More doctors focus on Vitamin D deficiencies

A basic medical exam produces some familiar numbers, clues to your overall health — blood pressure readings, cholesterol counts.

Now a new number is getting marquee treatment: a Vitamin D level.

Do you know yours?

In the past year, a test that checks Vitamin D levels in the blood has surged in popularity among doctors.

This summer the Institute of Medicine is expected to revise its recommendation for daily Vitamin D intake. Experts agree the current guidelines are far too low.

If you have symptoms that include fatigue and muscle aches and pains, don't be surprised if your doctor suggests a Vitamin D blood test at your next visit. Because of widespread deficiencies, some won't need any symptoms to suggest it.

Vitamin D is important to bone and muscle health for certain, but Vitamin D experts worry that D deficiency is implicated in cancers, autoimmune diseases, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, infections and depression, to name but a few ailments.

Carla Aamodt, an internal medicine doctor with St. Luke's Health System in Kansas City, Mo., said about half the patients she was testing were Vitamin D deficient, with many more "borderline."

Michael Kennedy, a family physician at the University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, Kan., said a third to a half of the patients he tested in the past year were deficient.

Cardiologist James O'Keefe said general population statistics were worse. Lack of sun exposure, the natural way the body makes Vitamin D, helps explain the deficiencies.

"Upwards of 70 percent of American adults are Vitamin D deficient or insufficient," said O'Keefe, director of the preventive cardiology program at St. Luke's Mid-America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo. "In the last year, awareness of Vitamin D deficiency has really exploded."

Doctors want to see a level of at least 30. That's nanograms per milliliter. Some prefer a minimum of 40. Levels in the low to mid-20s aren't unusual, and both Aamodt and Kennedy have had patients with levels under 5 ng/mL.

Billie Howard Barnes of Kansas City knows how that feels. The fourth-grade teacher at Pembroke Hill School had her Vitamin D checked two months ago — doctor-recommended and nothing she had considered before — and was surprised by the call she got.