Episode 99: The Easiest Way to Prevent Disease with Dr. Erika Schwartz

Dr. Debra Muth 0:02
Welcome to Let’s Talk Wellness. Now, I’m your host, Dr. Deb, this is where we talk about everything wellness, and learn to defy aging, and live our lives on our own terms. Dr. Schwartz, welcome to the show. I’m so glad to have you here today. It’s such a pleasure to be able to talk to somebody about wellness, I do the same thing as you. So we should have a wonderful conversation.

Dr. Erika Schwartz 0:26
Right, thank you so much for having me. It’s so nice to be on your show.

Debra Muth 0:31
Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get started from conventional medicine to integrative medicine?

Dr. Erika Schwartz 0:40
Well, it’s a good question. Because I actually did start as a conventional doctor because I thought of myself as a healer. So I became a doctor. Because, you know, this is where I came from the world that said that, the only way you can be a healer is if you have an MD after your name. So I went into conventional medicine I trained and then I went into critical care, internal medicine and critical care. And while I was running a trauma center at the age of 28, I suddenly realized that what I was doing was definitely not healing. And that while people you know, you can take care of acute people who are acutely ill like if they’re really sick in the emergency room, is probably the only place to be it for acute care. But after that, there’s nothing else. There’s no way to keep people to bring people to where they were before, or improve whatever caused them to get into trouble to begin with. And there was nothing. And I realized that that’s really what conventional medicine is about. And then to worsen the situation. The next step is that you get the the subspecialty, like game, which you get sent from one sub specialists to another, literally, to have tests, to have procedures to have all kinds of crazy stuff done, and never put you together as a human being and see what’s really wrong with you and how to help you get better. So in my mind, I what seems very logical to me is that the way I look at our lives, that lifespan is really a continuum of health, with small interruptions when you’re not well, and in the conventional medical thinking world. Life is a continuum of disease with small interruption is when you well, so that we didn’t really fit together very well. But he thought that, you know, I am a conventional doctor. And what I’m talking about is conventional medicine. And it must become conventional medicine, if conventional medicine is to survive. And so conventional medicine is clearly not surviving very well. So I started basically teaching myself because we’re talking about this occurred in the early 90s, that I noticed that this was not happening, that this is not okay. And then I also realized something else by running a trauma center that, you know, you can do everything right, you can follow all the protocols, you can do everything perfectly well and the patient dies, and or you could do everything wrong, and the patient walks away. So clearly, it’s not up to us to make these great decisions. And there’s a lot more going on than we know. So realizing that also took away the arrogance of doctors out of me really quickly. And it put me in a position where the only thing I could do is try to help for real. And then I did become a healer. And now I am a doctor and a healer. And the stuff that I learned 20/30 years ago, actually is coming to pass because it’s the truth. So I became so I just kind of transition gently. And to this day, if you ask me, if I was a conventional doctor, I will always tell you that I am a conventional doctor, because I understand, you know the science, I understand conventional medicine. And I think that there is a place for it and acute care, and that’s about it. And then you need someone to coordinate your care, to look at all aspects of care to integrate all the pieces and to not poopoo something they don’t understand.

Dr. Debra Muth 4:33
I love that description of things that was so well stated. Because it is so true. You know, it doesn’t have to be a alternative or conventional. There is a bridge in the middle, which is what we call integrated, right. And it’s the bridging of both the conventional science that we know and the alternative science that we know and some of the alternative world that we can’t quite explain but we know it exists. And that’s really where people tend to do the best is when we mesh all three of those things together and treat the person as a whole, instead of just parting our bodies out to specialists and saying, okay, you deal with this part, you deal with this part. And I hear this every day from my clients too, is nobody’s looking at me as a person anymore. It’s just my colon, or my liver, or my this or my that, and they send me to all these specialists. But nobody asks me all the questions about me. And I think that’s where we’ve lost the gift of medicine, really. And that’s where integrative medicine is so great is that we want to know everything about that person as a whole, their social, their mental, their physical everything.

Dr. Erika Schwartz 5:39
Right, you’re right. And, you know, the question really becomes why would a doctor dimensional doctor accept anything less than that? Why would anybody say, well, and they’re excuses I hear all the time, which is like, Oh, we have to see patient in three minutes. But the thing is, why would anybody except that they can do something to some to another human being, based on looking at one part of their bodies and ignoring the rest of them when everything’s connected. I mean, this is something that developed in the 70s and 1970s, and has only kind of taken a nosedive since then, and, you know, yeah, they’re great things that scientists do, and, you know, things that, you know, are really focused and very laser sharp, like, by all means, but that really doesn’t apply to the individual. You know, like, we’re like, we can talk about what’s going on now with, you know, COVID, and, you know, public health and public health issue is very different than the individual issue. And I deal with individual issue, I don’t do public health. I mean, I took public health horses, know about public health and understand it, but to take public health and make that generalize that and say everybody fits into this box is just kind of not okay. It’s not okay. It’s really and I think that looking at,

Dr. Debra Muth 7:08
yeah, you know, we look at personalized medicine, right, what you and I do is personalized medicine. And it’s truly prevention. And we have so many tools today than we had 20 years ago. And both of you and I started in this, it’s really growing, and thank goodness for that. But sometimes I feel like we’re not using those tools to the most benefit, you know, when we’re saying everyone can have the same treatment, and everyone can get the same vaccine, and no one’s going to have the same outcome. And what we know about genetics today, that is not true, but we’re not applying that to the general people. It’s like, it’s only for an elite few that can afford that care or understand that or happen to come across a doctor that understands it and gives it to, and it’s so sad that we’re not making this part of our frontline health.

Dr. Erika Schwartz 8:01
Right, I agree with you, I think that it’s, I was talking to somebody about it the other day that, you know, we don’t look at prevention as being available to everybody. We think that you know, eating right, sleeping, exercising, you know, meditating, breathing, and all of these are things that are only available to the rich. And unfortunately, it’s true, but the reason they’re unavailable to everybody else is because there’s a block from the conventional world, from Big Pharma, from public health, from everybody who works, you know, in that area, conventional medicine, that really doesn’t want this to happen, because then there’s less money to be made. And it’s so much easier to teach people to hear you that if you sleep eight hours a night, you will feel better. And you know, if you drink water instead of you know, not drinking anything or drinking bad stuff, soda, right? You will feel better, that if you move, you’ll feel better. So all these things are available to everybody. You don’t need to be wealthy to have access to it. And yet, it’s for it’s perceived, and it’s presented as uniquely available to those with money.

Dr. Debra Muth 9:27
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s so sad, because you’re absolutely right. If we could teach people some of the basic things that our families learned when our my mom was younger, you know, kind of like our old family remedies, right, which are truly the way people should be living. They’re not family remedies, but they’re how we care for ourselves without having to go into the medicine world. If we learn those things, and we teach those things and we share them. People have access to this at no cost, but we’re not sharing that knowledge today. More.

Dr. Erika Schwartz 10:02
No, you know why, and I tell you what, and I remember when I was in medical school and in my postgraduate training that they, you know, the conventional world will make, it’s not even conventional, because I don’t even know what to name for it is really traditional, like ditional medicine, they would say, you know, they would poopoo old wives tales, and all the stuff that actually works, all the stuff that, you know, it’s shared experience and shared information, that if you apply it, you do stay healthier. I mean, the whole thing, like I remember, like chicken soup, for instance, right? They’ll be like, Oh, that’s ridiculous. You know, that’s like, why would you give somebody chicken soup? Give them Gatorade? Well, why would I give them Gatorade and poison them and give them chemicals, when I would rather give them chicken soup. And then of course, you know, 20 years later, science comes in and says, oh, there’s protein in there, immunoglobulin. All the all the point of it being that, you know, old wives tales are okay, they actually work. That’s why they have been around for a long time. It’s just a very interesting world we live in. But I think that it’s changing. And I have to tell you that from the beginning, when I started doing this, to now from the early 90s, to now, things are dramatically changing, because my patients, okay, and they’re pre selected, because they’re my patients, obviously, like your patients are pre selected, right? My patience will not accept any of the baloney of like, not being looked at as a whole person not being listened to not being respected. I mean, people are starting to change. And I think that that will force the change in the system. I think you’re gonna meet them, it’s still a broken.

Dr. Debra Muth 11:50
Yeah, it’s still broken. But I think you’re right, because patients aren’t, they’re demanding a different way of being cared for. And if they don’t like it, they’ll go someplace else. And they’re spending, and they’re choosing to change with their dollars, which is the only way the medical system is going to change is if people change by their dollars. And with the larger deductibles today, if people are going to pay for care out of their pocket, they’re going to pay for the care that they want, not the care that they’re forced to have. And that’s so different. Right?

Debra Muth 12:33
Okay, as we’re talking about this, how does someone look and feel their best every day?

Dr. Debra Muth 12:42
I don’t know that everybody can feel their best every day. I think that’s the expectation, right? So I think that I think that, like I said, there are more days that you should feel good, then you shouldn’t be feeling good. And I think that, you know, I think it’s always like, you know, COVID has changed the world obviously has changed the way we live. So we’re kind of in an adjustment period now, where we don’t even know we think that this is going to end. And it should end because we’re sick and tired of it. Because the next pandemic is a mental health pandemic, obviously. But I write, so I think, now, you feel good if and I think having a purpose as I get up in the morning, and you have a routine, right? You get up, I mean, I meditate I work out, you know, then you start doing your work, and do your thing. But you know, some people skip breakfast, because you know, the intermittent fasting is very popular, and it actually works for most people and the people it works for, it works great. So it’s about maintaining the routine, and really kind of pay paying attention to yourself. And I think that, that what has happened, and I don’t know that you’ve noticed, I’m sure you’ve noticed that it’s as much as I have is that nobody wants to focus on themselves because nobody wants to take responsibility for themselves. And why you know, because if you say, Okay, I’m responsible for my health, for the outcome of what’s going on in my life, then I can’t look at you and say, Hey, you gave me bad advice, right? No, to make create transit is a big issue. And we’ll get there. We’re getting there. But I think that more than anything else, it’s like, you have to live in your body. And somehow we all live in our heads and what’s happening with the COVID in isolation, all of us with just having contact with each other, like through zoom more than anything else. Right. I think more and more is that people have to start paying attention. You know, I never understood why liquor doors were essential businesses to tell you the truth. I don’t know. I mean, I work in New York City and I live in Connecticut. And I have to tell you, I lived down the street from a liquor store. And while there was no no traffic, nobody was anywhere in the streets last spring, right? That store was booming. I don’t understand what that one makes it essential unless you’re trying to kill yourself, which I can understand as part of what’s going on. But it’s about once people drank themselves into oblivion, ate themselves into oblivion, didn’t do anything, eventually, things changed. And they’re starting to shift. And I see more people, you know, because we humans are extreme. So we go extreme, either you overdo it or you underdo-it. So we all start starting to come towards the middle. And as you said, about the type of medicine, right? Try to bring, once you bring it to the middle, it works. And I think that that’s what COVID is actually giving us as a legacy, really, the ability to start looking at ourselves, and the the fact that we have to start taking responsibility. We cannot blame anybody else when were locked up. And the only person basically make accountable for what’s going on is you

Dr. Debra Muth 16:20
I love that analogy. I think that’s so good. And I think you’re right. So we people are, are locked down at home, it’s forcing us to look at our lives and forcing us to decide, is this the life that we want? Or are we going to change it when we come out of the pandemic. And more people than not are saying, I’m not going to live that same way, I’m not going to be as busy, I’m not going to be as crazy, I’m not going to work 90 hours a week, I’m not going to give up sleep, I’m not going to stop having fun, I want my life on my terms. And I think that’s going to be a good thing. Because we’re not going to be in that rat race quite as much, hopefully, coming out of this pandemic.

Dr. Debra Muth 17:02
You know, we just moved offices in New York City. And we now across this building that is, you know, it’s an office building. So across from us this building was and still is primarily law offices. And they used to be literally like, you know, like an assembly line of desks with, you know, with computers. What else right. And it’s empty. And it’s been empty, I guess, since we just moved in there like two weeks ago. But literally, they when we looked at the building for the first time, before we decided to rent that space. There were a zillion people in there. So that was last spring before like maybe last January, February. And now there’s no one in any of those. So you know, that the law firms did not go under because you know, they’re busier than ever, but everybody’s working. So the good thing about that, like you were saying is that okay, now you kind of have to look at yourself, because, you know, on the other hand, is you are actually we all work more hours than we ever did. Yeah, because there’s no beginning and no end really, the date, no run in write. run on. So it makes it really difficult, right. But on the other hand, you have to look at yourself, and you don’t have anybody else to say, well, it was their fault that I didn’t you know that I went out too late that I didn’t exercise. Now it’s your own fault. But it’s so interesting to see how it completely changed. I mean, I’m sure New York will come back. I mean, it’s still it’s already bad. People are not going to work the same way. Like my office is open three days a week, we used to be open five days a week. And everything we do, I mean, it’s funny because we have patients all over the world. And the funny thing is that we are doing telemedicine long before there was done medicine, and long before there was any zoom. So my patients won’t do zoom will do FaceTime. So that’s it. But it’s so that people have figured out that there are better ways you don’t have to get on a plane every five minutes to do something.

Dr. Debra Muth 19:25
I agree with a lot of healthy tele medicine for 20 years and now all of a sudden everyone’s trying to figure out how to do telemedicine and our office looked at each other and said, it’s not that complicated. It’s really not. It can be done medicine can be done this way. And now finally the insurance companies I was on a call last weekend, Blue Cross Blue Shield said telemedicine is here to stay. We figured out a way to do this. We’re going to reimburse for it because it’s saving money because people are going in the hospitals and I’m like, No, we’re gonna save you money 20 years ago if you would have just taught me

Dr. Debra Muth 20:02
Hi, I’m Dr. Deb, founder of serenity Health Care Center, I want to thank you for joining our let’s talk wellness now podcast, it has been such a pleasure to share our knowledge. With so many people, we are averaging about 25,000 downloads an episode. And that is amazing because it’s showing us how much people want to learn about health and wellness. at Serenity Health Care Center, we have had the pleasure of changing lives for over 8500 clients, both men, women and their children. As a result of this, I have created serenity view, a university Learning Center where you can access all of my knowledge that I have developed over 25 years of practice at your fingertips in an easy to find index library, you will have access to this dashboard 24 seven, it will be like having your own personal natural path at your beck and call. Anytime a day. I’d like to encourage you to check it out at Serenityu.com.

Dr. Debra Muth 21:17
You know, it’s so interesting, because in 2004, we started our first you know, I was involved. I mean, I still haven’t been with bioidentical hormones, which nobody knew what they were, they weren’t called by bioidentical. They’re called natural hormones anyway, so the only way you could get them in those days was compounded. Well, of course, now the FDA approved enough of them that the only thing you can get that you need compounded is testosterone, the rest of it, that’s all available your local drugstore. And the interesting thing is, so we started our own compounding pharmacy, this was 2004. And all of a sudden, I guess I was Oh, I know, because I wrote this book, The Hormone Solution, which now it’s like the new hormone solution. So I do have something to pitch us, right. So I wrote the book. And it was number two on Amazon. And suddenly, because it came out at the right time, right when the Women’s Health Initiative study fell apart, right? So all of a sudden, we got like a lot of patients and the patients were coming from all over the world. So there was no way nobody had ever done this by phone. And they came to me and they you know that that my team and said, How are we going to do this? And I said, you don’t have to see the patient, you can to do it by phone. It’s not a problem. I mean, there’s nothing that I’m going to that I need to, you know, see the patient for. So we went to the, to the state to the New York State Department of Health, and we asked them I can learn in general. And we asked them if it was legal that we could you know, talk to prescribe to somebody in Wisconsin, right. And they were like, baffled they were talking about I mean, nobody’s ever done that before. How do you examine the patient? Is it don’t, we don’t have to examine the patient. I mean, I mean, we doing bloods, but honestly, between you and me and the rest of the world, you know, the only reason we’re doing bloods is because we’re conventional medicine, and we think that we the Bloods will tell us something, but they don’t know when you die about. Right. So we know that, you know, 15 years later, anyway. So they said, Well, you know, we’ll give you a letter saying that we don’t know. So that made it, okay. So this whole thing, and there were like six doctors in the group. And we were doing it, you know, all pulling down from Salesforce. And we would just do online, everything was telephones. And then we went on and said, Wait a minute, we don’t even have to talk to the patient. Because we’re focusing on balancing hormones, there was women only at the time. And more people came in and out that we saved so much money to the patient, to the insurance company, to the system. No one ever noticed. You know, you have no, you know, we weren’t an academic institution. So we weren’t going to publish the data and prove that Guess what, people do a lot better with hormones. They don’t need the system anymore. as much. So yeah, so it’s very interesting. Isn’t that interesting?

Dr. Erika Schwartz 24:37
So can you talk a little bit for people that are listening about why hormones are such a big role for us as we age? Why are they such a big deal for us to keep at an optimal level?

Dr. Erika Schwartz 24:51
Well, when you’re 20, and your hormones are imbalanced, and you have a period maybe you don’t have a period but your hormones are imbalanced, you’re fertile, you don’t have wrinkles, you can think clearly, you can put your head on the pillow at night and fall asleep. You lose weight really fast if you actually get serious about your diet. So and you sexually, totally interested, your libido is up. I mean, everything works well. So that’s when your hormones are in balance. So why would anybody think that once you lose your hormones, this will continue. And that there’s any other reason why you would start getting chronic illnesses as you get older. Because there’s a total correlation between the moment your hormones start going out of whack, and you know, whether it is menopause, that you go through at the age of 30, because it’s early, or the age of 60, because it’s late, it doesn’t matter the moment you don’t make hormones. I’m talking about estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, adrenal, thyroid, the moment you stop making them well, and making them imbalance, you start developing the beginning of diseases, chronic diseases of aging. And it’s so easy. And I, you know, I said, and then I realize it’s not cavalierly that I say it, because that’s what I do. But it’s the truth that if you have hormones, if you have the right hormones, if they’re well balanced, there’s no reason for you to really ever be sick. I mean, you know, when we first started working with hormones, and the North American menopause society was very against everything I was doing. So they were they said, Well, you know, three years is the maximum people should be taking hormones, though, after three years, of course, we continued, and me being on them, because I was 46. Right? So I was like, wait a minute, why would I stop that? Well, because of the increased risk of cancer, where did the increased risk of cancer come from, there’s not one scientific documentation to support that. And as a matter of fact, 20 year old women don’t really get cancer, that’s a very rare thing to see a 20 year old with cancer. And as you move on through life, you see that all of these diseases that we’re so afraid of, that are so bad, are not caused by hormones that prevented by hormones, and it became very clear that you need to have your hormones balance. And initially, I was working with estrogen and progesterone and testosterone, and amine, and estrogen and progesterone primarily. And then we added the testosterone. And then I realized that everybody was doing really well, because they were not having hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, you know, recurrent urinary tract infections. But I also realized that what happened was that weren’t quite where they should be. I mean, they were great, but they weren’t perfect. And it’s not like it will ever be perfect. Like you said, every day should be better, I hope, but they doesn’t really happen anyway. And I realized that thyroid is completely overlooked because the American endocrine society who has monopoly on diabetes is because that’s the only thing they have a monopoly on. And that’s a disease that occurs long time after, it should never have occurred right? up. Once you start giving people a thyroid based on symptoms, not on stupid blood test numbers, then they start feeling better. And then you put the picture together, put some adrenal support in there, whether it is herbal, like ashwagandha, or just, you know, the animal, adrenal is right, then you have a picture that’s much more well rounded. And it’s like, our life’s like a puzzle. So the more you put in, the more you’ll know what it looks like. So you need your hormones. And as far as I’m concerned, I will take hormones until the day I die. And my patients will be given hormones until the day that I die or they die who dies first. But you know, interestingly enough, you know, in the practice, we have had very few people who were positive for COVID. And of the ones that became positive and I’m telling you, I have patients all over the world. I mean, I’m not exaggerating, you name a country, I probably have a patient there. And nobody got sick, like really sick. And what do I do with them? Yeah, diet, exercise, lifestyle, stress management, sleep, obviously, everything else supplements, right? Everything, but they’re all on hormones, and they’re all on peptides, and everybody’s doing well. So the question is, why isn’t everybody on it? You know, I don’t have one patient with a low vitamin D level. So we discovered suddenly in the conventional world that people who were getting really sick for COVID and died with COVID had somehow turned out to have low vitamin D levels. But why did they have low vitamin D levels, I’m sure that the majority did have access to some kind of medical system that would do blood tests on them. And we know that nobody’s vitamin D levels normal on its own, because you putting on too stupid suntan sunscreen all day long. And some of us will live in northern areas don’t even have sun half the year. So why wouldn’t you supplement it? Why wouldn’t

Dr. Debra Muth 30:39
I love this, this is awesome. And this is this is my love to I’ve done hormone therapy for 20 years of patients. And so it’s great to talk to somebody else that feels the same way I do. And our practice is very similar to yours. We have 8,500 people in our practice, and we’ve had patients get COVID. But I have not lost a patient with COVID. We’ve not had any patients go to the hospital with COVID. They were sick for seven days, they were better. We have them on all kinds of supportive things. We told them what to take, if it got if they got COVID or can’t expose, we told them what to take to prevent it. And we said if you feel really sick, call us and we will prescribe hydroxychloroquine and doxycycline and ivermectin and AIDS it survives and whatever we need to do to keep you out of the hospital,

Dr. Erika Schwartz 31:27
Because their immune system’s fine. Yeah, why wouldn’t their immune system be fine?

Dr. Debra Muth 31:31
Yes. And I love this idea of hormones forever. I’ve been on that same front for 20 years, saying, There is no reason why we should not have hormones for the rest of our lives, there’s no reason we have to have a boxcar waist when we’re 60. Instead of the hourglass waist, we had when we were 20. There’s no reason you can’t sleep or want to have sex or have our brains function as long as we want them to function to where we want to. But when we lose, all of that is gone. And then you don’t feel like yourself, and you don’t feel like a woman. Because you’re really not a woman anymore. Without any female hormones, you’re just kind of is we’re supposed to still be that we were when we were younger, it makes no sense.

Dr. Erika Schwartz 32:18
It makes no sense. And you know what it makes no sense from so many perspectives if you think relationships that you say, Okay, so, how many times I don’t know, I mean, I take as it turns out in the past five years, we got a lot of men in the past. Now, it used to be primarily women now it’s like on a 50/50. And, you know, you see these guys, and you know, as they get into their 50s and 60s, you know, they wind up leaving the wife and moving on to somebody who’s 30 and 40. And the reason is, because, okay, it could be that, you know, relationships, run their course, whatever, I’m totally on board with that. But it also is because if you’re not interested in sex anymore, if your brain is not working anymore, and he’s exposed to something, someone who’s interested and wants to be with them, it changes everything, but it’s all about the hormones are gone. I mean, if you have no hormones, you’re not gonna be interested in sex. Now, you know. And I mean, women bring husbands and they go, I feel great. So you need to bring him back.

Dr. Debra Muth 33:31
I always question. And we were getting more men to always question, why is it okay to give men testosterone when they age, but women can’t have anything? And then yes, then the men are feeling great. And then they go to a 30-year-old and a six-year-old woman? Well, where is that fair, that men can feel amazing. And women should just feel it didn’t make any sense back then either?

Dr. Erika Schwartz 33:57
But it never made sense. But you know what, it’s the same thing as everything. You know, conventional medicine is about men. World is about men, and I don’t really care how long it’ll take. But someday, maybe that’ll change. And we realize that. But yeah, of course, why would men get testosterone? And why would it be such a big, you know, “ism” in the system? And why would it would there be such a debate? Why would there be such a big thing about women taking hormones, when in fact and the Women’s Health Initiative was just disgusting? what it did to this is to do that. And you know, 7 million women went off hormones like this like overnight, because they screwed up, because the government and why it pharmaceuticals screwed up a test a study. And if that had been men, you know, that wouldn’t have taken them off hormones, they would have put them on a different kind of hormone or the story would have been very But this was like, Okay, one more way we can bury the women and make them look like they’re idiots. And there’s something wrong with them. Because that’s what we want to prove anyway. You know, it’s interesting. There was an article today in the New York Times about how coffee, caffeine, right? changes estrogen levels, right? No. I was like one of my patients sent it to me. And I was like, yeah, we know that right? Yeah. So I read the article, honestly. And I’m like, What is going on? So it’s, you know, it’s always a report of some study somewhere, right? So it’s 250 premenopausal women. So from the age of like, 20 to 35. And they found out that the Oh, they followed them for two menstrual cycles. As you know, that’s really amount of time. Yeah. And turns out that Asian women, their estrogen level went up when they drank coffee, caffeine and Caucasian when their estrogen level went down when they drank coffee. So my patient says to me, what do you think about it? And I said, I think they have nothing else to write about. Yeah, basically. Because one thing about First of all, 250 women, two cycles, what does that mean? And it was unbelievable. And once I, you know, and I get that from patients all the time, I’m sure you’d have to that they send you stuff. What do you most of the time, it’s garbage. Most of the time, it’s, and it gets published. The interesting thing is, you know, I’ve published in conventional medical literature, but it’s so interesting to watch what they publish versus what they won’t publish. And it is so biased, that they will publish something that will help pharma or their you know, their position. It’s ridiculous, honestly, to watch what they publish.

Dr. Erika Schwartz 37:15
So it’s not to get all their publishing or ratings out, that’s all they publish towards.

Dr. Debra Muth 37:26
Do you believe in the fountain of youth?

Dr. Erika Schwartz 37:34
Do I believe in we are our own fountain of youth? I think that we were our own fountain of youth. I think that, as I said to you, if you have purpose, if you your hormones are imbalanced if you’re leading a life that’s well balanced, and, you know, purpose driven, right, and you’re happy with what you’re doing. And you get up in the morning, and you’re looking forward to what you’re doing, which I’m sure you do. And I certainly do. You’re gonna have there’s the fountain of youth. I mean, how are you going to get old? I mean, you look at people who go well into their 80s and 90s. And they’re still doing stuff. And you go, why didn’t you know what’s going on? I mean, people used to say that to me, like, how could this person still go to the office, I had a patient in the practice, and she died at 96. And she ran. I mean, she and her husband had this accessory business, and they were importing stuff from China. And she was going every single day after the husband died, she kept on going to work. And people would say, Why isn’t she retired? And I said, because she’s gonna die when she retires. And that’s exactly what happened. She didn’t retire. She eventually died. But she was happy. She had a purpose. So I think, you know, we have a very hard time finding purpose. And I think that it’s easier than we think. Because everybody’s looking for a bigger purpose. Because, you know, we live in such a crazy, you know, I don’t know, the celebrity dominated world of, you know, the media, social media craziness, that there’s so much that people lose their purpose and they compete or compare themselves to someone else. And if you compare yourself to someone else, it’s never going to come out. Okay? It could always be a lot better. If you just look at yourself.

Dr. Debra Muth 39:23
That is so true. So true. Do you feel like where do you stand on growth hormone?

Dr. Erika Schwartz 39:34
We use, we use growth hormone so we used to use a lot more of it before we started working with peptides. And now we use normal release factors. So we use CJC, ipamorelin, so we used to use growth hormone before that and I do use it but It’s gotta be, you know, kind of, I don’t use large quantities. I don’t know, I keep it, like physiologic. So I explained that to the patients with, I don’t work in pharmacologic dosing, and then pharmacological range. That’s like when you take it, that’s  pharmacologic range, right? The only way to work is if you can get a physiologic is where I work, which is optimizing physiologic, which I’m sure is close to where you were, because, you know, the, the naturopathic, which is, where you, you know, what you’re doing, which I have no idea what to do, I don’t understand that, because, but that takes a lot of skill and a lot of knowledge. And so I believe that you can work and I do work with growth hormone, and it does beautiful results. But I now use it only in patients who have allergic reactions to peptides. And most of them don’t, most of them do well, you know, and also the, the pharmacies that you can find, because peptides are now like what hormones used to be 20 years ago. Now, everybody’s like, the FDA is all over them all the time. Sometimes rightfully so sometimes No. So, yeah, so

Dr. Debra Muth 39:48
We do use peptides to repair. And the repair that I’ve seen, my post-surgical repair is amazing. And people heal so much faster and so much better when they have peptides. Or it’s incredible.

Dr. Erika Schwartz 41:41
You know? Yeah, it’s true. You know, what, reminded me of a patient when I was using primarily growth hormone that had a tear one, a thigh in her thigh, one of the muscles, right? And was became separated, right. So she had a hamstring, right? And so they she went and she fixed, and I had her on growth hormone before hormones, everything else, obviously, before and then after the surgery, goes back to the surgeon Two weeks later. And the guy says, I’ve never seen anybody heal like this at the time, she must have been in our early 50s. So he said, I’ve never seen this. So I said, Did you tell him what you’re doing? And she said, Oh, no, no, no, I wouldn’t tell. I’m sure he wouldn’t agree. So I said, but how would he learn? Right? If you don’t tell him, it’s about your people. And so now, I work more with peptides. So look into peptides, because you get amazing recovery, and amazing optimization function with peptides and growth hormone, of course, I mean, healing is like, no comparison, and have patients who were like old, like 60s 70s, and they would do amazingly well. But the other thing is, you know, I also see people who have been taking doses that were way too high, and then would have side effects. could hear about testosterone. To be like, Oh, you know, they’re growing hair, you know, facial hair, and they’re getting acne is thinking, well, would you rather have heart disease or acne? which one you’re more interested in? I mean, what would you like strong bones? Or would you like, you know, hair on your face? Which one is, and for some reason, you would read in the medical journal about these horrible side effects? And they would skip the fact that it would be cardioprotective. You know, bone, I mean,

Dr. Debra Muth 43:46
yeah. breast, everything else. And all of those things get to the wayside because you’ve got acne and oily skin, right. Yeah, so crazy.

Dr. Erika Schwartz 43:58
Crazy. It is.

Dr. Debra Muth 43:59
I talk all day, I could talk to you all day about things. I know you’re busy. I want to be respectful of your time. But what else do you want to share with our listeners today? Do you have some words of wisdom you’d like to share?

Dr. Erika Schwartz 44:13
I don’t know. I mean, does that I think that the most important thing is really, as I said to you purpose, you know, find the purpose and don’t look left, don’t look right, look inside. Because looking inside is where the answers are. And, you know, you have to find your best life inside yourself. You’re not going to be able to find that outside and, you know, put that phone away. Stay away from social media, listen to the podcast, listen to your podcast, and learn about the stuff and the information that makes you feel better about yourself. Eliminate you know, try to eliminate negativity we live in such a negative times and in such a negative world at this point that I think that Trying to be positive, trying to be kind trying to care about each other is really the only thing we have that can take us forward in a successful way. So always have it.

Dr. Debra Muth 45:15
That is so true. So true. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been a great conversation.

Dr. Erika Schwartz 45:22
Well, thank you. That was a pleasure being with you, your wonderful, thank you. Thanks.