The clinical site coordinator for NAPA Research in Boca Raton, Florida, Naval Parikh, MD, is an internal medicine physician who has the distinction of being named among the country’s Top Physicians by the Consumers’ Research Council of America. Dr. Naval Parikh earned his medical degree from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), where he also gained research experience that helped lay the foundation for his career. MUSC’s Hollings Cancer Center recently celebrated the renewal of its designation as a National Cancer Institute (NCI) Cancer Center, which comes with more than $10 million in funding to support its research efforts. With each designation period lasting five years, the NCI distinction is based on leadership, vision, outstanding facilities, research commitment, and community outreach.The only NCI-designated cancer center in South Carolina, Hollings is one of just 70 cancer centers in the country to earn this prestigious status. Since its last NCI renewal, Hollings has achieved multiple impressive milestones, including opening nearly 400 cancer-related research studies, expanding mobile health van cancer screening services, and winning 138 peer-reviewed research project awards.
Based in South Florida, Naval Parikh, MD, is a respected internal medicine physician in private practice. He also facilitates clinical trials at NAPA Research. Widely published in his field, Naval Parikh, MD, is the author of “Role of Folate on Depression: A Shift from Folate Replacement to Folate Supplementation” (Molecular Medicine Journal, Vol. 6, 74-76).A Harvard Mental Health Letter detailed the role of folate, also known as folic acid or vitamin B9, in treating psychiatric symptoms such as depression. Folate is found naturally in citrus, leafy green vegetables, and beans. Found naturally in citrus, leafy green vegetables, and beans, folate is also required at a certain level by pregnant women to mitigate miscarriage and birth-defect risks. Working in tandem with vitamins B12 and B6, folate works to break down homocysteine, an amino acid that, when found in high levels, has links with depression and Alzheimer's disease. In addition, breaking down homocysteine produces SAMe, which in an important component of brain cells. Deficiencies of SAMe are associated with depression. One issue for some people is that they harbor a variant gene that prevents the folate in their diet from being fully synthesized and used. One study has suggested that having this variant increases risks of depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. In addition, low levels of folate in the blood can make antidepressant drugs less effective.
An internist at SortinoMD in Boca Raton, Florida, Naval Parikh, MD, also serves as the clinical site coordinator of NAPA Research in Fort Lauderdale. Dr. Naval Parikh has also been published in the Journal of Molecular Medicine for his investigation of the relationship between folate and depression.Many people use the terms folic acid and folate interchangeably due to their similar names and characteristics. However, they are different forms of vitamin B9.A naturally-occurring form of vitamin B9, folate is found primarily in leafy vegetables, which are a good dietary source of it. Once digested, most dietary folate is converted into 5-methyltetrahydrofolate (5-MTHF). The biologically-active form of vitamin B9, 5-MTHF is essential for fueling the cells that drive the creation of genes, DNA, and chromosomes in the body.Conversely, folic acid, also known as pteroylmonoglutamic acid, is a synthetic form of vitamin B9. It’s found in many supplements and as an additive to processed food products, such as fortified breakfast cereals and flour.Unlike folate, folic acid is not immediately converted to 5-MTHF upon entering the digestive system. Instead, it must be converted to dihydrofolate (DHF) and tetrahydrofolate (THF) first. This process is time-consuming and may result in undigested folic acid being found in a person’s body. When left unmetabolized, folic acid increases the risk of cancer and may prevent the diagnosis and treatment of a vitamin B12 deficiency.
The recipient of an MD from the Medical University of South Carolina, Naval Parikh is an internal medicine physician who serves as clinical site coordinator at NAPA Research in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Supplementing nearly a decade of experience in internal medicine, Dr. Naval Parikh holds membership with the American College of Physicians (ACP).According to a recent ACP survey, more than half of all internal medicine physicians have used or work in a practice that has employed telehealth technology. As part of its survey, the ACP asked 233 of its members to detail their respective dealings with telehealth services, including video visits, remote patient monitoring, and e-consults. Members were surveyed between October 2018 and January 2019. Telehealth technology has the benefit of improving physician access for patients, especially among those who live in rural regions. Remote patient or chronic disease monitoring, for instance, is used once per week by half of the respondents. However, despite the expanding usage of telehealth services, only 19 percent of internists surveyed claimed to use video visits at least once a week. More than one-quarter of respondents also claimed they have no plans to implement telehealth technologies in their respective practices.
An alumnus of the Medical University of South Carolina, Dr. Naval Parikh has been involved in medical research for more than two decades. The clinical site coordinator of NAPA Research in Boca Raton, Florida, Naval Parikh, MD, began gaining research experience as a research assistant responsible for interviewing and monitoring subjects for a study on hypertension.Hypertension, or high blood pressure, affects roughly 85 million individuals in the United States. According to the American Heart Association (AHA), there are five ranges of blood pressure: normal, elevated, hypertension stages one and two, and hypertensive crisis.The normal range for blood pressure is below 120/80 mm Hg. When reading this, the first number refers to the systolic pressure, or the pressure at which the heart pumps blood throughout the body. The second number, meanwhile, refers to diastolic pressure. This pressure occurs when the heart relaxes and refills with blood.When blood pressure is between 120/80 and 129/80, it is categorized as being elevated. Once a person has elevated blood pressure, his or her chance of developing hypertension in the future is much higher than normal. However, such individuals can control the condition with medication, exercise, and stress reduction before it becomes a problem.Hypertension stages one and two occur at 130/80 mm Hg. Stage one hypertension refers to blood pressure that is between 130 and 139 systolic and between 80 and 89 diastolic. Past that point and up to 180/120 mm Hg, patients fall into the category of stage two hypertension. In these stages, a patient’s risk of heart attack, stroke, and other cardiovascular events increases.Finally, there’s hypertensive crisis. This category is reserved for patients who have blood pressure in excess of 180/120 mm Hg. Once in hypertensive crisis, patients need immediate medical attention and may experience such symptoms as shortness of breath, numbness, and chest pain.
Florida-based physician Naval Parikh, MD, splits his time between practicing medicine with SortinoMD and serving as NAPA Research’s clinical site coordinator. With upwards of a decade of medical experience, Dr. Naval Parikh has made several presentations about diabetes, folate replacement, and statin use.A specific class of medications, statins are commonly used to reduce cholesterol levels in the body. By doing this, they also lower a person’s risk of heart attack, angina, and stoke. Common statins seen in the United States include atorvastatin (Lipitor), simvastatin (Zocor), and rosuvastatin (Crestor).To understand how statins work, it’s important to have a better understanding of cholesterol. This naturally produced fat-like substance travels through the blood and is necessary for normal body and cell function. It is produced by the liver, but can become harmful when it reaches high levels. High amounts of cholesterol increase the risk of plaque buildup in the arteries, thus reducing blood flow and increasing the risk of heart and blood vessel problems.Statins combat this issue by acting on a specific liver enzyme. This enzyme is necessary for the production of cholesterol, and by impeding its ability to function, statins also lower the amount of cholesterol produced by the liver by more than 50 percent. Further, some statins increase the rate at which cholesterol is absorbed by the body once produced. This also reduces the amount of cholesterol left flowing through the blood vessels.
A clinical site coordinator for NAPA Research, Naval Parikh, MD, has been practicing medicine for upward of 10 years. Concurrent with his role at NAPA Research, Dr. Naval Parikh sees patients as an internist in the offices of SortinoMD, where he manages and treats a range of issues, including high blood pressure.At the 83rd Annual Scientific Meeting of the Japanese Circulation Society in March, researchers revealed a link between high blood pressure and nocturia, a condition that causes frequent urination at night. The study involved blood pressure measurements and self-reported bathroom visits from 3,749 people. Those who had blood pressure of at least 140/90 mmHg were considered hypertensive; meanwhile, nocturia was characterized as one or more bathroom visits per night.The researchers found that people with nocturia were 40 percent more likely to be hypertensive. They also found that the more often people went to the bathroom each night, the greater their risk of hypertension. However, researchers did note that the current study was limited by such factors as ethnicity, genetic background, lifestyle, and salt intake. Specific attention was drawn to the fact that only Japanese adults were analyzed in the study. Japanese adults have a higher likelihood of being salt sensitive, so their blood pressure increases more than some other ethnicities when they consume salt.Despite these limitations, researchers suggest that individuals with nocturia have their doctors pay special attention to their salt intake and blood pressure. They hope to complete more research into the connection between the two conditions in the future.
A Florida-based internist, Naval Parikh, MD, practices preventive medicine at SortinoMD in Boca Raton. Beyond this, he serves as a clinical site coordinator for NAPA Research. In addition, Naval Parikh, MD, has presented on diabetes at the 13th Annual Diabetes Fall Symposium for Primary Health Care Professionals. An autoimmune disease, type 1 diabetes (T1D) develops when the immune system mistakenly begins attacking the pancreatic cells responsible for producing insulin. As these cells are destroyed, the body creates less and less insulin, a hormone necessary for letting sugar into the cells and lowering the amount of sugar in the bloodstream. As a result of this, patients with T1D begin experiencing such symptoms as extreme hunger, increased thirst, and blurred vision.While it’s not entirely clear why a person develops T1D, the condition has been linked to a person’s family history of diabetes and their genes. Having just one relative with T1D increases a person’s risk of developing the condition to 1:20. While this may not seem very high, it is roughly 15 times higher than the general population’s risk of the condition. Meanwhile, certain genes have been linked to a higher risk of T1D, particularly those genes associated with the body’s immune response.Beyond family history and genes, environmental triggers impact a person’s risk of T1D. Viruses that target beta cells often increase a person’s risk of developing the condition. When these viruses take hold, the immune response increases to fight it. Unfortunately, the response sometimes goes wrong and results in uninfected beta cells being attacked, thus leading to the development of T1D.Finally, both age and geography play a role in a person’s risk of T1D. Children typically have the highest incidence rate of the condition between the ages of 4 and 7, and between the ages of 10 and 14. Children who live farther away from the equator also have a higher chance of developing the disease.
The clinical site coordinator at NAPA Research, Naval Parikh, MD, leverages past experience as a principal investigator, research assistant, and presenter to lead research activities that improve community health. Alongside this role, Naval Parikh, MD, practices medicine with SortinoMD and assists patients with managing such conditions as high cholesterol.It is well known that high cholesterol levels negatively impact cardiovascular health. However, a recent study also linked high cholesterol to the fatal neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). This incurable condition is most common in people over the age of 50. Patients with ALS typically pass away within two to five years of presenting with symptoms, which include slurred speech and muscle weakness. The ALS-cholesterol-link study was published in Annals of Neurology.To gather data for the study, researchers looked at about 21,000 ALS cases and 59,000 control cases from around the world. They compared these cases and searched for any genetic markers that connected or overlapped among patients. Together, they identified roughly 700 habits and traits that increased a person’s risk of developing ALS, including high levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL). According to the results, having lower levels of education and smoking also correlated with an increased risk of the disease. Similarly, intense exercise was linked to increased risk, while light exercise was associated with lower risk of the disease.
A board-certified physician who oversees a private practice in South Florida, Naval Parikh, MD, also coordinates clinical trials at NAPA Research. With experience as an emergency medical technician, Naval Parikh, MD, has assisted in emergency first-responder situations in connection with 911 calls. One common emergency situation involves a hypertensive crisis and is characterized by severely elevated blood pressure, with the diastolic pressure reading exceeding 120 mm Hg. The result of this type of hypertensive emergency is damage to organs such as heart, eyes, brain, blood vessels, and kidneys. Symptoms include visual and neurological disturbances, chest pain, vomiting, and shortness of breath.In this situation, medical professionals need to lower the patient's blood pressure immediately or acute, progressive damage can further impact the target organs and cause life-threatening conditions such as intracerebral hemorrhage, hypertensive encephalopathy, and acute myocardial infarction.Among the first-line medical therapies employed in this situation is the adrenergic receptor blocker labetalol, which is administered intravenously. The effect of the drug is to cause vasodilation, while not compromising blood flow in the cerebrum. Alternatively, the vasodilators nitroglycerin and nitroprusside may be used in a hypertensive emergency to decrease blood pressure.
A board-certified physician in private practice in Boca Raton, Florida, Naval Parikh, MD, also serves as the clinical site coordinator for NAPA Research. A frequent presenter to physician groups, Naval Parikh, MD, has published articles in peer-reviewed journals on topics such as the relationship between folate supplementation and depression. While many people associate folic acid intake with pregnancy, research shows that folate is a critical vitamin throughout life. Folic acid is needed to produce DNA and RNA, and it also serves as an essential component of neurotransmitters, which enable messages to be communicated through different parts of the brain. People who are deficient in folic acid generally have low levels of S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe), which is associated with depressive symptoms. A recent review of 11 studies that included 15,315 people revealed that low folic acid levels were linked with depression. This finding has led researchers to believe that increasing folic acid intake will trigger an increase in SAMe, which may lead to a reduction in depressive symptoms. However, depression is a complicated illness that generally requires more than one treatment. Those who think they are experiencing depression should seek medical advice and therapy in addition to considering an increase in folic acid intake.
Naval Parikh, MD, coordinates clinical trials at NAPA Research and treats patients as a physician in private practice in Florida. As a former research assistant with the department of social psychology at the University of South Carolina, Naval Parikh, MD, participated in a project focused on hypertension and its social indices.A 2014 study by MedUni Vienna researchers on the latter topic revealed close links between socio-demographic status and high blood pressure. Impacting women more than men, risk factors include profession, education level, income, and immigrant background. According to the report, one of the major risks associated with lower socio-economic status centers on gratification crisis. This involves the person making his or her best effort but not receiving adequate compensation in areas such as job security and opportunities, social recognition, and influence. At the same time, higher income allows people to more easily make lifestyle choices, and access better health screening, leading to healthier outcomes and reducing insurance burdens. Lower social status can itself be an outcome of poor health, which points to complex two-way causalities in this area. Within the scope of the study, hypertension was significantly higher in eastern Austria than in western Austria. With 19.4 percent of women and 16.6 percent of men in western Austria reporting hypertension, the figure rose to 25.5 percent and 20.1 percent respectively in eastern Austria.
Florida-based internist Naval Parikh received his MD from the Medical University of South Carolina. As an internal medicine physician at SortinoMD in Boca Raton, Dr. Naval Parikh treats patients for conditions including high cholesterol.A waxy substance, cholesterol is created by the liver from fat consumed through a person’s diet. It circulates in the blood and bonds to lipoproteins, which carry cholesterol between cells in the body. Lipoproteins are made up of protein on the outside and fat on the inside. There are two main types of lipoproteins that carry cholesterol through the body: high-density lipoproteins (HDLs) and low-density lipoproteins (LDLs). Each carries cholesterol to a different part of the body, which determines whether the cholesterol is “good” or “bad.”HDL, which leads to good cholesterol, carries cholesterol back to the liver. Once at the liver, the cholesterol is reprocessed and flushed out of the body. When a person has high levels of HDL, he or she has a lower risk of stroke and heart attack. This is because HDL removes excess cholesterol from the body so that it does not build up in the arteries.Meanwhile, LDL, responsible for bad cholesterol, carries cholesterol to the arteries. Cholesterol in the arteries often builds up and causes atherosclerosis, a condition that increases the risk of peripheral artery disease, stroke, and heart attack. It may also deprive certain arteries and organs of the oxygen they need to properly function.Most people have higher levels of LDL in the blood than HDL, the latter of which only accounts for about one-fourth to one-third of total cholesterol levels. On average, women and men should strive for HDL numbers of at least 55 mg/dL (milligrams per deciliter of blood) and 45 mg/dL, respectively. Meanwhile, LDL numbers should be as low as possible--no higher than 130 mg/dL in people without blood vessel disease, diabetes, or heart disease. LDL numbers should remain below 100 mg/dL for people who do have these conditions.
Naval Parikh, MD, is a respected presence in the South Florida medical sphere who facilitates clinical trials at NAPA Research. Possessing a background in emergency medicine, Naval Parikh, MD, stays current on developments in the broader health care field. A recent UConn Health study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences brought focus to findings on the premature aging of brain stem cells among people living with the most severe types of multiple sclerosis (MS). As MS advances it impacts the ability of nerves to transmit consistent signals throughout the body, which results in challenges in completing basic tasks such as holding a pen or walking. The major issue is degenerated and inflamed myelin, which acts as insulation around the nerves. The good news is that long periods of remission often occur among those with MS, which allows ample opportunity for recovery.The periods of relative wellness would be an optimal time for targeted therapeutics focused on prematurely old brain stem cells among progressive MS patients, which act differently than normal brain cells. Understanding them provides important pathways for new treatments that address the underlying neurological deterioration involved in MS.
Naval Parikh, MD, works in private practice and additionally serves as part of the NAPA Research team in Boca Raton, Florida. As NAPA’s clinical site coordinator, he manages series of high-level clinical trials at one of the state’s most experienced independent research facilities. Dr. Naval Parikh’s experience includes work as a hospitalist responsible for emergency treatment and as a physician with Body Care Liposculpture & Anti-Aging Clinic in Fort Lauderdale.
Liposculpture is a medical procedure that aims to slim and define the body or face by removing and reconfiguring areas of fatty deposits. The contouring of liposculpture can benefit the appearance of the chin, neck, and stomach in particular.
Experts point out that liposculpture can yield more extensive contouring than the better-known liposuction procedure. While liposuction can remove larger amounts of fatty tissue from the body, liposculpture has the ability to reshape and reconfigure greater quantities of fat, often in areas resistant to the effects of exercise. Prospective patients should keep in mind that liposculpture is not a solution for someone looking for a procedure that will remove a large amount of fat.
Typically performed under a local anesthetic, liposculpture also typically results in only minimal bleeding and swelling post-procedure. Physicians experienced in performing it say that the new body tone obtained from liposculpture will often be permanent for patients who pursue a diet and lifestyle that is healthy.
