Dr. Erika Schwartz grew up in a one-room apartment in Bucharest, Romania, an only child who by the age of five dreamed of being a doctor just like her uncle in America. Her family escaped Ceausescu's Communist stronghold when she was 16, and she arrived in Rome speaking four languages, though none of them English. Dr. Erika came to the US after graduating from the Overseas School of Rome and was accepted to NYU on a full academic scholarship.

She received her MD from SUNY Downstate College of Medicine, graduating cum laude, as a member of the prestigious AOA academic honor society. In her last year of medical school, she was hand-picked to be an Intern in Internal Medicine at Kings County Hospital, the second-largest county hospital in the US and main affiliate of Downstate College of Medicine, where she completed her training in Internal Medicine and Critical Care.Twenty-five years later, in 2005, Dr. Schwartz was honored by SUNY-Downstate with the revered Louis M. Hellman, MD Master Teacher in Women's Health Award.

Her first job at the age of 28 was to run a very busy Trauma Center, overseeing hundreds in medical personnel and caring for tens of thousands of patients on a weekly basis. As the Director of Emergency Medicine at Westchester County Medical Center (University Hospital of New York Medical College) in Valhalla, NY, Dr. Schwartz obtained accreditation for WCMC as the only tertiary trauma center between New York City and Albany, and established helicopter and ambulance services, ultimately bringing 911 and paramedics to Westchester county.

Dr. Schwartz eventually left the ER for private practice because of her love for people and her desire to provide continuous and total care to her patients.

She built and ran the largest internal medicine practice in Westchester County, practicing in Irvington, NY for 17 years.

Five years in, she began to integrate preventive medicine into her practice. Since there were no academic training programs in the field, Dr. Schwartz became self-educated in the value of supplements and nutraceuticals, took post-graduate nutrition courses, learned about the role of exercise in anti-aging and disease prevention, extensively researched the scientific data surrounding bioidentical hormones, validating their efficacy in herself and the patients she cares for.

Dr. Schwartz's scope of care to her patients expanded as she integrated different conventional and complimentary modalities into their treatments and advice. She developed her own protocols for bioidentical hormones, created the hormone-friendly diet, compiled her own line of vitamins and supplements, developed individually tailored exercise, stress management and lifestyle regimens, and three- and six-month life-changing programs. Besides her medical advice and world-renowned diagnostic expertise, patients find Dr. Erika's caring help on improving their entire lives consistently trustworthy and reliable.

She currently sees patients from all over the US, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Africa and even Asia.

She also devotes much of her time helping those who don't have access to healthcare by volunteering and giving free educational seminars and consultations. Dr. Erika's ultimate goal is to empower people to take their health into their own hands and become responsible for creating better health and better lives for themselves.

Over the past 30 years, Dr. Schwartz has personally taken care of more than 100,000 patients, has treated more than 15,000 patients with various formulations of bioidentical hormones and has written four best-selling books published by Warner Books, Putnam and HarperCollins. In December 2008, the Medical Clinics of North America published an entire chapter written by Dr. Schwartz on the use of hormones in wellness and disease prevention, a first in the field of conventional medicine. She was invited by the chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Harvard to lecture at Massachusetts General Hospital on the topic of bioidentical hormones in February 2009.

As one of the nation's most widely recognized experts in the field of bioidentical hormones and an outspoken advocate for patient's rights, Dr. Erika Schwartz has testified before Congress, had her own PBS pledge special on bioidentical hormones in 2004, appeared on CBS News, Larry King Live, the View, the Montel Williams Show, CNN, MSNBC, Oprah Satellite Radio with Dr. Oz and many others.

Her “Ask Dr. Erika” column that ran from 2005-2007 in the National Enquirer was read by 10 million people each week and received more mail than any other column in that publication.

Dr. Erika is currently being featured as part of the new Life Changers Team appearing on EXTRA-TV.