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%.
(CAN'T EDIT)
Meant to say, "Why couldn't it be?"
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."
That isn't dawn. No one should take vitamin D at dawn or when they first wake up. They should take it later in the day. Not at dusk either.
"Closer to dawn than dusk" doesn't mean "at dawn", more like "before midday".
And yes, it is literally dawn in Finland during winter months, if we're gonna be pedantic about this. And you don't even need to go to into the polar circle. About halfway to 2/3rds up Finland would be enough for dawn to be around 11.30 during winter.
I would wager that for a lot people on Lemmy, 15.00 is closer to their wakeup time than bedtime.
Well, direct the pedantry to yourself because you're the one using 'dawn' that way, I just used your own term back to you quoting your words used:
You did not say CLOSER to dawn. You said take it at dawn than dusk.
There's other reasons I think this, having to do with calcium, osteocalcin, movement, and vitamin k/food.
Morning is different from dawn.
Dawn is when the sun rises. Morning is when you rise.
Oh we were having some sort or a pedant-off contest here, I didn't actually say "AT dawn". I meant to write "closer to" in there as well, but either I fucked it up with typing on mobile or I'm just so high my brain skipped a few words. Both have been known to happen on Saturday evenings.
Oh yeah there's a hundred other things there as well, but *studies SEEM to indicate that you shouldn't take vitamin d at night / in the evening / close to your bedtime. And since our organs also have circadian rhythms or function on oir circadian rhythm and it takes a while to ingest all of the supplement, perhaps a bit before a bit before your bedtime? Perhaps like, make it a routine to do it nearer the beginning of the day than the end of the day.
Science seems to agree.
You have to use the actual words you mean, I can't hallucinate your real meaning from thin air. People make typos, you made one, whatever. Just admit it was a mistake and move on instead of blaming ME lol, it's so... lol.
Lol that is not what morning means. Morning is early morning to noon. You wouldn't wake up at 2pm and insist the time of day is morning, even if you can say it's YOUR morning and I understand that you mean you just woke up because it's a common joke about late sleepers saying "morning" when it's later.
I said to take vitamin D at midday. Never did I say to take it at night. You brought up taking a dose at night (probably to educate readers) when no one else has been saying to do so, certainly not me. The argument therefore isn't: take before bed or take right when you wake up, the argument is: take midday or take right when you wake up.
You also can't arbitrarily claim I've said something I've not said.
I'm a human, as you probably guess, and thus, fallible. I did admit to having made a mistake. The mistake was either in my fingers or my brain, but yeah, I definitely admitted to it being "my bad". Maybe you skipped words when reading said comment, because you too, are human, and thus, fallible?
Oh we're arguing the prescriptive meaning of "morning"? Cool. To me. Because It allows me to pedantically correct you, which you hate, because you're just being a lil' contrarian.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_description
Morning is used to indicate "hello people, I've recently woken up", even when it's not actually morning. Like if someone wakes up, even it's during the evening, but in an inappropriate place (ie someone dosed off somewhere), their friend make say "good morning, sleepyhead" when they wake up. Why's that, then? You just strictly defined what morning means, so it can't be used in other contexts. Oh wait, right, that's only if you're linguistically prescriptive. Which no academic linguists are, because that's not how language gets used in the real world.
Where we are.
Ever worked a shift job? In those too, you'd find people talking about "in the morning" as the time of day they woke up, even when theyre working a night shift. But also, they might at the same time say "when I got home in the morning", because that's equally valid language usage. Because language is not prescriptive.
No, you're now rounding up to midday, so you don't have to argue the science over that anymore. You said "midday or later in the day".
No, not "later in the day" exactly for the reasons mentioned. Despite never actually saying you have to take it the moment you wake up.
I can share my anecdotal experience though, which is that if you have to wake up 4 hours before dawn actually comes to go to work to drive people to buses and trains and then kids to school, I very much feel that vitamin D does perk me up in the morning. But with how large placebo is and how hard it is to quantify fatigue in general, that is purely anecdotal, not claiming it as any sort of evidence. But seems to help to wake up in a different way than caffeine, which basically just increases heartrate. (And no, that isn't all it does, I'm exaggerating. That's why I put down "basically", because I don't mean the sentence following it literally.)
And no, I didn't proofread this and am sure there are more mistakes in it as well. Typos mostly I think but I'm not above skipping a word on accident. Ambien is a helluva drug. Although I'm not yet on today. Or am I and just forgot I took some? Might be. I've noticed it's not terribly good for my memory.
Edit yeah in my first comment I did advice that if one supplements vitamin D, one shouldn't probably do it in the evening. Then I exaggerated with comparing it to an antidote to melatonin to simplify the reason.
And lo behold, here we are a half a dozen essays later talking about it so I could've prolly saved time by actually detailing the first answer, but I wasn't assuming such prescription
Are you telling me people with dark skin have equivalent vitamin D production, given the same sun exposure, as people with white skin?!
Read what I wrote again.
*cant eat livers of polar predators, not animals. It's generally ok to eat lovers of animals like caribou
Dude. It is most certainly not okay to eat people who love caribou.
But yeah you're right. But also up North where the polar bears live vitamin toxicity might not be your only issue. Protein poisoning could be an issue, if you didn't have access to any carbs or fat (caribou, or reindeer as we like to call them, are suuuuper lean usually).
Also known as "rabbit starvation."
https://optimisingnutrition.com/rabbit-starvation/