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Early Life and Education

Dr. Erika was born on February 18, 1950 and grew up in a one-room apartment in Bucharest, Romania, the only child of older parents, her father an accountant and her mother a bookkeeper. During WWII her mother survived Nazi Germany occupation in hiding with the help of Romanian friends and her father became a captain in the Russian Army whose unit marched on Berlin. Little Erika was raised in an environment that considered education, respect and kindness the keys to success in life. By the age of five Erika knew she wanted to be a doctor just like her uncle, Maurice Blechman, MD who was a consummate clinician, dedicated researcher and President of the International Tuberculosis Association. Through his eyes, she saw the impact of research on [[Good clinical practice|clinical practice. Dr. Blechman escaped communist Romania in the late 1950s and after a short stay in Italy settled down in New York. For many years, Dr. Belchman wrote to his sister, Erika’s mother asking the family to apply to leave the communist country and join him in the free world where he knew Erika could pursue her passion and become a physician unencumbered by political climate. However, that was no easy task. The Romanian communist regime under Nicolae Ceausescu kept the country’s borders tightly sealed and it took years and monumental efforts for families to be able to leave.

Dr. Erika’s family finally escaped Ceausescu’s Communist Romania when she was 16, and by the time they arrived in Rome Erika spoke four languages fluently though none of them English. She had learned German by attending a German Lutheran Elementary school and Russian and French in high school in Bucharest, Romania.

The family stayed in Rome, Italy for less than a year allowing Erika time to attend and graduate from the Overseas School of Rome, while in Rome, Erika learned Italian, English and Spanish language and was introduced to the school’s diverse and highly intellectual faculty made of poets like Desmond O’Grady who was part of the movie La Dolce Vita produced by Federico Fellini. While in Rome her parents took her to the Vatican City every weekend to see the works of art of Rafaello, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo and the other masters of the Renaissance. When college scouts came to the school from the US , Erika was accepted to New York University on scholarship into the pre-med program. While in college, her passion for the arts and the beauty they evoke in the human soul inspired her. Her love for people expressed in her growing interest in patient advocacy that emerged as she volunteered for the American Cancer Society, tutored underprivileged children and became involved in educational student movements to raise social awareness and teach people to care and respect one another. She was also on the Dean’s List.

When time came for Dr. Erika to go to medical school she chose to attend SUNY-Downstate College of Medicine because of its location in the center of one of Brooklyn's neediest areas helping 3 million people from more than 20 countries. Erika believed that at SUNY-Downstate she would recieve the highest quality training in a socially conscious setting. Without a doubt she did. She received her MD from SUNY-Downstate College of Medicine, graduating cum laude and qualified in her junior year to become a member of the AOA academic honor society in June of 1975.

Dr. Schwartz combined her last year of medical school with the full time position of Intern in Internal Medicine at Kings County Hospital, the second largest county hospital in the US and main affiliate of Downstate College of Medicine. After graduation she completed her training in Internal Medicine and Critical Care under the watchful eyes of Drs. Karl Adler and Eric Rackow, both leaders in the specialty of critical care at Kings County Hospital Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Career, Patient Advocacy and Bioidentical Hormones

At the age of 28, Dr. Schwartz was asked by Dr. Richard Levere, then Chairman of the Department of Medicine at New York Medical College, to become Medical Director of the Emergency Department Trauma Center at Westchester County Medical Center (University Hospital of New York Medical College) in Valhalla, NY. During her tenure at WCMC in conjunction with Dr. Louis Del Guercio, Chairman of the Department of Surgery, Dr. John Savino, Dr. Robert Schultz, Dr. Schwartz was part of the team that led to the hospital’s accreditation as the sole tertiary trauma center between New York City and Albany, New York established helicopter and ambulance Medivac services, ultimately bringing 911 and paramedics to Westchester County through the Greenburgh Police Department and the County Executive Albert Del Bello.. Dr. Schwartz also held the title of Director of Ambulatory Health, Employee Health, Employability Screening and Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at New York Medical College during her employment at Westchester County Medical Center. At New York Medical College, led by John Connolly, PhD, Dr. Schwartz joined the Preventive Medicine Department under the leadership of Dr. Joseph Cimino and took as well as taught masters courses in Nutrition, Epidemiology, Emergency Medicine and Medicine and Law.

Dr. Schwartz left the ER to pursue private practice in 1983 and over the course of the ensuing 15 years built a large multispecialty practice with two branch offices in Irvington and Chappaqua,NY. The Chappaqua practice was acquired by Montefiore Medical Center whose president, Spencer Forman, provided Dr. Schwartz with her own educational TV show, Health Horizons focused on teaching the public better healthcare practices. The 150 shows produced and hosted by Dr. Erika aired on all New York Cable networks for three years.

As an outcome of the TV shows and to better fulfill the patients’ needs, Dr. Erika became exposed to a panoply of new and exciting areas in medical advances. Among the ones most interesting were alternative therapies, complementary medicine, women’s health and the Women’s Health Initiative. To help provide better support in her practice, Dr. Erika developed expertise in integrative medicine and bioidentical hormone therapies. Since there were no formal training programs in the field, she did her own clinical research and extensive literature review. Dr. Erika became conversant with the work of Drs. Andrew Weil, Dean Ornish and Bernie Siegel. Everything Dr. Erika prescribed and continues to prescribe in the area of bioidentical hormones, supplements, diet and lifestyle she took herself and gave to her own family members first. In the past ten years Dr. Erika has become a leading expert in wellness, prevention and helping people integrate all aspects of their lives to change their health paradigm to wellness and disease prevention.

As she integrated different modalities into the treatments of her patients, Dr. Schwartz developed her own protocols for bioidentical hormones, created the hormone friendly diet, compiled her own gender and age specific line of vitamins and supplements, developed individually tailored exercise, stress management and lifestyle regimens and 3 and 6 months life changing programs.

The years of change

• In 1995, as Dr. Erika was exploring integrative and complimentary medical practices for her internal medicine patients, she became increasingly dissatisfied with the menopausal treatment options available. Herbal remedies and supplements did not consistently eliminate the symptoms nor did their effects last long enough to make a positive impact. FDA approved, commercially available conventional medications had unacceptable long and short term side-effects: bloating, mood swings, depression, bleeding, strokes, heart attacks and cancer. Personally, Dr. Erika experienced menopause at an early age which also contributed to her deeper search into safe and effective alternatives for the treatment of symptoms of hormone imbalance as well as search for preventive treatments in the area. At the recommendation of her patients and through her own research of the work of Drs. John Lee and Jonathan Wright, Dr Erika encountered bioidentical hormones and after becoming comfortable with them started using them first on herself and a selected group of patients. The results were so amazing, the doctor decided to dedicate the following three years of her career working part time in a compounding laboratory at Bryce Labs and developing her own protocols for the use of bioidentical hormones alongside doing a thorough research of the entire medical literature.

• In the wake of the 2002 Women’s Health Initiative fiasco millions of women and physicians were left confused and unable to find support in the conventional medical establishment in the area of hormone therapies. The Women’s Health Initiative was an NIH study of more than 100,000 women. that looked at the assumed beneficial effects of Premarin and Prempro in a double blind placebo controlled prospective study. The results proved the drugs to be more dangerous then helpful and the NIH had stop the study three years before its scheduled completion.

• The NIH and the academic institutions who conducted the study were unable to provide a cohesive and safe alternative to the beleaguered drug option leaving millions of women filled with doubt and feeling sick. Three months before the Women’s Health Initiative came to its abrupt halt, Dr. Erika’s second book, The Hormone Solution was released by its publisher, Warner Books.

In the book Dr. Erika discussed how hormones affect men and women at different ages, what symptoms of  hormone imbalance are, what therapies are available to treat these symptoms in conventional, alternative and integrative medicine including the use and safety of bioidentical hormones.  The book became a popular manual reaching number two on Amazon and was featured in the New York Times, Vogue Magazine and national as well as local media.

As Dr. Erika expanded her practice and understanding of hormone balance and prevention, her focus turned to including diet, exercise and lifestyle with the use of the bioidentical hormones as an integral part of the living well paradigm shift in health. Her book The 30 Day Natural Hormone Plan, published also by Warner Books in 2003 was the subject of a PBS pledge special in the spring of 2004 that gave Dr. Erika the opportunity to travel to 23 cities around the US giving lectures and appearing on various TV stations and media outlets.

Dr. Erika’s clinical practice continued to grow and women brought not only their husbands and boyfriends but also their daughters. One of the young women Dr. Erika saw was the daughter of a highly regarded editor, Claire Wachtel, at William Morrow. Claire liked the transformation her daughter experienced and asked Dr. Erika to write a book about how she treated teens. The result, The Teen Weight Loss Solution and the paperback version, Dr. Erika’s Hormone Solution for Your Daughter were published in 2004 and 2005 respectively.

As Dr. Erika became the most widely recognized authority on bioidentical hormones she published the first white paper on the use of hormones in wellness and disease prevention in December 2008 with co-author Kent Holtorf in the Medical Clinics edited by Vincent Morelli. In February 2009, Dr. Erika was invited by Dr. Isaac Schiff, the Chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Harvard Massachussets General Hospital to present the scientific literature review on the various hormone molecules actions in the human body.

In 2008, together with Drs. David Brownstein and Kent Holtorf, Dr. Erika Schwartz started the Bioidentical Hormone Initiative,a not for profit organization for physicians and health care professionals created to keep them informed and aware in the areas surrounding bioidentical hormones, wellness, anti-aging and prevention.

She is also a course director in the Bioidentical Hormone Institute- the only online physician education academic institution providing training courses for physicians in bioidentical hormone therapies and prevention with Continuing Medical Education status.

She currently sees patients in her office in New York City from all over the world; from US, to Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Africa and Asia.

Over the past 30 years, Dr. Schwartz has personally taken care of more than 100,000 patients and has treated more than 15,000 patients with various formulations of bioidentical hormones and integrative, preventive programs.

She also devotes much of her time helping those who don’t have access to healthcare, by volunteering and giving free educational seminars, writing educational articles and materials for the web and print media. Dr. Erika’s ultimate goal is to empower people to take their health into their own hands and become responsible for creating their own wellness.

Through her DrErika.com website, she is helping to improve the healthcare system by teaching people to take care of themselves, building a community of intelligent people who are following common-sense approaches to wellness and helps them commit to staying young and feeling healthy by taking charge of their lives.

Honors and Awards

• Education
  • New York University
    • B.A., Pre-Med Dean' s List
  • SUNY-Downstate College of Medicine
    • M.D., Cum Laude
    • Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society
• Women's Health
  • 2005- Louis Hellman Award-Master Teacher in Women's Health (SUNY-Downstate college of Medicine)

Published Work

• Scientific
  • Hormones & Wellness & Disease Prevention: Estrogen,Progesterone,Testosterone,Growth Hormone and Thyroid Replacements in Clinical Practice.
  • Safety, Efficacy and cost of Pancreaticoduodenal Resection in a Specialized Center Based at a Community Hospital.
  • Results of Clinical Trial with L-Carnitine and CoQ 10 in Healthy Patients in a suburban Primary Care Practice.
  • Coenzyme Q10- A Review of Clinical Data.

• Books and Ebook

• • 1999 - Natural Energy - CP Putnam and Sons Publishers ISBN 0425171582, ISBN 978-0425171585
  • 2002 - The Hormone Solution - Warner Books Publishers ISBN 0446678287, ISBN 978-0446678285
  • 2004 - The 30 Day Natural Hormone Plan: Feel and Look Better Without Synthetic Hormones – Warner Books Publishers ISBN 0446693324,ISBN 978-0446693325
  • 2004 - The Teen Weight Loss Solution - W. Morrow Publishers (Imprint of Harper Collins) ISBN 1422359034, ISBN 978-1422359037
  • 2005 - Dr. Erika Hormone Solution For your Daughter - Harper Collins Publishers ISBN 0060741279, ASIN B000VYFJU6
  • 2007 - Dr. Erika's Hormone Friendly Diet - Self-published online e-book

Media Presence

• Print
  • WSJ OpEd : The Truth About Hormone Therapy.
  • The Huffingtonpost Bylined Article : The True Prevention is the Solution to Our Healthcare Crisis

• TV
  • Extra (TV series)ExtraTV Lifechangers
    • Dr. Erika on Hormone Health
    • Where to Buy Bioidentical Hormones
    • Dr. Erika Invites You to Ask Medical Qs
    • Dr. Erika Making Rounds
    • Dr. Erika on Call
    • Dr. Erika is in the house
    • Dr. Erika Answers All
    • Renegade Doc on Bioidentical Hormones
    • Food that Ignites Your Sex Drive
    • Is Thyroid Causing Your Weight Gain?
  • Discovery Health Channel
    • Body in Numbers

Online Presence

• • DrErika.com
  • Dr. Erika's Blog
  • Gather.com
  • Dr. Erika's Video blog on YouTube