Millions of people take them every day. They hope to improve their health and live longer. However, one study found that these products don’t necessarily have the benefits they promise. Multivitamins could harm your health. Multivitamins are presented as products that will help you improve your health and even live longer. They are a million-dollar industry. They reached a market size of $46.63 billion in 2021, according to the Reports and Data agency.
Researchers in the United States analyzed the medical records of almost 400,000 adults without serious long-term illnesses. They wanted to see if daily consumption of multivitamins reduced the risk of death over the next two decades. Scientists found something surprising. People who took multivitamins did not live longer. And something more than that. They were marginally more likely than non-users to die in the study period.

Silent damage
Multivitamins are widely known for their popularity. But researchers question their health benefits. They have even warned that supplements can be harmful to those who take them regularly. Multivitamins could certainly harm your health. One example is natural food sources of beta-carotene. These do protect against cancer. But beta-carotene supplements may increase the risk of lung cancer and heart disease. Another example mentioned by research is iron, which is added to many multivitamins. It can cause iron overload and increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Also diabetes and dementia.
The study was conducted by the National Cancer Institute of Maryland. They reviewed data from three major American health studies that began in the 1990s. They followed them for more than 20 years. In this way, they collected data on the daily consumption of multivitamins from 390,124 adults.

Risks
The researchers found no evidence that daily multivitamins reduced the risk of death. Instead, they reported a 4% higher risk of mortality among users in the first few years of follow-up.
The increased risk of death reflects the harm that multivitamins can cause. There may also be a tendency for people to start taking daily multivitamins when they develop a serious illness.