Episode 159 | Dec 11, 2025

How to Protect Yourself In Healthcare, With Dr. Erika Schwartz

Have you ever walked out of a medical visit feeling more dismissed and afraid than informed and supported? This week on Health Coach Talk, Dr. Sandi welcomes physician, author, and patient advocate Dr. Erika Schwartz to talk about what really goes wrong in our healthcare system and how patients can protect themselves. Dr. Erika, founder of Evolved Science and faculty at A4M, has spent decades pioneering bioidentical hormone therapy and speaking out about the arrogance and fear-based culture that so many patients encounter in conventional care.

“It’s about helping people, empowering people to take their health into their own hands. Because you’re better off with no healthcare than with bad healthcare.”

Dr. Erika Schwartz

Dr. Erika spent years in trauma and critical care medicine before realizing how often the system intimidates patients instead of empowering them. Her experiences with rushed visits, physician ego, and fear-based decision-making shaped her book Don’t Let Your Doctor Kill You and her advocacy for prevention-focused care rooted in hormones, sleep, nutrition, and stress. In this conversation, she shares how medical arrogance leads to unnecessary medications and procedures, especially for women, and why she’s encouraged by the growing movement toward functional, whole-person women’s health.

For health coaches, her insights highlight how vital your role is in helping clients feel seen, informed, and supported. Dr. Erika and Dr. Sandi discuss how coaches can guide clients to prepare for medical visits, understand their options, and recognize when a provider isn’t serving them. Coaches are uniquely positioned to support women through symptoms like brain fog, irritability, and burnout by exploring lifestyle and hormonal factors rather than defaulting to quick prescriptions.

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Transcript

Dr. Sandi: So many women have not been well served by our healthcare system. We really need advocates. The person who is my special guest today has been a patient advocate for many years. She is a real pioneer for women’s healthcare. She is somebody who I greatly admire and was honored to have her as a guest on the podcast.

Let me tell you about this trailblazer, Dr. Erika Schwartz. She’s the founder of Evolved Science, a world-renowned medical practice based in New York City. Builds on the recognition that bioidentical hormones are the foundation for better health. Once hormones are balanced, the practice focuses on optimization and longevity through disease prevention, patient advocacy, and coordination of care. Dr. Erika is a pioneer in the use of bioidentical hormones for preventing illness and recognizing their direct link to overall wellness and their interconnection with diet, sleep, and stress management. Her focus on treating patients as a whole person began more than 30 years ago with her understanding that bioidentical hormone replacement is the safest and most effective path to increased health span and to achieve the highest quality of life.

Dr. Erika has authored eight bestselling books as well as numerous articles in publications such as “The New York Times”, “The Wall Street Journal”, “Daily Mail”, “Vogue”, “Town and Country”, and “The New York Post”. She appears frequently on TV shows, international podcasts, and in social media. She’s a distinguished faculty member of A4M, the world’s preeminent longevity and functional medicine organization where she hosts the popular “Redefining Medicine” podcast. Dr. Erika continues to spread her message worldwide with the goal of changing healthcare to benefit the patient and eliminate fear from the healthcare system. Erika sees patients from all over the world and believes that when given the correct information, patients can take charge and improve their own healthcare outcomes. I know you are going to enjoy my conversation with Dr. Erika. Dr. Erika Schwartz, thank you for being with us today.

Dr. Schwartz: Thank you, Dr. Sandi. It’s so nice to be with you.

Dr. Sandi: So, thank you. So, you and I go way, way back in healthcare. I think we have seen it all. And what I want to get into is how you came to write a book titled “Don’t Let Your Doctor Kill You”.

Dr. Schwartz: The truth.

Dr. Sandi: And I love the title. And I was wondering if we could start there. We have many health coaches who are listening, people who are thinking of becoming health coaches, or who are just fed up and want to take charge of their health. And so, how can we take steps to really be empowered to take charge of our health when it comes to working in the medical community?

Dr. Schwartz: Yeah, it’s a nightmare. Actually, we’ve been talking about healthcare being a mess and being broken for decades, and we’ve done nothing about it. And we blame the insurance companies, we blame malpractice, we blame everything. But we have never sat and figured out how to improve it. And I’m all about making things better. And this, my idea of “Don’t Let Your Doctor Kill You” because I’m a doctor, so I can talk about doctors. I have an MD after my name, so I’m fully trained in a conventional system. I started out by running a major trauma center. I’m an internist in an emergency room, trained, critical care doctor. So, I’ve been around for a long time and I have watched the system fail from the medical professions.

And in the 1990s, which is long before many of our audience were born, what happened was that I saw that there had to be a change, because if there wasn’t a change in the way doctors treated patients would become scared, intimidated by the fact that the white…it used to be like white coat syndrome, right? Because you have high blood pressure when you go to the doctor’s office. So, they would be intimidated, they’d be scared, and then they couldn’t hear what the doctor had to say. And they do whatever the doctor wanted, which is exactly what the pharmaceutical industry and the surgeries and the testing and everything else we’re doing wants, is for you to be scared. And then if you’re scared, you’re going to do everything.

So, I thought… And I was doing a review, actually. This is in the late ’90s. I was reading and there was a doctor at Johns Hopkins who had been… I can’t think of his name after that, but I’m sure we can figure it out. Anyway, who had done all the research on what was the underlying cause for medical errors? And the underlying cause keeps on coming back over and over again as being medical mistakes. Medical errors come from physician arrogance, right? And this doctor… Then this is at Johns Hopkins, it wasn’t some backwoods, small country hospital that, you know, you be an outlier, it’s exactly the middle of the center of academic medicine. He said, it’s physician arrogance. Everything stems from physician arrogance.

And then I went back to education. And at the time, I was on the board of downstate, the medical school I attended, I was conventionally really ensconced in the conventional system. And every time I looked around, I realized that the senior attendings, everybody who was at the top of the ladder was arrogant. And it was arrogance that created exactly what this guy had said. So, then I started paying attention to my patients coming in, and everyone had a horror story from the medical system, from the healthcare system. Every one of them was afraid of their doctor. And I would say, “Well, why are you afraid of your doctor? He doesn’t live in your body and she doesn’t live in your body. You live in your body. You know better what’s going on. They’re there to just give you recommendations. You can take it or leave it. It doesn’t matter.”

And as time went on, one day, I just woke up and I said, “Well, this is “Don’t Let Your Doctor Kill You”. I have to. I mean, it was like my fifth or sixth or seventh book at this point. And I said, “I have to write this book.” The first time I went and I told my editor about the book, they said to me, “Nobody really knows who you are. Don’t do it. It’s going to ruin your career.” So, I turned around and I wrote three other books about hormones, about menopause, and it was still before anybody knew anything about it. And then I went back. And about eight years ago, my publisher said, “Oh, my God, I love the idea of the book. Let’s do it.” So, I did it, and it did very nicely.

My publisher and my PR person that you spoke to actually said to me, “You need to re-release it.” After COVID, things went very wrong. They went in the wrong direction, and they’re going even more every day. It’s become horrible, just the concept of going into a hospital, just the concept of seeing a doctor. And it’s like, because of what you’re doing is teaching people how to coach people, to help them, to protect them. And I’ve always been a patient advocate, so it’s not like this is news to me. It’s always been something I cared about because I’ve never thought of myself as being more important than the patient. I’ve never thought of myself as being something special because I have an MD after my name. As I’ve said many a time, I used to tell people that I wasn’t a doctor at the beginning because I’m a healer. And I didn’t want people to think of me as a doctor. And they still do.

Now, I use being a doctor to tell people my experience and get the credibility and be able to write a book like “Don’t Let Your Doctor Kill You” and not be laughed at and say, “Oh, here’s some other person bad mouthing the system.” I’m not bad mouthing the system. I’m just telling true stories. And I brought COVID into this new edition, and I also brought the AI situation in it. And it’s about helping people, empowering people to take their own health in their own hands. Because you’re better off with no healthcare than with bad healthcare. And if you’re intimidated, if you’re treated arrogantly, if you’re not treated by somebody who cares about you, you’re at risk. And I wouldn’t take that lightly. And I know it because I’ve been doing this for 40-plus years. So, that’s how I came up with “Don’t Let Your Doctor Kill You” in a very long, roundabout way.

Dr. Sandi: You know, that is so true about becoming empowered. And study after study of health coaching shows self-efficacy is what increases. And the sense that you can take charge of your destiny, it’s not all in your genes or you don’t have to blindly follow what the doctor says. And we also know that when people see health coaches that are much more honest, they’ll tell that person things that they’re afraid. They still see the doctor as that authority figure. And I think perhaps nowhere is this worse than for women’s health. And you have been a pioneer in women’s health. You were one of the first to talk about bioidentical hormones and who is in that generation that was doomed because we had the women’s health study, we were misled. And I remember so many doctors that say, “Well, I don’t know anything,” or, “I don’t know about hormones,” or just thinking that this is something that we all need to stay away from. So, are there any signs that it is getting better with the younger doctors? Are they wanting training in, for example, bioidentical hormones? Is it something they’re interested in, or is it still pretty much the same?

Dr. Schwartz: Well, like everything else, people come to me because they want hormones, right? And they want 360 degree care, and they want somebody who can hold their hand and cares, right? So, I’ll see the pre-selected group. And I also, as faculty at A4M, and so obviously, we see those who see the light, who want training because we have the identical hormone training tracks, we have peptide tracks, we have a lot of really serious growth potential for doctors and for healthcare professionals. So, yeah, from where I sit, I see an enormous improvement in growth. And we have almost 20,000 members at A4M. And in December, when we have the Longevity Fest in Vegas, it’s going to be the biggest it’s ever been. So, it’s wonderful. So, from where I sit, there’s a lot of improvement and there’s a lot of growth and there’s a lot of potential. And I don’t feel like I’m screaming in the dark alone anymore, like I did for 25-plus years. I feel like there’s a lot of support.

But at the same token, the medical education is not changing. It has the same attitude. They have not done anything to improve the doctor’s relationships with patients, the doctor’s behavior. There’s no course that teaches them how to behave, that teaches them that they’re dealing with humans. There is no such thing. The same way there was no nutrition course in medical school when I went to school 50 years ago, there’s no, how do you behave towards a human being. It’s just that society has changed. And I think it’s like everything else, society is pushing the change. And I think that we’re going to see more and more change as we move. And we’ll see for how long we’ll be around to watch it. But it’s great to see because I’m not alone anymore.

So, I could tell you that in 2008, I was talking to the head of OB-GYN at Harvard and I was saying to him, “Please, we need a women’s health specialty.” And he said to me, “Well, we are women’s health specialty.” And I said, “No, you’re not. You only are the ones who deliver the babies and take out the uteruses. That’s it. You don’t do anything.” And he said, “How could you say that to me?” And they invited me to give a talk because I had written the book about hormones at the time. And he never heard anything. And I haven’t spoken to him in a long time. He’s a really nice guy. He’s now retired, but he’s still the editor in chief of “Menopause”, which is the mainstream American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology journal. And I think I should call him really. I’ve been thinking of calling him and sending him the book saying, “Hey, how are we doing in the women’s health?”

Because two years ago with A4M, we started the Women’s Health Summit. And the Women’s Health Summit has grown. The first year there were like 200 people. You were last time there when it was in Scottsdale in October. And there were like 600 people. And it was capped at 500 because the facility didn’t take room. And the 600 that were there, they were standing room only, you saw. So, things are moving in the right direction. And now, I feel like I need to lobby, not just to help people, women, and men. I don’t care. Men need help, too. Anyway, but to help women get support and be empowered and stop living in fear of the doctor.

But I also think that we can start the women’s health as a specialty. And that could be… Because we have so many names for what we do, functional medicine, alternative medicine, complementary medicine, longevity medicine, anti-aging medicine. I call it prevention. I’ve been calling it prevention for the past 30 years. And I’m not going to change it, because prevention, to me, explains exactly what it is. But women’s health is prevention. And that’s what I think is really important. And I think as we grow, you’re going to see me, hopefully, next year at the same place doing the same thing, educating and bringing people up to date on what we know. And we have great people. A4M is very supportive of everything we do. So, we’re lucky. We found a home. We found a home.

Dr. Sandi: Yes, I love A4M. I will be there at the luncheon and the next women’s health. And we are committed to training our health coaches to be the support. Because I got to tell you, I just think that there’s so much that is lacking. My daughter who is 41, she was talking to her friends, same age. And one-by-one, they were all saying, “I’ve just been feeling out of sorts. And uneritable. And I have brain fog. And I went to my doctor, and now, I’m on an antidepressant.” And she came back, she said, “Well, it’s like…” I went like, “Did they talk to you about hormones? Did they do any testing? Did they talk to you about stress and sleep and exercising?” Many of these women are in orders theory, they’re burning themselves out, and then they’re not sleeping well. And they’re stressed and they’re not eating well. They’re intermittent fasting. And there’s so many issues that… Okay, but no, the doctor just wrote me a prescription, didn’t have time. Even if they wanted to, they don’t have time often to spell these issues.

Dr. Schwartz: No, don’t cut them some slack. Do not cut some slack. Because you know what? I’m a doctor, remember. I have been training. I actually have training from 50 years ago, but unfortunately, it’s the same.

Dr. Sandi: It is.

Dr. Schwartz: You know what, it’s up to them, each one of them to learn, to stay up to date. They don’t stay up to date. They finish their training, and they get into whether it’s because of the insurance or whatever, they don’t make money. It’s crazy. But unfortunately, all the reasons are environmental. They’re not about the patient. So, if you go to a doctor and the doctor doesn’t pay attention to you, Sandi, me, Erika, if we don’t get attention and they don’t notice you, but they think you’re a 70-something year old woman or a 40-year-old woman, and that’s the bucket you fall into, you’ve fallen. And you better off with nothing. You’re better off walking out and saying, “Thank you so much. I’m going to look for somebody who’s going to notice me.” It’s not any different than any other relationship.

I mean, I hope nobody stays in a marriage where the partner is not supportive, caring, loving, notices them. By now, you see it on Instagram everywhere, right? Don’t stay in toxic relationships. Why would you stay in a toxic relationship with a doctor who’s there to only take money from you and not notice you? And it’s not like doctors make a lot of money. Some of them do, but most of them don’t. They’re like just losers because they don’t care. And I think when somebody doesn’t care, you better run as far from them as possible.

Dr. Sandi: I could not agree more. And I can’t remember, the last time I was at a conventional doctor, I think I was 60, 65, and they were asking me, they only wanted to know if I had my shingles vaccine and the graph bar. Graph bar?

Dr. Schwartz: And where’s your, in your family.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah. I do handstands every single day. I’m 75. And so, I don’t want to go to a doctor and talking to me about a graph bar, when I’m ready for the assisted living. It is really that there are so many ways that you can take charge of your health. And I’m seeing it in generation of women in particular, men as well, but people in their 70s. I do strength training many times a week and if learning to lift heavy things.

Dr. Schwartz: Well, you look great.

Dr. Sandi: Thank you.

Dr. Schwartz: You look great. We’re in the same age, so we know.

Dr. Sandi: we know what it’s like, but we don’t have time…

Dr. Schwartz: Yeah. But it’s like, you know what? You don’t want to be superfluous. You don’t want to become unnecessary and you become disposable. And that’s how we age. And that’s how they miss out on the wisdom that we’ve accumulated that we can share with the young people. And it’s crucial. And I think it’s a really bad situation that is created purely to provide money for people who don’t care. I mean, how do you give, like you said, that woman, how does that woman get antidepressants? Antidepressants are the number one sellers in the United States, and they’re given to women. They’re not given to men. Most women are an antidepressant. Why are you giving women antidepressants? They’re not missing antidepressants. What they’re missing is hormones. Why don’t you put them on hormones first. And why don’t you teach them they need to sleep?

They need to learn their bodies. Women don’t know their bodies. It’s horrible. Doctors don’t know women’s bodies. They don’t care. They’ll just throw the medication at you. Physical examination is pretty much obsolete. It’s really crazy. The thing is, you don’t have to put up with that. You don’t have to be adversarial. You don’t have to be negative. You don’t have to be mean. Just walk out. Just say, “I’m here. You know, I’ll be fine.” And then go talk to your coaches.

Dr. Sandi: I love it. Absolutely. Because we can take charge of our health and it’s getting easier and easier. We’ve got direct to consumer labs. I tell people all the time, they’re saying, “Well, I wonder what my vitamin D level is.” “Well, you can go to Quest labs. You can get their test. You can find out.” You don’t have to wait if your doctor says, “Oh, you’re good. You don’t need that.”

Dr. Schwartz: You know what, Sandi? That’s really something else. And there are all the stories in “Don’t Let Your Doctor Kill You”, our stories from my practice, from my patients. So, I listened to it all day because I still see patients three days a week. But you know what? It’s really sad to see how women accept us. And it’s so easy to just break the pattern and move on and say, “I don’t care.”

I tell the story and I just told it the other day, we had this big book launch in the city for a book. And I was talking about this woman patient of mine who had gone in to the gynecologist. And this guy happened to be an oncological gynecologist, so obviously, all he saw was cancer. And she had an ovarian cyst and she was 60 years old or 50 year old. He immediately said, “There’s a 6% chance you have cancer.” And that’s it when somebody said that. But do you have anything else? So, she came running to me. She called me actually. And she said, “He said I have a 6% chance of having ovarian cancer. So, I’m going to go have an oophorectomy.” So, I said, “Wait, breathe. First of all, let’s breathe. Don’t do anything. Think. What does 6% chance of having ovarian cancer mean?” And this woman was like an executive for JP Morgan. So, she says, “What does it mean?” So, I said, “Doesn’t it mean 94% chance of not having ovarian cancer?” She said, “I can’t afford 1% chance.”

So, think how brainwashed fear-mongered this person is. So, anyway, she went on, she had her ovaries removed. Fortunately, I was there to take care of her hormones. But the thing is, it’s horrible. Just think about it. For you to buy in when somebody… By the way, she didn’t have ovarian cancer, obviously. You as a provider, to tell a patient something that disturbing, such a horrible perspective, and to know that you’re not telling anybody what their absolute risk is. Each piece of information you’re getting from any medical journal, from any doctor that is a percent likelihood of getting something is a relative percent. Because we don’t know what the absolute risk is. Because we don’t know what your risk or my risk is. Because we don’t know. We’re not going to know until it’s over, right? Until something happens. So, why don’t you tell the truth? Stop bullshitting. Stop lying. Stop intimidating. Start empowering. Start helping people enjoy their lives. Don’t make people’s lives miserable. Make them a little better because everybody’s life is tough enough.

Dr. Sandi: So, beautifully said. Oh, my God, we can trade stories forever because they have so many similar examples. And I said, just stay in the moment, tune into your breath, feel warm feelings for your heart. Imagine this organ. Imagine blood, imagine healing and psychoneuroimmunology and the work that I used to do. And people were just so scared, but you start to look at these real basic things and you’re anti-inflammatory. Now, you’re creating a different state in your body. Your cells respond.

Dr. Schwartz: And I remember when I first got involved and I said… There was nobody else doing any of this, right? So, I was reading about Asian medicine, Chinese medicine, etc. And they knew it all along. I mean, they were doing it for thousands and thousands of years. And anytime I brought any of it to my colleagues in the conventional world, they looked at me like I had three heads. I remember talking to patients about acupuncture and 25 years ago, they were like, “What? What’s that? Why are you doing that?” Well, guess what? It’s time to wake up and it’s time to take control and look at who’s sitting across the table from you. And they shouldn’t be sitting across the table.

Dr. Sandi: That reminds me of years ago, this is the late ’80s, a top cardiologist, and his younger partners were referring patients to me, but he never had. So, I went to see him and I’m telling him about the work and patients are getting better with breathing and imagery and all kinds of other relaxation techniques and trust management. And he stands up and he says, “Do you see this journal, this ‘JAMA’, the day that there’s a controlled study in here about this crazy breathing that you’re talking about, then I’ll see you. Now, get off my office. Shame on you.”

Dr. Schwartz: That is why you spoke to him.

Dr. Sandi: And first forward, there’s hundreds of studies. So, I…

Dr. Schwartz: What did you say to that guy?

Dr. Sandi: So, I said, “Well, it sounds like we’re very far apart. I just know I have so many stories that I could share of people who have felt better. They’ve been able to lower their blood pressure, get off medication, stop panic attacks, deal with whatever medical situation is going on with them. The power of the mind to really transform what’s real in the mind is real in the body.” But sometimes you just have to let go. And, yeah.

Dr. Schwartz: Maybe we don’t. Maybe we start going on the attack. Maybe we start being so flexible and malleable and allowing them to ask idiotic questions, rather ask them.

Dr. Sandi: And what happened was…

Dr. Schwartz: Maybe empower the patient. That’s what you’re doing as a coach. Empower the patient.

Dr. Sandi: Empower the patients. Yeah. And they go to the doctor and they say, “Hey, I want to work with a health coach,” or, “Hey, I want to do… There must be something else, so what else can you offer me? I’m not satisfied with this.” Becoming empowered. It is so, so important.

Dr. Schwartz: Right. And you know what, if they don’t have anything to offer, leave them.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah. And many doctors come to it because they themselves. So, I would have cardiologists from that practice, their colleagues, they had an NMI, they had an incident, and their doctor referred them to me for biofeedback and relaxation work and towards anger management and what if. So…

Dr. Schwartz: And you know how angry they all are. Yes.

Dr. Sandi: Well, this has been fabulous. The book, again, is “Don’t Let Your Doctor Kill You”. It is available wherever books are sold. And where can people find you? Because I know they are going to want to know more.

Dr. Schwartz: On Instagram, D-R E-R-I-K-A, Schwartz, S-C-H-W-A-R-T-Z . Yes, health, which is the practice that I work at, who I found in many years ago. It’s a concierge medical practice. We have a lot of very happy patients. And interestingly, we have patients who’ve been there for 30 years with me.

Dr. Sandi: Wonderful. Follow over on Instagram. Get the book. You are in this space as one of the pioneers. I applaud you and love your work. Thank you so much.

Dr. Schwartz: Thank you.