Mahaska Health Welcomes Cardiologist
John Pargulski, DO
Oskaloosa, Iowa—Mahaska Health recently expanded its services to Mahaska County and southeast Iowa by adding a cardiology team headed by Dr. John Pargulski.
Oskaloosa News recently sat down with Pargulski and talked to him about setting up shop in Oskaloosa.
We asked him why Oskaloosa. “So I’ve been doing this a long time, 30 years, and I’ve done it in a number of different communities. Part of my desire beyond just patient care is to develop those resources and make them accessible in practice, developing a practice done in a number of different locations. And so that was initially intriguing. For me, the work environment here is really like none other I have heard of or been exposed to. And it’s run from the administration down that has created this type of work environment,” stated Pargulski.
“Well, I have worked in the Midwest my whole life, and I was in Des Moines and did outreach clinics. I am just very appreciative of the patients in rural areas. They’re so welcoming and appreciative of the access to care that it makes coming to work—a pleasure, says Pargulski of his time working outside large metro areas.
Since we had the doctor sitting here with us, what better time than now to get some good advice for living better?
Pargulski shared, “I would say we all want to find a routine that includes some activity that one we can still orthopedically do, and two that we enjoy.”
Pargulski also shared some thoughts on diet, “diets are hard to maintain success with because most people want to lose weight and they want to gone yesterday. And so they go to grass and water, and they reach their target, and oh, great, now I can go back to doing what I was doing. And that’s the problem: you can never go back.”
“So your weight is the fulcrum of balancing energy. And, so finding a way to consume and the Mediterranean diet is a fairly balanced, nonselective, nonexclusionary type diet, but I don’t really tell people to find an exclusionary or a fad diet because they’re just awfully hard to maintain.”
“And so looking at those types of parameters that we see in the Mediterranean diet is what I think most cardiologists would suggest, and then not having easy access to certain foods. It’s not that we can’t ever have these, but my wife learned a long time ago, she didn’t buy ice cream. I didn’t eat ice cream. And so easy access makes it difficult. The temptation is too hard to avoid all the time. And so we go out in the summer, it’s a hot day, and everybody’s stopping for ice cream, I have mine too. But if I had it in the house, it wouldn’t be there long. And so access, exercise, balanced diets. If you can pull it out of the ground or pull it off a tree, these are the best types of ways to manage some of these things. And so keeping those big pictures in mind and kind of shifting our lifestyle towards that something that my brain can wrap its arms around is probably the best long-term strategy.”
A cardiologist is a medical doctor who specializes in diagnosing, treating, and preventing diseases of the heart and blood vessels, which constitute the cardiovascular system. This specialty involves a wide range of conditions, including heart attacks, heart valve diseases, heart failure, and high blood pressure, among others. Cardiologists also play a crucial role in helping patients manage heart disease risk factors and make informed lifestyle choices to improve heart health.
You can contact Mahaska Health to schedule a time by calling 641.672.3360.
