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.
