Does Taking a Multivitamin Shorten Your Lifespan?

We interrupt our coverage of B-grade crisis actors to bring you a series of nutritional supplement articles that might extend your life.

A few weeks back, media outlets ran a story about a “major” and “massive” study that supposedly found no mortality benefit for multivitamin supplements.

"Multivitamins are mostly useless, finds study of nearly 400,000 participants," declared a National Post story that was picked up by MSN.com.

“Daily multivitamin supplements don't help you live longer, study shows,” wrote ABC News. Other media outlets, like The Guardian, CBS and Fox, ran similar headlines.

The Epoch Times also ran the story, but it seems reporting on something that fails to make you live longer has limited clickbait appeal. So it upped the ante and ran with the headline “Large Study Links Daily Multivitamin Use to Increased Mortality Risk.” (Bold emphasis added)

What’s going on here?

The Usual Bollocks

The “major,” “massive” study recently appeared in JAMA and it has an interesting back story - one that may help explain why an otherwise yawn-inducing paper made headlines.