When your fellow Baby Boomer friends ask why you look so young and energetic, you can honesty say that it's "all in the genes." Just don't tell them about that multivitamin you take every day.

A study in the latest issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports Baby Boomer women who take a multivitamin daily may have "younger" cells than non-users, judging by the length of their telomeres, the region of repetitive DNA that protects the ends of chromosomes from destruction.

Telomeres are indeed handy as they also prevent a cell's chromosomes from fusing with others or being rearranged, which may lead to cancer.

After tracking the nutritional habits and the multivitamin use of nearly 600 women (ages 35-74), researchers found patients who take a multivitamin had longer telomeres (by some 5 percent). Additionally, women who had higher intakes of vitamins C and E from foods -- whether they took a multivitamin or not -- had longer telomeres too.

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 89, No. 6, June 2009, p. 1857-63

Nutra Ingredients-USA.com May 27, 2009