Do Multivitamins Work?

Slate basically says no, they don't. The evidence has been building in recent years that not only are they generally useless in promoting health or longevity, but probably even increase mortality for certain groups such as cancer patients.

As part of my plan to live forever, I've been taking a regular multivitamin every day for a few years now, along with fish oil supplements, psychedelic drugs, and baby aspirin. But after reading this I'm considering discontinuing the vitamins. I never had any strong belief that they were doing much good anyway, but I've figured that for the less than $50 a year it takes to take supplements, if there's even a small chance of a slight boost in longevity it's probably worth it. But the health risks, however small, probably negates this logic.

I probably get adequate amounts of micro-nutrients from my high fruit/nut/veggie diet already anyway, but I have actually been more interested in some of the more esoteric supplements that you can't really get from diet, such as resveratrol and coenzyme Q10. There are good theoretical reasons to think these and a few other antioxidants have strong anti-aging effects but as far as I know there aren't any large empirical studies of their efficacy. The Slate article above and most studies I've read about only discuss the garden variety vitamin A-to-Zinc supplements.

One of my heroes, Ray Kurzweil, has long been advocating aggressive supplement use, especially of extradietary antioxidants like resveratrol, etc., and if we're to take him at his word regarding his health results, it seems to be working out pretty well for him (he does look pretty good for 61). His most recent book on the topic is on my reading list, and I'll probably get to it in a few months. I'm gonna hold my judgment on supplements until then.