It’s not often you find someone who finds their home in Alexander City when they’re from out of town. It’s even less often you find someone who’s from out of the country.
But Dr. Dimo Popov did exactly that.
The Bulgarian-born doctor received his medical training in Hungary before doing his training in New York. But when he was looking for a place to call home as a doctor, he wanted to go to the underserved.
“I wanted to find a place which was a needy, needy place, and Alabama was one of those,” Popov said. “Where the job is, that’s where home is, so I ended up in Alabama.”
Starting in a couple smaller clinics in Alabama, Popov eventually landed his permanent career at Russell Medical where he is the chief nephrologist. It was ultimately the advancements Russell Medical was making in the healthcare field that landed him there.
“There was a dialysis unit that they needed to put back on, and they recruited me,” Popov said. “Kidney disease doctors kind of are hard to come by, and they were not successful for some time and they found me. That’s how life is a lot of times — even if you’re not looking for something, things happen.”
Popov specializes in the study and treatment of kidney disease, but as there are lots of other factors that contribute to potential kidney disease, his repertoire expanded at Russell Medical.
“I began not just doing the kidney disease, but I began taking care of patients with blood pressure and diabetes and other general medical problems,” Popov said.
One of the most challenging things about kidney disease treatment and prevention, according to Popov, is the signs and symptoms can be invisible.
“The heart will always tell you straight up, there’s something wrong,” Popov said. “There will be pain, fluttering, breathing problems. The kidney is very, very silent. It doesn’t tell you anything until it’s far, far advanced. So usually people don’t know anything about the kidneys until the blood work is done.”
Because of this, Popov recommended having blood work performed at a general practitioner’s office from time to time.
The Nos. 1 and 2 causes of kidney disease, Popov said, are diabetes and high blood pressure. That’s why he sees patients with those issues as well because the two can go hand in hand.
Although diabetes and high blood pressure are often thought to be a problem as people age, Popov said that’s not necessarily the case anymore.
“With the obesity epidemic we have, these things are beginning to show up much, much earlier,” Popov said. “Even in younger people, we’ve seen early onset diabetes and blood pressure even without kidney disease. With the obesity epidemic and the way food is manipulated with all the chemicals, that has a very significant effect.”
Ultimately, Popov said there is no substitute for healthy living.
“Diet, exercise, weight loss and keeping yourself healthy and in as good of a shape as you can, that will prevent the biggest culprits that cause kidney disease,” Popov said. “And obviously if something is discovered like a renal insufficiency or some sort of kidney damage, people need to be seen by a kidney doctor right away.”
