Lisa Te Morenga: Professor at Massey University’s Centre for Public Health Research and Nutrition on research finding multivitamins may slow biological ageing

New research suggests daily multivitamins could slow biological ageing. 

A clinical trial in the US found slower changes in the DNA based epigenetic clocks of older adults who take multivitamins.  

It suggests that simple nutritional interventions could potentially influence the body’s ageing process. 

Professor at Massey University’s Centre for Public Health Research and Nutrition, Lisa Te Morenga told Mike Hosking it’s not a magic pill. 

She says the effects so far are quite tiny, and there’s no evidence yet that multivitamins actually help you live longer, it's just changing things they believe are associated with living longer.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
New research out this morning suggests daily multi vitamins could
slow biological aging. So this trial found older adults on
multi vitamin showed slower changes to the DNA based epigenetic clock.
Now least attemiding It is a professor at the Center
for Public Health Research and Nutrition at MASSY and as
will this least a morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Good morning, This makes sense, I guess. So it's adding
to a small but growing body of intri of research
suggesting that there's some value in multi vitamins.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
My argument, My argument would be that if it counterbalances
things that you aren't getting throughout your life, then that
will inevitably help you. That It makes sense, wouldn't it.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
It makes sense. But it's not a magic pill that's
going to mean that you don't have to eat your
vegetables and do all those other things that we say
are healthy, and you probably won't notice the effects. The
effects so far are really tiny and also only changing
markers of health risk. There's no evidence yet that it

(01:07):
actually helps you live longer. It's just changing things that
we think are associated with living longer. So it's pretty preliminary, right, And.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
So this is where we're into this longevity space, and
the world's fascinated by this at the moment. If you
went further in the sort of research and you looked
at people not on multi's but on specific targeted vitamins
to replace things they weren't getting, is there a rich
vein of research there to be had?

Speaker 2 (01:34):
You know, I think we've been trying to do these.
We've been trying to find the magic pill and the
magic diet for decades, and you know, mostly this sort
of research doesn't pan out to show really major and
important effects. So all of it combines to show that
eating well, making sure you have lots of vitamins and
minerals that are important as good. That we haven't found

(01:57):
the magic pill.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, but the problem with vitamins and minerals and all
of that sort of stuff is, and we know this
is why we have an obesity epidemic, is most people
don't know what they're eating or don't care or accommodation
of both sot right.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
They afford it, well, it could, but vitamins are still
quite expensive, aren't they. So what would be good is
if you know, we could all afford to eat healthy
fruits and vegetables and lean meats, and whole grains and
all of those things. These these multi vitamins aren't particularly
cheap either, and the formulations that you buy in the supermarket,

(02:31):
they're all different. If you look at the backs of
the bottles, they're all slightly different. So we don't really
know what we're getting, and we don't know for sure
what they're doing.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
All right, appreciate at least at Leasta timiding. I don't
think it was a cost thing that the research did.
It was whether they were effective or not. For more
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