How Lifestyle and Bio-Identical Hormone options can help balance your hormones with Dr Erika Schwartz [Episode #1005]

This Week’s Episode Special Guest: Dr. Erika Schwartz 

About Dr. Erika Schwartz 

In this engaging conversation, Kimberly Snyder interviews Dr. Caroline Leaf, a renowned neuroscientist and author, about her latest book, ‘Help in a Hurry.’ They explore the profound distinction between the mind and the brain, emphasizing the importance of understanding the non-conscious mind and its role in managing thoughts and emotions. Dr. Leaf shares practical tools for self-regulation, particularly in moments of stress and regret, and discusses the impact of our thoughts on our physical health. The conversation highlights the power of self-awareness and the ability to create positive energy in the world.

Guest Resources:

Website: https://drerika.com/

Podcast:   Redefining Medicine podcast

Book: Don’t Let Your Doctor Kill You: How to Beat Physician Arrogance, Corporate Greed and a Broken System

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Episode Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Hormonal Health and Dr. Erica Schwartz
01:52 The Importance of Bioidentical Hormones
05:57 Misconceptions and Historical Context of Hormone Therapy
09:50 Empowering Women to Understand Their Bodies
13:53 Navigating Hormone Therapy: Timing and Longevity
17:40 Balancing Hormones for Fertility and Overall Health
19:30 Understanding Hormone Supplementation
21:46 The Role of Hormones in Aging
25:39 Proactive vs. Reactive Hormone Use
28:11 Hormones and Disease Prevention
30:30 Muscle Health and Aging
33:53 The Importance of Supplements and Lifestyle

 

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KIMBERLY’S BOOKS

• Chilla Gorilla & Lanky Lemur Journey to the Heart
• The Beauty Detox Solution
• Beauty Detox Foods
• Beauty Detox Power
• Radical Beauty
• Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
• You Are More Than You Think You Are 

OTHER PODCASTS YOU MAY ENJOY!

• Wellness Insights: How to Listen to Your Body for Nutritional Guidance [Episode 878]
• How the Power Foods Diet helps with Weight Loss with Dr. Neal Barnard EP. 877
• How Not to Age with New York Times best-selling author Dr. Michael Greger [Episode #873]
• How to eat to reduce anxiety with Harvard nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Uma Naidoo [Episode #867]

 

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Transcript: 

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (00:02.595)
Hi everyone and welcome back for our Monday show. We have a very special guest here with us today. I’m so excited to chat with Dr. Erica Schwartz, who is a bestselling author. She’s the founder of Evolved Science, a world renowned medical practice based in New York City, built on the recognition that bioidentical hormones are the foundation for better health. She has eight books out. She’s been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Daily Mail, Vogue.

Town and Country, the New York Post, and regularly on many television shows. goes on and on. Dr. Erica, thank you so much for being here with us today and sharing some of your wisdom.

Dr Erika (00:44.782)
Kimberly, thank you for having me. It’s such a pleasure. kidding? I think you have accomplished just as much, if not more, than I have. So I think that’s pretty impressive. You’re impressive. And I’m really honored to be on your show.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (00:55.631)
your energy is so beautiful, Dr. Erica. I can feel your heart. I can feel your authentic, really wanting to support, especially women. I feel like, you now, Dr. Erica, there’s so much discussion around hormones. When I think about my mom’s generation and my grandmother, especially in different parts of the world, you my mom’s side is from the Philippines. I feel like we didn’t talk about hormones that much.

And now all of a sudden it’s sort of like everywhere. You’ve been talking about this for, wow, yeah.

Dr Erika (01:30.798)
30 years. So yes, it’s, you know what I say, I am thrilled to have lived long enough to see it happen.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (01:39.822)
Yes.

Dr Erika (01:39.886)
because 30 years ago when I started working with hormones, people thought I had lost my mind. And I was like, no, all this data is wrong. Everything that they’re coming up with is wrong. And it was really rough. now it turns out that I have patients who’ve been with me for more than 30 years, that I’ve been taking hormones more than 30 years. And it turns out that it was the right thing. And it’s just…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (01:56.877)
Wow.

Dr Erika (02:04.82)
unfair for these poor women who still suffering because the information is still missing.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (02:11.661)
Yes. Well, let me ask you, Dr. Erica, let’s talk about some of this information because I know you’re a proponent of lifestyle as well and healthy food and exercise and all these aspects, which I want to talk about. But since, you know, the bioidentical hormones, is this something that we should pursue only when we start to feel adverse symptoms? Is it possible for many women to not feel those symptoms, to sort of glide through perimenopause and menopause?

Dr Erika (02:21.07)
Thank you.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (02:39.339)
Or is it something that’s more your opinion proactive?

Dr Erika (02:44.6)
Kimberly, that’s such a great question. So this is the thing. I think that everybody should be on hormones. I think that when you go on hormones, depends on your own individual needs. I think that because there’s such confusing and mixed messaging coming around, but there’s more and more realistic stuff coming through. I think it depends on, you know, there are a lot of women who don’t even know that there are such things as symptoms around menopause.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (02:50.244)
Mmm.

Dr Erika (03:13.262)
They don’t even know that that exists. So if you start having symptoms, by all means you should be on hormones. You should see a doctor or a provider, nurse practitioner, SPAs, they know how to provide services because they know how to take the bloods.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (03:13.646)
Right.

Dr Erika (03:32.438)
evaluate you, you want to find somebody who cares about you, individual, the person, and who actually knows what they’re talking about. Because recently, there’s like a total on, you know, onslaught of

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (03:36.845)
Yes.

Dr Erika (03:49.464)
hormone experts. And the truth is they’re not because they haven’t known about it long enough to know what do. You know, I teach at the American College of Anti-Aging Medicine, A4M, and we train a lot of doctors and a lot of providers. But the thing is, there’s still many, many more who need help. And in the conventional medical system, the medical education is completely zero on it.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (03:54.945)
Wait!

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (04:11.097)
Right?

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (04:19.001)
Wait.

Dr Erika (04:19.408)
no education, the North American Menopause Society, the menopause practitioners, they really are very, far behind. And I’ll give you an example that when this whole thing started in 2002 with that study that really put us behind the eight ball, was the, they sent out, and this is the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology in North America Menopause Society, where all women turned to, and I’m a conventional doctor,

trained doctor and what they did is they sent out this like a pamphlet telling women that what you should tell your patients since you couldn’t give them hormones anymore was that they should wear layers they should stay in dark rooms

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (04:50.093)
Yes.

Dr Erika (05:12.078)
It was so offensive to me because I was working with hormones already. I couldn’t believe it. But you have to think that this is where they’re coming from. And that was only in 2003. So you’re talking about 23 years, 22 years ago. So there’s a long way to go to get the information out to everybody and get the right information out.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (05:34.848)
That study you’re referring to, doctor, was linking hormones to cancer, correct?

Dr Erika (05:41.482)
It was a study that did not use bioidentical hormones. They used a synthetic form of hormones that came from Franklin Horse’s urine. And that study said that came out stopped early because supposedly there was an increased incidence of breast cancer.

in the study and strokes and, you know, strokes and blood clots. The truth is that the study was wrong. The women that were studied in the study were women that were older. They were more than 10 years after menopause. They were, a lot of them had pre-existing conditions, meaning like there were smokers, they had all kinds of other medical problems. So,

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (06:19.567)
Huh.

Dr Erika (06:30.05)
the study was just wrong. The fact that it was wrong, it just was wrong. And then what happened is that the principal investigators did take back the information, but unfortunately the media never covered that. So doctors never knew about it. The women never knew about it. And it took until in the past four or five years, 10 years maybe that

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (06:31.695)
It was spewed. Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (06:45.827)
Hmm.

Dr Erika (06:58.344)
Women are now talking about menopause, peri-menopause, they’re talking about hormones, and the information is very clear. And you know, the surgeon general and the FDA right now, they’re taking off the black box warning off of estrogens because there was no connection between taking estrogen and breast cancer and taking estrogen and getting ovarian cancer or whatever. It was just crazy.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (07:00.45)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (07:22.829)
Great.

Dr Erika (07:26.816)
The truth behind it is that it was all about money and it was about Big Pharma having paid for the study that was supposedly the government sponsored study, but it wasn’t. It was Big Pharma paid for it. And Big Pharma paid for the hormones that they were using in the study. And then they thought that it was going to be the eternal, you know, the fountain of use, but it turns out that it wasn’t.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (07:36.047)
Mmm.

Dr Erika (07:54.198)
It wasn’t even right because it was the wrong population. So anyway, make our long story short, they got scared because the last thing they wanted was for the public to know that it was the government had taken money from big pharma to conduct a study that wasn’t right.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (08:14.937)
So Big Pharma didn’t want women to know about bioidentical hormones so they could potentially sell other medications or aids for women to deal with the symptoms. Is that sort of the gist?

Dr Erika (08:26.784)
Right. So, yeah, that’s the gist because essentially, and this is the funny thing, know, women get antidepressants when they’re perimenopause. I mean, women take more antidepressants than anything else. And you think about it, are we missing antidepressants in our system? Well, I don’t think so. I bet you don’t think so. We don’t have antidepressants there. There are a lot of ways to get rid of the depression and

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (08:54.671)
Great.

Dr Erika (08:55.342)
lifestyle being the number one that you talk about so eloquently and so correctly and Diet exercise stress management everything you talk about and talking about for 30 years So I agree with you a hundred percent and then hormones you missing hormones when the hormones start going out of whack

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (09:06.018)
Yes.

Dr Erika (09:17.878)
That’s what you need to do is balance the hormones, not give women antidepressants and basically take them out of the workforce, take them out of society, make them basically unnecessary. It’s terrible.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (09:23.18)
Right.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (09:33.325)
Let’s get a little specific, Dr. Erica, when you say hormones, you mentioned estrogen. Are we also talking about progesterone, testosterone?

Dr Erika (09:42.306)
Thyroid, adrenal, yes. We’re talking.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (09:44.495)
So there’s a whole mix that you would have to meet with a doctor such as yourself to see what’s right for your body.

Dr Erika (09:50.124)
Well, I think it would be best to do that. People become their own doctors. you know, sometimes that’s not so bad, because I think that in the conventional world, we’re not helping our patients. You know, I have this book coming out, re-released actually, September 2nd, it’s called Don’t Let Your Doctor Kill You. And it’s the truth.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (09:57.465)
right

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (10:07.524)
Hmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (10:15.915)
What a great title.

Dr Erika (10:17.886)
Thanks. But you know, it’s coming back out and we’ve expanded. The first time it came out was like 10 years ago. And then we added COVID and AI and a lot of pieces to it and more stories. And the thing is that in the conventional world,

you really don’t get the help you need. And women, and I think that one of the most important messages is you live in your own body. I don’t live in your body. The doctor doesn’t live in your body. So listen to your body, learn to listen. And once you listen to your body, then you can actually follow advice or not. It’s your decision. And in the conventional world, unfortunately,

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (10:36.239)
Mmm.

Dr Erika (11:02.892)
That decision is based on fear because it’s about intimidating the woman, scaring her into, my God, I might have cancer that I’m missing so I can have a million tests. But at the end of the day, nobody stops to see what’s going on inside. How could I improve my life because I live in here? So that’s kind of the goal. My goal is to eliminate fear.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (11:19.748)
Wait.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (11:29.944)
Yes.

Dr Erika (11:30.08)
and to empower women to learn as much as possible about themselves. And yes, you’re right. You do need a prescription for estrogen. You might not necessarily need a prescription for progesterone. You do need a prescription for testosterone, for thyroid, adrenal. You may not need a prescription because they’re supplements. But the thing is you want to work with someone who cares about you.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (11:52.587)
Yeah, it’s just even hearing you say all these things, Dr. Erica, it just, I don’t know, for me, and I haven’t gone into this yet, it just feels like someone being their own doctor when hormones are so specific, that feels scary, like you’re just kind of prescribing to yourself. So let me ask you some specific, yes.

Dr Erika (12:01.801)
Yeah.

Dr Erika (12:11.192)
Well, can’t. You can’t prescribe for yourself. But if you understand how your body’s functioning, you’ll start living inside your body, right? That’s what you teach, is live inside your body. Be present, understand. Don’t react to the outside, react to the inside.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (12:24.749)
Yes, be present.

Dr Erika (12:32.593)
then you can get right help because then you can, you’ll go to a doctor, let’s say, or some kind of provider and they say stuff that doesn’t make sense. You’re not going to be intimidated. You’re not going to be afraid. You’re not going to make a mistake of like, okay, I’m going to follow it. You’re going to say, well, that doesn’t make sense. Let me run. Go somewhere else.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (12:55.631)
So Dr. Schwartz, I’m gonna ask you a three-part question. And if you forget one of them, don’t worry, we’ll go back. as you’re… Oh, sorry, sorry. I’m so sorry. Dr. Erica.

Dr Erika (13:01.736)
This is not much work, it’s my god.

I’m just kidding. I just have people to call me like the shorts as much as I don’t like it.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (13:10.959)
Might sound so formal, right? We’re sisters here. Yes, yes. So three parts. Number one, which is a fear women have once you start taking the hormones, do you have to be on them for the rest of your life? So we’ll talk about timing a little bit, because I read something recently, you have to start before 60. Number two, the symptoms.

Dr Erika (13:14.154)
Yes, we are. We’re all one. We’re all one. That’s it.

Dr Erika (13:21.463)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (13:37.453)
that we keep referring to, if we could elaborate a little bit more about when we know something’s off. And number three, I’d love to know not just about alleviating symptoms, but potential further benefits, whether that’s protecting our bone health. Like you talked about mental health, physical health. So if we could go into those three more specific things, Erica, I’d love to hear. First one, do we have to be on hormones forever?

Dr Erika (13:53.774)
Great job.

Dr Erika (14:00.302)
Okay.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (14:06.593)
timing wise, like some people may experience symptoms in perimenopause. Some people, I think my mother went through menopause in her mid-50s.

Dr Erika (14:16.862)
Yeah, that’s because you’re half Filipino. The Filipinos go into menopause later in general. But let’s answer. So first of all,

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (14:20.184)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (14:25.752)
Okay.

Dr Erika (14:29.684)
Yeah, you should stay on hormones forever because you want to stay young and healthy, right? It’s not about chronologic age. It’s about physiologic age. I’m 75. I don’t think my body looks or feels or I feel the same I felt when I was 40 only maybe 35 only I work a lot harder at it. You know what I mean? What I do

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (14:32.345)
Got it.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (14:42.702)
Wow.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (14:54.721)
Adrienne, it’s amazing. I mean, you look like you’re in your 40s.

Dr Erika (14:58.674)
I love you. you know what? They have that new app that my one of my grandchildren had and about what your age is, right? And you put it up and it said 48. It’s funny that you said that. That was the sweet. No, but I have to tell you. So yeah, if you stay on hormones, your chances of staying healthy and staying well.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (15:06.349)
yeah, yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (15:10.18)
Wow.

Dr Erika (15:20.982)
are much higher. So why would I ever stop hormones? I started at 46 and I can promise you, I will die with my taking hormones because look at how I feel, look at what happens. But it’s not just the hormones. We’ll talk about that. So anyway, so the other part of it is you don’t have to stay on hormones or anything forever. You could do whatever you want.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (15:36.856)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (15:52.152)
Yeah.

Dr Erika (15:55.146)
And I mean, most of my patients are now 30. You start having symptoms of hormone imbalances as a teenager. When you get acne, when you first take the period, you get PMS, those are hormone imbalances. And they’re all very easily treated with very low dose progesterone, very low dose. And it’s really easy. So if you have somebody like my first book, The Hormone Solution, that…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (16:03.801)
Right.

Dr Erika (16:20.662)
That’s what I wrote in it and that came out in 1999. think about, no, maybe 2002. So it’s so obvious that it’s a continuum, right? I mean, why don’t we address the fact that it’s a continuum and it’s okay. Yeah, go for it.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (16:36.889)
But Dr. Schwarz, now you’re talking about that young, what about worries with fertility if you start taking progesterone or messing with hormones, let’s say before you have your kids?

Dr Erika (16:51.128)
Kimberly, you’re not messing with them, I promise you, because what I’m gonna teach you is how to support your system. You know, when you’re messing with them is when you’re taking birth control pills. And when you take birth control pills, it suppresses everything and you’re creating a menopausal hormone levels, which is not okay, right? So when you’re taking progesterone, by the way, that’ll help with fertility. As a matter of fact, if you do IVF or something like that,

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (17:02.539)
Yes, which… Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (17:10.797)
Yes.

Dr Erika (17:20.172)
they will give you additional progesterone. And most women who get pregnant that are under like really good medical care will take supplemental progesterone for up to 20 weeks of the pregnancy. So progesterone will never harm any future pregnancies. that’s…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (17:34.424)
Really?

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (17:38.979)
Well, my doctors who were very, I just say conventional, never prescribed for my pregnancies. I never took any of that.

Dr Erika (17:45.39)
I think we should move you away from that. Yeah, I’m sure, but you know what? Maybe we should move away from that, because that didn’t work out well. It worked out well for you, but it doesn’t work out. I have patients right now, I have three patients who are in their 30s and they’re all three pregnant. And we have them all three couldn’t get pregnant, they were gonna do IVF. They wound up not doing IVF because we balanced their hormones.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (17:55.63)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (18:13.411)
Wow.

Dr Erika (18:13.632)
And one of the things they got was progesterone. The other one was thyroid. The other one was DHE. But there are a lot of things you could do to help women get pregnant by balancing their hormones.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (18:18.142)
yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (18:25.807)
That’s amazing, doctor, and that gives people a lot of hope. Is there any downside to taking progesterone, let’s say that young, you start in your 30s for the next 60 years?

Dr Erika (18:28.846)
the end

Dr Erika (18:34.094)
No, no, no, you know what, but you take it when you need it. You take it like when you’re in need. Yeah, or you take it just like for PMS, you take it for four or five days before your period. That’s the only time you need it. So it’s not gonna stay in your system. It leaves your system. It goes away, goodbye, it doesn’t exist. So it just supports, it makes your system better.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (18:39.859)
you cycle it.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (18:46.703)
Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (18:54.927)
Wow.

Dr Erika (18:59.106)
You know what I mean? So that’s one thing. The other thing is, remember, when you think birth control pills, you’re putting women into menopause. So all this stuff.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (19:07.297)
Yeah, I never did it, doctor. It always felt, for me, not the right choice.

Dr Erika (19:12.396)
Right. No, I agree with you. Me too. I agree. But women will take it because what other options do you have? I mean, I tell everybody to put an IUD and, without hormones. But the thing is, it’s really hard. And think about it. We, you need something. You don’t want to get pregnant anytime, really. So think about that.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (19:35.819)
There’s always good old, you know, we call pull and pray.

Dr Erika (19:39.19)
Yeah, pull and pray. The rhythm method, yes. There’s a lot of praying going on there.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (19:47.543)
Not so exacting, yeah.

Dr Erika (19:49.836)
No, right. all right, so we’re still on number one. Okay, so number one was, can you take it forever? You should take it forever. If you don’t wanna take it, you could stop any time, and that’s what you were saying, right? You could stop any time. Nothing will happen because…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (19:53.358)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (20:00.109)
Wow.

Dr Erika (20:12.64)
It goes out of your system within a few days. So within a few days, you go back to what your baseline is. So if you have symptoms, they’ll come back. If you don’t have symptoms, they won’t come back. The thing is that I have a lot of patients that I’ve encouraged over the years when they said, I don’t think I need it anymore. I don’t think this, you know, cause once you feel good, everybody thinks, I don’t need anything. So I will say stop taking them. And then within a month, a week,

three weeks, three months, they’ll be back and they’ll say, okay, well, you know, what do you think? Now, to go to number three.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (20:50.533)
wait, hold on, before we move on from number one, Dr. Erica, this is so interesting. Can I ask you one more detailed question? So sometimes you hear this, and I know it’s different sorts of compounds and hormones, know, with melatonin, for instance, what you take, you don’t make. So there’s, know, people are taking so much melatonin and then they get off it and then it sort of messes up their sleep. And I know it’s different for men. My husband was on testosterone.

Dr Erika (20:56.128)
You can ask me as many as you want.

Dr Erika (21:07.982)
Thank you.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (21:18.103)
and then he tried to get off it, he got off it so we could get pregnant and then his levels went down because he was on it so long. So he had to get back on it. So what about this idea that, yeah, when your body gets used to not making something when you’re taking it.

Dr Erika (21:34.786)
But I’m not suggesting that we’re overriding the system. So melatonin, I’m not a big fan of, especially as you get older. Whereas the problem with melatonin is that we’ve been giving the dosing that you could get, that you buy from whatever store. Amazon, it’s wrong. It’s a very high dose. And it’s funny because I’m giving a talk on sleep this weekend in Colorado at the medical.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (21:43.352)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (21:55.628)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Erika (22:04.118)
meeting and hormones, sleeping hormones. So the thing is as you get older melatonin doesn’t work and also you want really low dose like 0.5 milligrams to 1 milligram maximum and people take 5 milligrams it’s crazy it doesn’t work right exactly and it’s all about making money it’s not about anything else

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (22:16.589)
Hello.

Yes, it’s in all these sleep aids at five milligrams.

Dr Erika (22:27.85)
So I think that that’s a very important thing to know that as you get older melatonin also becomes more counterproductive. So let’s put that off the table. Let’s take that off the table. But then let’s talk about the fact that hormones, what I’m talking about is not hormone replacement therapy because you’re not replacing anything. It’s called supplementation and nobody seems to get that.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (22:37.592)
Okay.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (22:50.066)
Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (22:56.056)
Interesting.

Dr Erika (22:56.278)
What I’m doing is supplementing. The same way you’re supplementing with supplements, I’m supplementing with hormones. So if you have PMS means that your progesterone is low, right? You’re not making enough progesterone to keep your mood stable, right? So if you give a little bit of progesterone, you’re not overriding your progesterone production. What you’re doing is you’re just supplementing it a little bit. As you get older,

And you know, I’m not a big fan of estrogen, estradiol, in perimenopause because in perimenopause, there are a lot of spikes. Estrogen goes up and down and up and down and up and down. And you can have symptoms one day, take the blood, find out that you have no estrogen. And then the next day your estrogen level is going to be off, you know, off the charts. And if you gave somebody estrogen, all you did is screw around, you know, you just like screw. So I’m not a very big fan in perimenopause of

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (23:36.409)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (23:51.289)
Yeah.

Dr Erika (23:55.412)
estrogen. think testosterone might work better, progesterone for sure will work well, thyroid will help, adrenal will help. Guess what? Diet, exercise, mismanagement, meditation, and I love the way you talk about meditation because I talk to a lot of people, you know, and I have a lot of very aid listeners like you do too, and

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (24:08.278)
Yes.

Dr Erika (24:22.134)
They come in and they go, I don’t have time. I can’t meditate. Okay, we’re not going to call it meditation. We’ll just call it sitting. You’re just going to sit and do nothing. So all of these things contribute tremendously to getting you in balance because your body will create the right hormones if you’re giving it a chance. But when you’re running a 90 miles an hour, getting from one plane to the next plane to one thing to the next to the next, you don’t have time to

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (24:24.719)
you

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (24:28.813)
Yes.

Dr Erika (24:52.108)
your body balance itself. Those pieces are crucial.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (24:55.193)
Hmm.

Well, let me ask you again, another specific, this is so interesting, doctor. Let’s say you’re between 35 and 40. You had a couple of kids. You don’t have crazy symptoms, but you’re like, oh, everybody’s talking about progesterone. Is it, and you’re having a wonderful lifestyle. Would you say, which I asked you at the beginning again, but I’ll ask you again with all this information.

Dr Erika (25:07.406)
That’s you.

You don’t.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (25:25.561)
Do you wait until you get symptoms or do you say, hey, I want to protect my bone health or my, I don’t know what else progesterone does. We had another, we had someone in here talking about it’s an antidote to adrenaline and rage, right? So you start to feel mood.

Dr Erika (25:40.63)
It’s not an antidote, but it works, yes. It helps calm down.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (25:43.193)
So yeah, would you say to that woman, many women in that boat listening to this right now, hey, it’s a good thing to still explore or wait until you’re further down the road into menopause.

Dr Erika (25:50.882)
Yeah.

Dr Erika (25:57.238)
I think that if they have the issue with rage, if they can’t sleep well, those are symptoms. to me, asymptomatic is you’re sleeping fine, your mood is perfect, you’re exactly the same way. Your mood is your mood, the regular, whatever that means, right? You don’t feel any difference. Everything’s the same. Then why would you do anything? Now, I think that it’s the difference between

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (26:03.041)
Yes, but if you’re asymptomatic.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (26:16.377)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (26:22.531)
Right.

Dr Erika (26:27.124)
like kind of preemptively doing it, proactively doing it, right? Versus waiting. Now, if you’re fine, why would you do it proactively? I wouldn’t do that. I would proactively exercise. I would proactively eat right. I would stop drinking alcohol proactively. I would increase my water intake proactively. I’d make sure I go to sleep, you know, at 10 o’clock at night proactively. Those are things that are in your power.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (26:41.613)
Yes.

Dr Erika (26:54.934)
and you should be doing and as you get older, the more you adjust and the more you change your lifestyle to support you, the less likely you are to get into trouble. Right?

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (27:08.44)
Wait.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (27:11.993)
So when I look at you too, Erica, you have all this musculature and I would assume really great bone strength. When you’re taking these hormones and we talk about from anti-aging from a positive perspective, not this fear-based, are you saying there’s a protective effect as well for your muscles, bones, tissues, skin?

Dr Erika (27:34.636)
Yes, absolutely. But again, let me make it really, really clear because what you’re doing is so important that I think everybody should listen to you first. Seriously, no, I’m saying it for a reason because I have patients coming in and they all want hormones because I’m known for that, right? But I say, listen, the hormones will open the door, a jar to feeling better.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (27:45.398)
thank you.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (27:55.726)
Yes.

Dr Erika (28:03.788)
The only way you can make that, open that door widely is if you exercise, if you sleep, if you eat right, if you take care of yourself. And I think that’s the part that where you come in and your message is so important. I can’t minimize it enough. I mean, I can’t maximize it enough. It’s not minimizing it. It’s about saying how important that is because yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (28:10.689)
Yes.

Dr Erika (28:30.688)
As you get older, if I didn’t have hormones, I probably would not look the same way. I probably would not feel the same way. But I’d still be okay because I’m doing everything you say. So would I now, so that’s why I wanted to go to three and jump over two for one second. Because hormones,

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (28:43.117)
Right.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (28:49.688)
Yes.

Dr Erika (28:53.806)
are actually preventive of disease. So what the problem with aging is, because if you think of aging, chronologic age, whatever, look, this is 75, whatever that means, Right? So that’s not the problem. The problem is that physiologically things get worn down, right? Because we’ve used them so much because of all the junk that comes into our system, because of stress, because of a million things, right? Hormones,

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (28:57.231)
Mmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (29:05.76)
Amazing!

Dr Erika (29:23.394)
will protect you. So hormones will protect you from heart disease. They will protect you because as you go into menopause, the incidence of heart disease increases to the same level as men get heart disease, right? Even so if you take hormones, that doesn’t happen. Then Alzheimer’s, you don’t get Alzheimer’s as you know, they protect you. You’d get Alzheimer’s if you eat sugar. Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (29:38.008)
Yeah.

Dr Erika (29:53.422)
If you taking hormones, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, adrenal, thyroid, et cetera, you will not increase your risk of Alzheimer’s as fast as you would just from chronologic aging. Yes. Yeah, a lot. And then you were talking about bones, right? You talked about bone, which is really crucial. So you know that the only true solution

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (30:07.883)
Is that true, doctor? There’s a lot of research around that now.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (30:15.415)
Yes.

Dr Erika (30:22.914)
to losing your bone density, to getting osteoporosis, the only true, true, true solution is having muscles on your body. Because muscles are the currency of youth. So if you have muscles, your bones will be fine. But if you don’t have hormones, you’re not gonna have the energy to start exercising. And you’re not gonna be able to build the muscles.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (30:31.331)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (30:49.881)
Mmm.

Dr Erika (30:50.176)
So that’s the layer. So the hormones are the foundational layer.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (30:55.599)
Wow, that makes a lot of sense. Wow, just so much to unpack in there. And obviously we hear about lifting heavier weights as you get in there.

Dr Erika (30:59.811)
Thank you.

Dr Erika (31:09.742)
let me tell you something about that. Very important. Another crucial piece to aging is you don’t want to get injured because once you get injured, the recovery is much slower and will never take you back to where you were. So.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (31:21.368)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (31:30.276)
Hmm.

Dr Erika (31:31.95)
And I have patients coming in and saying, oh, let me do, you know, I’m going to do heavy weights. The thing is you better off with lighter weights. That’s where you are, right? Exactly. You got to gradually move it and see where you can go. I mean, I go to a gym where obviously I’m the oldest person there, but they’re all, you know, they’re really big body.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (31:40.461)
Mmm, yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (31:55.117)
No one would think you were a doctor.

Dr Erika (31:57.23)
They all know me, so it’s okay. They love it. They think it’s great. I feel like I’m everybody’s grandmother. Anyway, but the interesting thing, but it’s still, you know what? It’s inspirational. But it’s inspirational to me because I want to be with the young people doing stuff that they do. I mean, I can’t do chin-ups. I can’t. I’m just, I’ve never done them. When I was 30, I couldn’t do them. I can’t do them today. But I could tell you that

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (32:07.183)
It’s very inspiring. Yeah.

Dr Erika (32:25.708)
the amount of muscle that I have on my body now is more than I had 20 years ago. And it’s not because I didn’t work out, because I always worked out. My whole life I’ve worked out. It’s about the fact that I’m much more cognizant, and I work with this guy who’s really wonderful, who respects my body and knows that the way to help me the best, the most, is…

to focus on flexibility, to focus on balance, to focus on using my body weight to build. Now, I can lift 200 pounds, but I won’t. Because what if I pull a muscle? Why would I do that? I mean, there’s no logical reason for it. So I think it’s like the desperation that takes hold of us when we get older.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (32:59.023)
Mmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (33:07.254)
Yeah.

Dr Erika (33:19.672)
has to be removed. We have to make women feel powerful and strong no matter what and realize that you don’t want to keep up with the Joneses. You don’t care. I mean, if I tried to work out the same way as the 30 year olds over at the gym, I’d probably kill myself in 10 minutes, right? But the whole point is you want to work together.

You want to supplement each other. You know, I can bring in some wisdom and experience. They can bring in the inspirational part for me to keep up the work.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (33:54.999)
Mm-hmm. Well, and taking it practically, Erica, do you think some women may be listening to this and like, hey, I’m trying to gain muscle, but maybe back to the hormones, maybe they don’t have enough testosterone? And also, do you believe in taking things like creatine?

Dr Erika (34:12.844)
Mm-hmm. I love creatine. Not just because it helps with the muscles, it’s because of what it does to the person. So I love creatine. Pretty much most of my patients, 90 % of my patients, there’s some who can’t tolerate it, but everybody who tolerates it, they’re getting five grams a day, and especially on the days they work out. The other thing about supplements that I think is really important to tell people is…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (34:19.407)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (34:34.297)
Got it.

Dr Erika (34:40.3)
You don’t have to do everything every day. You can take breaks, you can take off. You don’t have to take the same thing. It’s like the conventional world where they give you a medication for blood pressure, right? And you take the same medication for the next 30 years and nobody cares about it. Nobody changes it. You can’t do it that way. You have to change things. You have to give them a break. I work with peptides and you know what? I rotate them. I don’t have people take the same thing all the time.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (34:42.425)
Right.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (35:09.08)
Yes.

Dr Erika (35:10.294)
big difference when you give people the freedom, they feel free to make decisions. And they make better decisions.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (35:16.815)
Mmm, I love that. I love that. So, doctor, it’s so exciting you have your book coming out, a re coming out in September, and you have your clinic in New York. Can people work with you remotely?

Dr Erika (35:31.726)
Sure, I have patients all over the world, literally. I have people all over New Zealand.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (35:33.833)
amazing. So can you tell us your book again to look out for, which by the time this airs will be in just a few weeks, and also how we can get in and learn more about you and get in touch with your work?

Dr Erika (35:42.958)
your base notes.

Dr Erika (35:48.472)
Thank you so much, my God. I’m so happy. Thank you so much, Kimberly. No, thank you. So the way to get in touch with me is you can write to me on Instagram, let’s say, or Facebook at…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (35:52.003)
Well, thank you for sharing so much.

Dr Erika (36:06.028)
D-R-E-R-I-K-A-S-C-H-W-A-R-T-Z. It’s like in one word, Dr. Erica Schwartz. And the practice is called eval science. So it’s at ES Health. And that’s also on, you can get that on Instagram, Facebook. The book is called, Don’t Let Your Doctor Kill You. You can’t forget that one.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (36:24.931)
Great.

how can I forget that amazing title?

Dr Erika (36:31.786)
And know, Kelly Ruppa wrote on the cover of it. So it’s really exciting for me. She’s been with me for a couple of decades. it’s really wonderful. So I’m really excited about that. And we’ll be happy to help anybody because I think like your work is really God’s work. And so is ours.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (36:35.233)
Amazing.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (36:39.917)
Wow.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (36:54.319)
That’s amazing. Dr. Erica, is there anything I didn’t cover about your work or anything you want to share? We talked about so many different things.

Dr Erika (37:03.52)
Anything you want. mean, I think that you’re amazing. I am so honored to be on your show, really. Your podcast is wonderful and I love your books. anything I can do to help because you get it. I think if we get it together, that it’s you and what we do are hand in hand. They have to do it. That way it’ll work.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (37:07.064)
You are so sweet.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (37:18.557)
No, amazing.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (37:29.561)
Dr. Erica, it’s been such an honor speaking to you. You’re such an inspiration to all women. Your heart is so big. You also look physically amazing. If anyone is listening to this on Spotify or Apple, please just hop on our YouTube channel for a moment and just take a look at Dr. Erica. Or check out her Instagram. She is amazing as she sounds. She’s just an embodiment of the work. We will link directly to Dr. Erica’s social channels, her website.

her book coming up on our show notes at mysaluna.com. Thank you again, Dr. Erica for sharing so much. has been, I’ve had some other hormone conversations in the past and this is the one I have learned by far the most and so interesting and intriguing. So thank you again. And thank you.

Dr Erika (38:20.11)
Kevron, you be here anytime you want. Just with me, I’ll be happy to do anything I can do to help because I think women need a lot of help. I think what you’re doing is wonderful. And I think it’s time for us to not be afraid and to be able to take care of ourselves without fear and without intimidation.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (38:35.585)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (38:39.255)
and powerful. And thank you so much everyone for tuning in. Once again, go to the show notes. I’ll see you on social at underscore Kimberly Snyder. I’ll be back here in a few days for our next interview. Till then, sending you all so much love and take great care.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (39:00.289)
Yay, one sec Dr. Erica.