Vitamins and supplements: what you need to know before taking them

By Neelaveni Padayachee, Senior Lecturer, Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, University of the Witwatersrand
Varsha Bangalee, Associate Professor, Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal

If you were to open your medicine cabinet right now, there’s a fair chance that you’d find at least one bottle of vitamins alongside the painkillers, plasters and cough syrup.

After all, people are definitely buying vitamins: in 2020, the global market for complementary and alternative medicines, which includes multivitamin supplements, had an estimated value of US$82.27 billion. The use of natural health products such as minerals and amino acids has increased…

Read complete article

~	How gendered disinformation on social media harms Kenyan women seeking political office

~	Grattan on Friday: Social media companies can’t be immune from the need for a social licence

~	Persisting inequality has made many young South Africans question the choices made by Nelson Mandela – podcast

~	Challengers: new Zendaya tennis film reviewed by an expert in the psychology of competition

~	New ‘cold war’ grows ever warmer as the prospect of a nuclear arms race hots up

~	Sadiq Khan on track for third term as London mayor – but nearly half of Londoners dissatisfied with performance

~	Wiley’s Treddin’ on Thin Ice at 20: revisiting a blueprint that continues to shape grime

~	Celebrities routinely drop in on this Florida university’s hospitality course

~	Banning TikTok won’t solve social media’s foreign influence, teen harm and data privacy problems

~	IceCube researchers detect a rare type of energetic neutrino sent from powerful astronomical objects