10/09/2026
Interesting post ⬇️ And very relevant to us here on the Causeway Coast too ☀️
We're sitting at around 55° north - so when it comes to vitamin D, the same applies to us...
During the autumn and winter months, the sun sits so low in the sky at our latitude for our skin to make sufficient vitamin D - even on a rare beautiful, bright North Coast winter day! 😎
That's why vitamin D is one of those supplements we talk about so much in the shop, especially at this time of year 😶🌫️
Vitamin D contributes to the normal function of the immune system, helps maintain normal bones and teeth, and contributes to normal muscle function.
Pop in and we'll talk you through the different vitamin D options and strengths available 💛
☀️ Scottish skin is not pale by accident. It is pale on purpose, and the reason is sitting sixty degrees north.
Skin colour is largely a trade off between two needs. Melanin protects the deeper layers of skin from ultraviolet damage and shields folate, which is essential for a developing pregnancy. But the same ultraviolet light is what the body uses to make vitamin D, and vitamin D is what lays down bone. Move a population far enough from the equator and the calculation flips. Protection matters less. Getting enough light in matters more.
Scotland sits between roughly fifty five and sixty degrees north, which is further north than Moscow and level with Hudson Bay. From about October to March, the sun never climbs high enough here for the atmosphere to let through the wavelength that makes vitamin D. It is not about cloud cover. Even on a bright January day the light simply is not the right kind. Skin that is very light can pull far more out of the weak light that does arrive in summer, and that difference was the difference between a straight skeleton and a bent one across generations of children.
Diet carried the rest. Oily fish, herring in particular, was the other half of the answer, which is one quiet reason why the herring fishery mattered so much more to these communities than money alone would explain.
When our people emigrated, that finely tuned northern skin went with them into Australia, the American South, southern Africa and New Zealand, where it was suddenly badly matched to the light. Scots and Irish descended populations still carry some of the highest skin cancer rates in the world.
And the ones who stayed did not stop needing it. Scotland has some of the highest rates of vitamin D deficiency in Europe.
Your skin was built by four hundred generations of weak northern light. It remembers a place your passport may not. 🏴
