vitamins or nutrients are more important for the brain as people age, such as vitamin B12, vitamin D, vitamin E, lutein, and zinc. Other studies have reported that people tend to absorb less vitamin B12 as they get older, for example, and synthesize less vitamin D through the skin. And while the study only followed people for up to three years, future trials could also look at whether longer term use of multivitamins could lead to even greater benefits for the brain. As encouraging as the results are, Manson says they don't suggest that a vitamin can substitute for a healthy diet and lifestyle. “By no means does this say that people can be complacent about their diet and just pop a pill. But it is possible that a multivitamin could have a complementary role to a healthy diet and lifestyle because it includes a comprehensive array of essential vitamins and minerals, and if someone does have a deficiency in any of them, it can be of benefit.” ## Transcript But these are Lance's disarm mirror. Will be sent through the mirror. The our research found that there are on average a quarter of a million particles including both micro classes and Nano plastic per liter of the bottled water. If it does not stop and magnetize it can actually go even smaller. So Wednesday the size below what micro Nano plastic cuz now it's saying it's sizes in another Branch. There are actually I don't have nice people, they use to study nanoparticles that is called electromagnet coffee. They can actually see very tiny particles of matter that but they don't tell you If the particle is plastic or not, so our techniques is kind of dumb, combines the both benefits of being able to see smaller and then be able to tell that what type of plastic chemical composition is that I mean, what are we see or not? It's out there. So it's better that we actually know how much is out there and what they are but I myself as a scientist. I would want more data in terms of the toxicology study to actually know that whatever help people you would be to my own body. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6564179/multivitamins-slow-brain-aging/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6564179/multivitamins-slow-brain-aging/"},"headline":"Multivitamins Are Linked to Slower Brain Aging","datePublished":"2024-01-19T15:39:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-01-19T10:34:24.000Z","description":"A study builds on data showing that multivitamins can keep the aging brain healthy.","url":"https://time.com/6564179/multivitamins-slow-brain-aging/","keywords":["Aging","healthscienceclimate"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt31b5b7416eae7b5a/698a4401457a520c45d6854d/GettyImages-537567565.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alice Park","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/alice-park/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt31b5b7416eae7b5a/698a4401457a520c45d6854d/GettyImages-537567565.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"GettyImages-537567565.jpg","caption":"Herbal Supplements","creditText":"Moment Editorial/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/aging/","name":"Aging"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6564179/multivitamins-slow-brain-aging/","name":"Multivitamins Are Linked to Slower Brain Aging"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Microplastics in Bottled Water At Least 10 Times Worse Than Once Thought","description":"Bottled water has long been marketed as a safer alternative to what comes out of the tap—if it doesn’t come straight from a mountain spring, it’s at least purified and chemical free. 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