Medical Report: Do daily multivitamins help you live longer?

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — One in three Americans takes a daily multivitamin, but does it make a difference? An NIH study , which followed almost 400,000 people over 20 years, sought to answer that question.

According to the study, taking a daily multivitamin does not reduce mortality. As you can imagine, this study is a statistical analysis — after all, there is no way to predict how long an individual will live. This studies a population.

However, when you follow hundreds of thousands of people, there is a greater chance to draw conclusions.

There is one other important point: The authors of the study did not look at the role of vitamins used to help treat individual health issues. They only looked at overall mortality.

Get more medical reports from Dr. Brian McDonough .

​​KYW Newsradio’s Medical Reports are sponsored by Independence Blue Cross.