this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2025
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Why wouldn't it be? Darker skinned people have a hard time with northern winters due to the lack of sunlight. Read an article when I lived in Chicago about how many black women were diagnosed and lacking vitamin D.
According to a dermatologist pricing in the Caribbean, most of the people living there have Vitamin D deficiency as well.
When it's hot and sunny all year round most people just avoid the sun all the time.
In Australia they stopped publically funding vitamin D blood testing because it just KEPT returning deficient. Basically everyone here needs to supplement Vit D. Well applied sunscreen blocks vitamin D absorption by like, 95%.
Because race isn't genetic and isn't scientific. It should competely be removed from the sciences entirely.
Twins with same dad and mom can be different races.
People who have no relation can have the same skin tone and can be labeled as the same race by someone looking at them.
If there are specific genes or biochemicals causing different vitamin status in people, that is not racial, that is genetic and environmental. They need to cite those specific genes or biochemicals to actually conduct proper science. If the mechanism is melanin, then that needs to be properly described as melanin and not race- there are people who racially are black with no melanin - albinism.
Everyone living at the poles has lowered vitamin d status and elevated vitamin A status, that's why you can't eat livers of polar animals or you'll die like those explorers who ate husky liver.
Vitamin D daily amount is super super easy to get, something like 5-15minutes standing outside is all you need. People do more than that when they walk to their car. The reason their vitamin D is low is often due to needing other vitamins and nutrients that work with it. Vitamin D status is closely related to other fat soluble vitamin status (vitamin k, e) and B vitamins and many other things, not just accessibility to sunlight or dairy or melanin content of the skin.
Additionally melanin content of the skin can change a little over time, including with most metal supplementations like copper, iron, and zinc - that's why zinc and copper deficiencies are associated with vitiligo and why giving vitiligo patients zinc can help treat the condition. It's also why skin bleaching works biochemically. It's why you can tan.
What you eat and do affects your melanin content, but it certainly would not change someone's race, because race is an arbitrary grouping of features that includes skin color from various genetic and biological causes, meant to enforce roles and class onto people.
So no, it isn't racial, it is related to vitamin D status.
True it's like 80% of daily vitamin D intake in 15 minutes even when you're only showing like 20% skin.
But sometimes that be harder than you'd think. There's no direct sunlight to my apartment, at any point of the year. Despite these apartment complexes being called "Sun Valley" lol. I supplement vitamin D in the winters though. Have to. I'm not always awake during the few hours the sun is up and even when it is often there's heavy cloud coverage.
If you do supplement vitamin D though, remember to do it in the morning rather than evening, as it's basically an antidote to melatonin, so to avoid fucking up circadian rhythm (or to create a new one) melatonin at night and vitamin d in the morning.
Yeah again if you aren't absorbing adequate vitamin D from being outside, it is probably more related to other vitamin deficiencies, often vitamins k and e. That's why for years there were no known health benefits of supplementing vitamin d, until it got paired with vitamin k - your vitamin d supplements you take literally have vitamin k in them for this reason.
It is actually a better idea to take it midday or later in the day, but paired with other fat soluble vitamins and calcium, and this is intuitive that your max vitamin D status naturally would be at the end of the day once you've eaten and been in the sun all day.
You would never wake up full of vitamin D, the premise doesn't make sense.
Melatonin and vitamin D have a complex relationship with calcium and serotonin and other biological pathways. I wouldn't call one an "antidote" to the other because they are synergistic.
It's not just because they're synergistic.
I say "morning" but 11-14 is basically my morning and I'm in Northern Europe. But yeah, probably best to take it dawn than dusk. And research seems to agree.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1087079220301222
But yeah "antidote" is hyperbole, my bad. "Further study is needed."
(CAN'T EDIT)
Meant to say, "Why couldn't it be?"