The Quest for Vitamin D

When I wrote about my battle with Vitamin D deficiency, I expected feedback, the kind I usually get after an interesting, personal article: emails, comments on Facebook, WhatsApp messages, that sort of thing. Instead, my phone would not stop vibrating. Men and women, I respect. Women I consider strong. People who run homes, hospitals, thriving […]

When I wrote about my battle with Vitamin D deficiency, I expected feedback, the kind I usually get after an interesting, personal article: emails, comments on Facebook, WhatsApp messages, that sort of thing.

Instead, my phone would not stop vibrating. Men and women, I respect. Women I consider strong. People who run homes, hospitals, thriving businesses, and ministries. All saying the same thing: “Doctor, this is me.”

Apparently, we are a nation of accomplished, competent, deeply exhausted people living under one of the brightest suns on earth.

Which brings us to a question that refuses to go away: How does someone in Nigeria, where the sun rises boldly and sets reluctantly, become deficient in the sunshine vitamin?

The answer, as it turns out, is woven into how we now live, our lifestyle.

Walk through many urban neighbourhoods in Kano, Kaduna, or Abuja today, and you will notice something our parents and grandparents did not grow up with: houses built shoulder to shoulder, high perimeter walls rising like fortresses, balconies staring into other balconies, windows opening onto concrete. Industrialisation has rearranged our relationship with the sky. Where courtyards once allowed sunlight to flood in freely, where women swept under open heavens and children played barefoot on warm earth, we now have paved compounds, enclosed designs, and architectural efficiency that values privacy over penetration of light.

Sunlight, these days, must apply for permission to enter.

Once upon a time in villages, women spread their mats outside between 9-11am, chatting with friends and neighbours, eating ‘dumame’ in a tradition known as ‘shan hantsi’. Domestic chores like picking stones out of rice, ‘surfe’ and ‘daka’ (pounding) where activities carried out outside. Women spreading clothes outside, chatting across fences, supervising children, absorbing light without thinking about it.

In rural areas, a long time ago, kitchens were built outside, and women had to cross the yard several times during the day in order to cook a decent meal. The toilets were also situated at the back of the houses or in a separate unit from the bedroom, requiring us to walk outside so that we could relieve ourselves.

It was ordinary. It was routine. In a way, it was biochemical gold. Now, washing machines hum indoors, drying racks stand quietly in tiled rooms, and in some homes, tumble dryers do the job without a single ray touching cotton or skin.

Modernisation has given us convenience but has quietly taken away casual sun exposure.

Security concerns in this country further limit outdoor leisure. Heat drives us indoors during peak UVB hours. Air-conditioned comfort becomes preferable to brief discomfort under open skies. We have, unintentionally and ingeniously, engineered sunlight out of our daily lives.

Then there is our love affair with tinted windows. We tint our cars for comfort and privacy. We tint our offices for aesthetics and cooling efficiency. We tint our homes because the glare feels harsh. What we do not always realise is that ultraviolet B rays do not negotiate with glass. You may sit by a sunlit window all afternoon, feeling virtuous about your proximity to daylight, but your skin is synthesising nothing. Nada. You are basking in brightness without benefit.

We drive to work in tinted cars, sit in tinted offices, return to tinted living rooms, and wonder why fatigue follows us like our village people.

As if that were not enough, the air itself has changed. Harmattan dust drapes the sky in seasonal haze. Generator fumes mingle with traffic emissions. Urban pollution thickens the atmosphere. Research shows that atmospheric pollution can reduce the amount of UVB radiation reaching ground level. In other words, even when you step outside, the sunlight may be filtered before it meets you. We are living under what appears to be brilliant skies, yet the quality of exposure is compromised.

And then of course, there is our poor diet. Natural sources of Vitamin D, like fatty fish, fortified dairy, and fortified cereals, are not consistently consumed in many Northern households. Sunlight remains the primary source. When that source is blocked by architecture, fabric, glass, pollution, traditional dress, melanin or lifestyle, deficiency quietly advances.

Another risk factor is obesity. Almighty Obesity. Because Vitamin D is fat-soluble, it can become sequestered in adipose tissue, reducing its bioavailability in circulation. The vitamin is present, technically, but not functionally accessible. Yet another reason why we should lose excess weight.

Exercise, you say? O yes! Even when we exercise, we do so in the early mornings or in the evenings, when the sun is down.

For women, there are also uniquely female factors, the ones we carry quietly.

Pregnancy and lactation significantly increase calcium demands. If Vitamin D levels are inadequate, calcium absorption becomes inefficient, and the body compensates by drawing from bone stores. Over time, repeated pregnancies and prolonged breastfeeding without adequate replenishment can erode bone density in ways that are not immediately dramatic but deeply consequential. Many women do not realise that their persistent muscle aches, their subtle weakness, their low-grade fatigue may be tied not to character but to chemistry.

The solution of course is not to go and lie down somewhere in the desert and get sunburnt.

Balance is key. We cannot dismantle urbanisation, nor should we romanticise a past that came with its own hardships. But we can modify how we live within modernity. We can become intentional about sunlight the way we have become intentional about hydration, exercise, and sleep.

This means stepping outside in the early morning or late afternoon for fifteen to thirty minutes, allowing forearms or lower legs brief, safe exposure where culturally and personally appropriate. It means choosing to walk short distances instead of always driving. It means sitting in an open courtyard rather than under constant shade when the opportunity presents itself. It also means reconsidering the perpetual darkness of heavily tinted environments.

For lactating mothers and pregnant women, it means proactive screening and supplementation when needed, rather than waiting for symptoms to accumulate. For clinicians, it means remembering that fatigue is not always psychological and that bone pain in a young woman should not be dismissed as “stress.”

For households, it may mean reintroducing small practices we abandoned without noticing drying clothes outside when possible, opening spaces to light, and allowing sunlight to enter not just rooms but routines.

Diet can support, though it rarely replaces, sunlight. Including Vitamin D-rich foods where accessible, and using supplements when indicated, becomes part of responsible self-care rather than luxury.

If there is anything my low vitamin D levels have taught me, it is that health is rarely lost in dramatic gestures. It slips away quietly, through small daily patterns repeated without thought.

I have learnt my lesson.