Letter from the Editor #17

Can vitamin supplements actually lengthen your life?; Tell me something good; You can now order remote video-streaming tickets for The Oldster Variety Hour March 4th...

Feb 05, 2026

Readers,

I hope you’re all hanging in there through the whiplash-inducing news cycle. A couple of times a day I check various sites to stay informed—and, oh, you know, to make sure civilization hasn’t fully collapsed. But the rest of the day, my work on Oldster helps me shift focus back to the subject that intrigues me the most: what it’s like to get older, at every phase of life.

I also derive much needed comfort and inspiration from the community that’s cropped up around Oldster. I love how thoughtfully so many of you chime in on the personal essays, interviews, open thread forums, and these Letters From the Editor. Thank you for making Oldster a friendly haven for me and so many others. 💝

If you like what you’ve been reading here, and you haven’t already, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Oldster runs on paid subscriptions, rather than advertising, or the sponsorship of deep-pocketed corporations, and it pays essayists and interviewers.

Big, big thanks to those who’ve already converted to paid. I appreciate it! 🙏

Can vitamin supplements actually lengthen your life?

Earlier this week, Vogue Magazine published an article by Brianna Peters entitled, “A Doctor’s Guide to Longevity Supplements and Aging Well.”

Peters interviewed three physicians whose practices are centered on longevity and aging, and Vogue did some testing of the supplements those doctors recommend. They include particular brands of: vitamin D3, omega 3s, circumin, CoQ10, resveratrol, hyaluronic acid, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), and a multivitamin.

The piece caught my eye because I’m alternately drawn to supplements, and deeply skeptical of them. I’m also the daughter of a serious vitamin enthusiast, a now 90-year-old whose 35-or-so supplements a day sure do seem to be helping him to live long and age well.

My father on his 90th birthday last April. He’s lived much longer than anyone in his family ever did before him. And he’s in remarkable health for his age. Tee shirt?

My dad started me on vitamin supplements when I was 3 or 4. First there were chewables—vitamin c and multis. Then there were swallowables. I still remember when he taught me, at around 5, to knock back capsules and tablets with a few sips of water.

Growing up, on car rides we’d listen to Carlton Fredericks and Gary Null on WBAI discussing vitamins and nutrition. Dad read every article and study he could get his hands on about alternative medicine and all manner of supplements. Each morning, he’d put out pills for us in little plastic cups we’d swiped from Arthur Treacher’s (meant for tartar sauce).

In high school, I got a job at a health food/vitamin store called Sun Foods in Oceanside, NY (an earthy-crunchy Peyton Place, but that’s another story for another time), and I used my employee discount to stock up—my favorites were the sugary chewable vitamin C with acerola tablets. I kept taking vitamins for much of my life, including C, fish oil capsules, B complex, E, folic acid, selenium, and various others.

Then, a few years ago, I started to read articles suggesting that most weren’t truly effective; that some of the benefits might actually be the result of the placebo effect; that certain vitamins in certain doses might be dangerous, potentially causing damage to the liver and other organs; and that so much about dosage and efficacy is unclear because the supplement industry is largely unregulated by the FDA. In August, Vox published an interview with Washington Post Health reporter Anahad O’Connor, pointing to some of this. And gynecologist and author Dr. Jen Gunter has written a lot about this in her newsletter, The Vajenda.

Not quite sure what to believe, I just stopped taking everything. Every few months, my dad would implore me to start again—to at least get a good multivitamin. I’d mostly nod my head yes, and then do nothing.

Recently, though, I gave in and purchased a bottle of Life Extension Two Per Day Multivitamins, in part, I’ll admit, to placate him (I love you, Dad 🩷), and in part because his vitamins seem to actually be doing something for him.

My dad and stepmother last year when they got to go backstage at Mandy Patinkin’s show at the Lasher Center in Walnut Creek, Ca.

At 90, he’s lived longer than anyone in his family ever has. He’s in pretty great health for his age. He also exercises regularly (a habit he only began at 79!), and maintains a healthy diet. But he’s been taking vitamins a lot longer than he’s been doing those other things. And he looks and feels great. So, I figured I’d give the multis a shot. I’ve been taking them for a few weeks, and I can’t say anything has changed. But talk to me when I’m 90.

***

Am I persuaded by the Vogue piece? The Vox piece? I’m not sure. Honestly, I don’t see myself running out to get a bunch more supplements. I guess I remain a vitamin agnostic—although, don’t worry, Dad, I’ll keep taking the multis I just got. It’s easy enough to pop just two pills a day. Each time I do, I think, “Here goes nothing…”

How about you? Do you take vitamins? Which ones? Do you have faith in them? Do they seem to make a difference? How old are you?

Tell me something good…

I don’t know about you, but each day lately I find myself searching for signs that all is not lost. In times like these, yes, we need to stand up and speak out and help others.

But we also desperately need to have our spirits buoyed with experiences that make us feel uplifted, inspired, intrigued, delighted, moved, comforted, and less alone. Art that makes us smile and laugh—and even cry, for reasons other than what we’re all already crying over—has never been more necessary.

So I thought it might be nice to share here some good things that have recently lifted my mood, and invite you to do the same. My hope is that shared uplifts might be contagious.

I really enjoyed Kumail Nanjiani ’s HULU comedy special, Night Thoughts. I’m a fan—I’ve loved every performance of his, and super duper loved The Big Sick, the 2017 romantic dramedy Nanjani and his wife, Emily V. Gordon, co-wrote about their love story. The running premise behind this standup special is how much worse all the sources of our anxiety seem in the middle of the night, when worrying makes it hard to go back to sleep. Boy, can I relate.
I spent last Saturday evening engaging with the wonderful work of three artist friends— Eva Tenuto’s abstract paintings, Chris Wells’s songs, and Robert Lucy’s portraits—and briefly not thinking about all the latest horrors. It was magnificent and life-affirming. So many artists I know struggle right now to feel as if their work matters, and it really does. My pal Tobias Carroll recently sent me this quote from an article by Christine Smallwood in the New York Times Magazine about the work of late artist and activist David Wojnarowicz, and I tacked it up to my wall: “The artist Zoe Leonard remembered confessing to Wojnarowicz her anxiety that her aerial photographs of clouds didn’t reflect grim political reality. Wojnarowicz said to her: “Zoe, these are so beautiful, and that’s what we’re fighting for. We’re being angry and complaining because we have to, but where we want to go is back to beauty. If you let go of that, we don’t have anywhere to go.”
Yesterday my husband Brian and I celebrated 21 years of marriage over dinner at a great restaurant in Kingston, NY called Eliza. I can’t begin to tell you what a joy and privilege it is to grow old with someone who really gets and appreciates you. (Well, grow older—I know that at 60 and almost 64, respectively, we are younger than a good portion of this magazine’s readership.) Yes, partnership like this isn’t for everyone. (See Bella DePaulo’s Oldster piece about those who are “single at heart.”) And not everyone is as fortunate as we are to be so well matched. But I just want to acknowledge how happy I was to celebrate getting to spend my life with my favorite person, in a marriage that gets better year after year. Lucky us.
We got these tee shirts by way of contributing to this fundraiser.

Okay, now it’s our turn. Tell me something good…a positive experience you had, some good news, or some great art that moved you.

Remote streaming tickets are available now for the Oldster Variety Hour March 4th…

In-person tickets are nearly sold out for the next Oldster Variety Hour at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan on Wednesday, March 4th at 7pm. If you want to attend, don’t sleep on grabbing your seats! It’s going to be so great.

If you do get shut out—or if you don’t live in or near New York City—I’ve got good news for you: I’ve found a way to make remote live streaming available. Remote streaming tickets are just $10. You can watch from anywhere, live, or on your own time for up to a week after the show.

Get Remote Streaming Tickets

No paywall this week…

This week I’m not putting the bottom part of my Letter from the Editor behind a paywall, as I had in prior installments. Sometimes it takes a paywall to inspire people to support your work, but I don’t like to exclude people. If you enjoy all that I publish here, I’d love your support. Publishing Oldster takes a lot of work. 🙏