The word deficiency points you toward food. But the active form of vitamin D is a hormone — called calcitriol — and your body makes it from sunlight, not from diet. When the system fails, it's not because you haven't eaten enough oily fish. It's because something is disrupting the production pathway.

In this episode, I walk through how calcitriol is actually made, why melanin-rich skin at northern latitudes disrupts that process at the very first step, what the data shows about who is most affected in the UK — and why some of the supplements GPs are prescribing may be making things worse, not better.

This is the science behind the parliamentary question. It's the reason I asked it — and it changes how you understand your own body.

calcitriol

vitamin D

melanin

health equity

endocrine system

Black health UK

In this episode of the Indigenous Intelligence Podcast, Nii Okyne explores the journey that led him to submit a formal question to the UK Parliament regarding vitamin D guidance for people with higher melanin concentration.

Blending science, ancestral wisdom, policy, personal experience, and cultural history, this episode examines:

• why vitamin D is actually a hormone
• how melanin affects sunlight absorption at northern latitudes
• why current public health guidance may not adequately serve Black and South Asian communities
• and how Indigenous knowledge systems often understood these realities long before modern institutions acknowledged them

Nii shares the story behind Parliamentary Question 106242, the government response that followed, and how Ga ancestral practices from Ghana connect directly to modern conversations around health, grounding, wellbeing, and human biology.

This is more than a conversation about vitamin D.
It is a conversation about memory, disconnection, science, identity, and reclaiming knowledge that was never truly lost.

Topics explored:

• Melanin and sunlight
• Vitamin D and hormonal health
• Indigenous knowledge systems
• Ga traditions and Homowo
• Grounding and wellbeing
• Health equity
• Public policy
• Ancestral intelligence

Follow Indigenous Intelligence for future conversations exploring ancestral wisdom, wellbeing, culture, identity, and human potential.