The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #350 - Erika Schwartz

TRANSCRIPT

Erika Schwartz
It's scary that we created a system that we're perpetuating. And the medical education is the same now as it was 50 years ago.

Get another opinion. And by that, I mean get somebody who looks at it differently. And it's very difficult when you're talking about health care to take it in your own hands, because you actually think you can't, you don't know enough.

Melanie Avalon
Welcome to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast, where we meet the world's top experts to explore the secrets of health, mindset, longevity, and so much more. Are you ready to take charge of your existence and biohack your life? This show is for you. Please keep in mind, we're not dispensing medical advice and are not responsible for any outcomes you may experience from implementing the tactics lying herein.

So friends, are you ready to join me? Let's do this. Welcome back to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast. Oh my goodness, friends, it has been the highest of honors to meet Dr. Erica Schwartz, who yes, I will refer to from here on out as Erica. Her book, Don't Let Your Doctor Kill You, is a shocking exploration of the problems with today's doctor-patient relationships, including things that happen to patients and interacting with doctors, as well as shocking things that go down at hospitals. In today's episode, we get all into that. I share my own stories of things that have happened with me interacting with doctors. We talk about the enormous amount of medical error deaths that occur annually, and the very surprising cause of those medical deaths. It's not what you think, things you should know about over the counter medications, what the plastic surgery industry is actually doing right when it comes to medical care, the future of medical care when it comes to AI, what you can do as a patient to have agency and be empowered and take charge of your health, and so much more.

We also didn't mention this in the episode, but Erica is the official host of A4M's podcast, and she is actively involved with A4M and a lot of the direction that they take. It is such an honor to know Erica. The show notes for today's episode will be at everything that we talked about, so definitely check that out. I can't wait to hear what you guys think. Definitely let me know in my Facebook group, I have biohackers, intermittent fasting plus real foods plus life. Comment something you learned or something that resonated with you on the pinned post to enter to win something that I love. And then check out my Instagram, find the Friday announcement post. And again, comment there to enter to win something that I love. All right, I think that's all the things. Without further ado, please enjoy this wonderful conversation with my dear friend, Erica Schwartz. Hi friends, welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation I'm about to have. I'm here with Dr. Erica Schwartz. She is the author of a book called, wait for it, Don't Let Your Doctor Kill You, The Ultimate Patient Playbook for Navigating Modern Healthcare. And friends, what I so loved about this book and as a disclaimer, I read the original version that came out in 2015.

Melanie Avalon
There is a new version re-released in 2025, which apparently has around 40% new content, which I did not read. So we were definitely going to talk about what was updated for that book.

But in any case, what I so loved about this book is approaching the book, I thought it might be a generalized approach of the difference between specialized healthcare versus the disease model of healthcare and the problems with specialization and the problems with conventional medicine and all those things. I did not anticipate the insane deep dive it goes into the modern healthcare system, in particular how doctors are trained, what happens with the doctor-patient relationship, and the insane important need for empowerment with the patient. In addition to having a lot of personal stories throughout the book as well, and talking about Dr. Schwartz's own journey from being a conventional medical doctor to opening her own practice and the transition there, and how she functions now with medicine, I personally identified with so much of the book, because I have had so many horror stories happen to me in the hospital and with doctors. I even went through a, I literally went through a point of my life when I was having a lot of medical conditions that I was trying to figure out what was happening, and I was seeing so many doctors, and I literally got so fearful of doctors because of how some of them had been treating me. I remember I would go in to meet a new doctor, and I would just pray to myself, please be nice to me, please be nice to me, and I was literally scared of doctors. And this book is so empowering to realize how the system is set up, who the doctor actually is, and how they should function in your relationship, and how to be empowered as a patient. So I cannot wait to talk about this.

I have so many questions. Dr. Schwartz, thank you for everything that you do, and thank you so much for being here.

Erika Schwartz
Oh my God, Melanie, thank you so much. And first of all, don't call me Dr. Schwartz. Please.

I started the, you know, the trend with calling the doctor by the first name because I mean, if they're calling you Melanie, why would they call me Schwartz?

Melanie Avalon
I actually have a question. You mentioned in your book, and again, I need to read the updated version, but you talked about how when you transitioned to private practice, you even made the conscious choice to stop wearing the white coat as a doctor. And even that is something so interesting to think about. Because I think we think a doctor wearing a white coat, we don't really think about it, but it comes with all of these implications and creates this sort of persona of the doctor. So I applaud you for that. And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on that, just even like the the mystique of the white coat of the doctor.

Erika Schwartz
Yeah, it's unfortunate that there is a mystique because, listen, originally, they wore it because they were getting blood and all kinds of body fluids on themselves, so that's why they wore it. But then it became a transition into becoming something to put distance between you and the patient and to make it sound or feel like they know more than you do, which is not true.

The whole point of the doctor knows best is that they don't know best. They don't know better. They don't live in your body. Wearing a white coat, I ran a trauma center. That's where I started after I finished my training. So I know when you need to do something acute to make sure that you take care of somebody and prevent them from dying, literally, and then the rest of it, it's about, as far as I'm concerned, and I've been doing it for the past 30-plus years, is about making sure that you stay healthy and you enjoy your life and your experience and your interaction with the doctor should be something positive, not a fear-inducing, fear-based… Like you said, you were praying that the doctor should be nice to you. If the doctor isn't nice to you, you shouldn't even be there. And the whole medical experience is just such a disaster. And I've been teaching and lecturing about it for a long time, and it's just like what exactly is going on because it's not getting any better.

Melanie Avalon
It really is shocking and I actually posted in my Facebook group and I was just curious. I was asking if people had basically stories about problematic things that had happened with their doctors or healthcare and so many people were posting about it.

And I remember the moment where I realized how much I was just like a word that you use in the book of statistics rather than a real patient. I got admitted to the hospital for anemia, I was there for a few days. I asked for my charts at the end and I got to read all the doctor's notes and they had written in my notes because I was on LDN at the time, low dose naltrexone. I still am actually. And they literally wrote my notes. They were like, patient says she doesn't drink or it doesn't drink excessively but she's on naltrexone. So it was an example and for listeners basically now, naltrexone is used to treat like alcohol dependency, low dose naltrexone, which a lot of people are familiar with is for like inflammation and sleep and mood and autoimmune conditions and things like that. So it was an example of just like completely not being seen or listened to. And I would have no idea these conversations were going on if I hadn't asked for the notes. And I remember it just made me think like how often is this happening in general with patients not being seen by their doctors.

Erika Schwartz
Well, that time, all the time, I can tell you that you don't have to worry about it. It still happens all the time.

And it's really disturbing that we're allowing it patients. I mean, allow it that, you know, people go in and listen to the doctor and are scared of the doctor and believe what the doctor says, and it's really, it's scary that we created a system that we're perpetuating and the medical education is the same now as it was 50 years ago. There's absolutely no change in the medical curriculum, medical school curriculum. And I was on the board of a medical school in New York for more than two decades and nothing changed. And to this day, there is no change in the medical education. So the fact that we have a broken system is just, we're just talking about it. We're not doing anything about it. And the only way we can actually change what's going on is to take it into our own hands. And it's very difficult when you're talking about healthcare to take it in your own hands because you actually think you can't, you don't know enough. And that's why there's so many biohackers. That's why there's so many people giving advice. There's so many people because it's the attempt of the many to take it basically away from the few and figure out how to make it work.

Melanie Avalon
So everything that you're talking about, I believe in so much. I, I do it personally. So like where, when I go in now to doctors, I like bring my own studies. I know somehow I show up, you know, now with my own studies and I will, you know, question the doctor and things like that, but I mean, I guess I still feel a tiny bit like fearful and I feel guilty in a way, despite everything I believe and agree with like in your book, the pervasive paradigm, like you said, the doctor knows best and just the power dynamic relationship of the system and me knowing they're only getting paid so much like by insurance for a certain amount of time.

It's just hard to lose that, that ingrained paradigm in my head, even if I don't agree with it, even if I take actions against it, it's hard to actually, I don't know, feel like I'm not on that totem pole at a certain place.

Erika Schwartz
But you are, because nobody lives in your body except for you. So if you think of it that way, then how could somebody who doesn't live in your body know more about how your body functions or what's going on in your body than you do, how?

Melanie Avalon
It's really, really true. I actually got, I got fired by my doctor once.

Erika Schwartz
Good for them, you got rid of them.

Melanie Avalon
I know I was like, so that's one way. That's one way to weed it out.

I was asking for they were trying to do another colonoscopy and I just had one a few months ago and I was like, Can we do a pill cam instead and and look at the small intestine and everything and they were like, and then I got an email being like, you're like, your doctor has like removed you from her care. I was like, Oh, okay.

That's interesting. So then they assigned me to somebody new it was

Erika Schwartz
the doctor's ego that ruled there. If you're going to have somebody whose ego is ahead of you, ahead of you, ahead of what's good for you, why would you listen to them?

Why would you believe anything they say?

Melanie Avalon
And I think that's something that I wasn't really aware of.

So like what role does, cause I'm assuming for that reason it was ego is probably that they would get paid more, I mean, I don't know, but I'm assuming they would get paid more for a procedure, like a colonoscopy than, you know, giving me a pill cam. There's no procedure, there's no procedure, right? Which I did end up getting the pill cam from another doctor, but what goes into, like when doctors are making decisions about whatever it may be, like the next steps, be it medication, be it surgeries, whatever it is, like what factors so listeners can really understand what's at play here is going into their decision for the next step that they take with you, the patient and conventional medicine.

Erika Schwartz
well it's really simple it's the protocols right so if you're an orthopedic surgeon let's make it simple right and you're there because you have a hip problem so hip replacement makes sense because you're bone on bone and you have a pain in your hip right so you're going in you're going to have hip replacement so that's the next step doesn't matter who you are what your lifestyle is like what other variables there are in your life let's say you're a 53 year old person and you fall into the 53 year old bucket with bone on bone on the hip so you're going to have surgery nobody cares i mean they have they need a medical clearance by an internist and if they don't discover that you have some horrible other problems they clear you and you go hey have your hip replaced at no point does anybody say hmm let me see if there is another perspective on this i don't mean another opinion because you get another opinion from another orthopedic surgeon chances are nine out of ten you're going to get the same opinion because they're trained the same way they're going to they're trained to do the hip replacement in this case right what i say is get another opinion and by that i mean get somebody who looks at it differently whether it is a functional medicine integrative medicine preventive medicine you know whatever you want to call it and that's where we got stuck because when we left the conventional fold we got too many titles and too many labels for what we do and you know i call it prevention i'm a prevention now for 35 40 almost 40 years and it works really well i have patients who've been with me for 35 years and they haven't needed much of anything i mean they're healthy you know everybody's healthy and that makes me wonder if they're healthy did i just pre-select a group of like really healthy people or did they become healthy because of the work way we worked together learning about each other and me being just a quarterback the respectful quarterback in service to the patient and i think i know what the answer to that question is

Melanie Avalon
What led you to actually, and I know you talk about it in the book, but what led you to actually make that change, that transition from conventional to open your own practice, which is a big step?

Erika Schwartz
No, I wasn't opening my own practice. I had opened my own practice. I was practicing internal medicine. And my first job out of training was because my training is in critical care and internal medicine. So I ran at the age of 28, one of the major trauma centers in New York. And I did that for five years.

And then I left, and I went to private practice because I wanted to connect with the patients. And within five years of being in private practice, I was like, what am I doing? I'm waiting for them to get sick. I mean, there's nothing I'm doing. There is no in-between. So what made me decide to move into what I call prevention, which is functional medicine, integrative medicine, anything you want to call it, but conventional medicine or classical medicine, what made me decide was the fact that I wasn't helping.

And I know when somebody's sick by having run a trauma center, how to treat them. And the conventional system is excellent in acute care. So if you get run over by a bus or you have a heart attack, by all means, you should be in the conventional system. Unfortunately, the system's clogged up by a lot of unnecessary pieces. So even then, you may not get the care you need unless you're on your way out, basically. So after five years there, I went into private practice to create relationships with my patients and realized that I was doing nothing. I was repeating their blood tests or whatever tests every six months, waiting for something to go wrong. And we didn't have anything that's called chronic care. Our chronic care in our system doesn't really exist because all we're doing is waiting for something to become acute. And that's how the system wants us to do it. And when they're not acute, you're not giving them anything. The patient gets nothing. So I thought, well, there's gotta be something I can do. So that's when I started looking into what is now called, whatever you wanna call it, but it's prevention. What could I do to help people prevent disease? So I learned about diet, exercise, stress management, sleep, all the things that now everybody knows are part of it.

Nobody even knew they existed. There was no course in medical school or in my training on diet. There was nothing on nutrition. There was nothing on exercise. There was nothing on sleep. There was nothing on anything. Now when you're talking menopause, perimenopause, I mean, I got into hormones in 1995, 96 because there was nothing there. So there are barely some supplements that were like putting them out and everybody would say, oh, this is all garbage, multivitamin is what you need. And no, you don't need that. Anyway, so what made me decide to get a long answer, the short version of the answer is, I thought that I was there to help people feel better. That my goal is to be a healer, to help people, to help them come to see me happily and leave me happily. And that was a very different approach to medicine than anybody else at the time.

Now we're moving in that direction, slowly, but we're moving there. So that's why I left. I left because I had to learn how to prevent disease from happening.

Melanie Avalon
You wrote the first version of the book that we're talking about today, Don't Let Your Doctor Kill You in 2015 and then the new one in 2025. When you sat down to re-release it, update it, how much had changed?

Erika Schwartz
Sadly, nothing much changed. Sadly, I just gave that talk at A4M literally, and I'm giving it in December at the annual longevity fest in Vegas, and it's about where are we? And we're probably, sadly, and I am a very positive person in case you don't know. I'm really positive. I'm very optimistic. I'm very happy to see the changes that are occurring. I hope that I live long enough to actually see more changes occurring, and I'm very excited about the future. But having said that, not much has changed.

Not much has changed. There's no course in medical school that teaches you how to talk to human beings like human beings instead of talking to them like you're better than them and you know better than them and trying to intimidate them and bully them, which is what you told me exactly what happened to you, which is you're being bullied. I would never dare talk to someone the way I've watched doctors talk to patients. And I think that what I changed, so in order to get the book, as I was saying to you before, in order to get the book re-released, re-published, I had to put 45% of it had to be different, which is why if you go to Amazon, you have both the old book and the new book anyway. So 45% of it is different. There are a lot of new stories, patient stories, because unfortunately, I hear a new story at least twice, if not three times a day, which is really sad. And I spoke about what COVID did, and that was one of the impetus for putting the book out again was that the timing is a lot better now. There are a lot more open-minded, intelligent people, yourselves included, who realize about the fact that we need to change things. And the book needs to come back to be front and center because it helps. It gives you the guidance you need and it empowers you, like you said, to really not be afraid and intimidated by the system. So I added COVID because COVID was a horrible situation, and what it brought to us is more troubles than it needed to. And maybe if we have more self-confidence, we won't allow COVID to appear again and create the mess it did last time. And then it also exposed the underbelly of the system, which is just a mess, like now the public at large knows how confused and confusing the system is and how it doesn't work. And then the second piece I brought in, which I think I smile when I say it, is AI and the role of AI. And I see AI as a positive in the sense that in the conventional setting and the conventional education, it can take over all algorithm-driven, all protocol-driven medicine, and it'll force the doctor and whatever provider you have to really spend time with the patient and get to learn who the patient is. And that will change dramatically the interaction, will increase the chances of providing care rather than just following the protocol. And it can actually bring the shift that we dramatically need in order to change this horrible system.

Melanie Avalon
AI is evolving so fast that whenever even when I talk about AI on this podcast I'm like how quickly am I gonna date myself because I feel like it is just evolving so fast I have no idea like what it's gonna look like tomorrow even.

Erika Schwartz
Yeah, but you don't have to worry about that, because, you know, AI affects everybody in every way, right? I mean, I see in our offices how they use AI and admin and a lot of things, right? So it's great.

There are a lot of very good things, but you still need the human touch. Because if you don't have the human touch, AI is just a soulless tool. That's all.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, to that point, the human touch thing, going back to the COVID topic, my grandmother was in the hospital, like dying in the hospital during COVID. And it was so interesting to see, because I know this affected so many people where, you know, like their loved ones were, you know, dying and either from, you know, COVID or whatever, or whatever they're in the hospital for.

And the barriers the hospitals would try to put up so that you couldn't, you know, visit them was just like wild.

Erika Schwartz
Yeah, you know what you're right. So a lot of people so when you think of the first Like wave of kovat right in the early 2020 right in March I mean December through December 20 to 19 to June let's say July of 2020 right there were a lot of people who died and the people who died were primarily Older people sick people people who had co-existing conditions There was not one child who got kovat and died and there was no healthy person who got kovat and died So that's an interesting thing because we all were locked up all Healthy people were locked up and nobody understood and still doesn't to this day Know how kovat is transmitted as we were washing our Groceries right in the boxes of everything.

Mm-hmm. I remember that

Melanie Avalon
I remember that right like the Amazon boxes. They're like

Erika Schwartz
As we were keeping six feet of space between each one of us, we had no idea how this disease got transmitted. And to this day, when you read, you know, I'm sure you do, the publications, any scientific publication, they're still debating how it was transmitted, and yet it closed the world.

It closed the world. Of course, let's not forget that liquor stores were essential business, while gyms were closed because we thought that it was being transmitted through sweat. So you think about it, what is wrong with our society? What is wrong with our culture? That people don't care enough about each other and themselves that they would allow this kind of weird stuff to occur because the people who are telling us what was what, right? The politicians, the doctors in charge had no idea. No idea. I mean, to this day, I mean, if you listen to what Anthony Fauci said in front of Congress, he said he made up the six feet between people because he had no idea why. Now, I understand he came from a good place. I'm willing to give him that because nobody in their right mind would come from a bad place when you're dealing with the life of millions, billions of people, right? But if you're making it up, just tell us. Tell the truth. I understand that you don't want to scare people. But when you lie, you scare more people than when you tell the truth.

Melanie Avalon
I could not agree more. And it's weird, even now, I feel like we know the truth about a lot more of the facts, but it's like nobody really publicly admitted it. It's like we don't talk about it.

It's like now we know better about things, but nobody really came out and made statements about what was incorrect.

Erika Schwartz
Right. And you know what? That's terrible because if you think about it, what if there is an outbreak of something else, right? How are we going to react? Are we going to accept, right? Are we going to accept and say, okay, we're going to sit home and go back to that. I bet that if you took a poll, chances are most people would say, no way. I'm not doing that away again.

Because what it did was not only create a horrible world, it made everybody crazy. And you don't want all those kids who couldn't go to school, all those people who couldn't go to work. It created so much mental illness and I'm watching it from, you know, I see patients three days a week and my patients are healthy, right? Because I'm blessed, I'm lucky, I'm humbled by my patients. And as I said to you, they've been with me, some of them have been with me for 30 years. So they're healthy. But these people are not going to accept being told to be, I'm going to be locked up again. They're going to ask for facts. And in the meantime, the world you're in, the biohacking world, right, has turned around and said, wait a minute, you guys are full of it. You're not telling the truth. So I'm going to do my own research and whether it is fact or fiction, I'm going to put it out there so that I can encourage people to have more confidence.

Melanie Avalon
kind of like what you were talking about earlier with all the labels that have arisen for the alternatives to conventional medicine. Even one of the labels is, you know, alternative medicine. But I'm super aware that I don't want to become too biased in like this perspective that I'm in of alternative non-conventional medicine. And I don't want to like look too negatively on the system.

So my question that I have here is it was amazing timing because I was reading your book, I was reading the part about all of the like the numbers of hospital related or like medical error related deaths and you know, hospital infections and things like that, which that also happened to me. I when I had anemia, I got an infection, I got discharged and I got an infection from the hospital had to get recharged. It was not fun.

Erika Schwartz
Horrible, horrible. Melanie, look how you just brushed over it and it was like, okay, this is what happened. Because you expected it to happen. You expected it to happen. And it shouldn't be that way.

Go ahead, finish the story. I'm sorry.

Melanie Avalon
No, no, no worries. I'm just thinking back to how bad it was. Because I remember when I got out for being in just a few days, which I'm not saying people should be in the hospital, but I do think there is something to like, if you have been admitted to the hospital for something, just that experience. I have so much empathy for now for people in the hospital, because it is not fun.

At least it was not for me. And I remember when I left and then got the infection had to come back, I was like, no, they can't take me again. Like, it was like the worst.

Erika Schwartz
feeling ever. How horrible is that?

Why wouldn't a hospital be a place where you actually get peace, support, kindness, love, and medical care? Why? Why can't we get that together? Why don't we understand that we're dealing with humans, that we're not dealing with numbers, like you said about a statistic, a number. Nobody's a number in a statistic, and yet we live in a world where everybody is categorized according to what their age is, what their, you know, the color of their skin is, what their foundational whatever, you know, what their profession is. Why can't we look at people as humans, individuals?

Melanie Avalon
I think what people would say, like for Devil's Advocate answer, at least it's what comes to mind for me is maybe there just aren't enough humans that both want to be doctors that have that approach and are not just in it for like the money or the ego or the power chip. Like maybe it's just not sustainable because there aren't that many people who would do that, who would be that way.

Erika Schwartz
So then, first of all, remember, I am a conventional doctor. And by the way, Praise. Right? Because I don't think that writing this book without being a conventional doctor, you could get any credibility, really.

But think about it. I'm a conventional doctor. I wrote this book because what you said was interesting about not wanting to be biased, not wanting to appear like I'm too alternative, right? Well, this is the thing. I'm not alternative. And I've been saying this from the moment I started moving away from the conventional world, which is 30 years ago, right? And I have to tell you that I've always said the same thing. I'm not alternative. I am what conventional medicine has to become in order to make the system work. I write prescriptions for drugs. I recommend patients to have sub-specialists take a look at them for whatever reasons. So it's not like I don't play in the same playpen as the rest of the conventional world. It's just that I treat patients differently. And I understand other ways of treating them than what the, in quotation marks, evidence-based system provides you with. So it's not like I don't know conventional medicine at the cutting edge of it and where I am in prevention, right? And it's not like I don't use conventional medicine when I need to or conventional sub-specialists when I need to. It's just that I bridge the gap. And I think that we need a ton more doctors to bridge the gap the way I do. And that's why I teach so much. That's why I write these books, because I think we all should find these doctors. And I know I just gave a talk the other day on the book because I'm a book tour. And they said, well, where do we find you? And I said, there are a lot of me. I mean, A4M teaches them. There's a lot. It's a certification. It's great. Go to their website. There are a lot of educational avenues that you can find these days that will help you. But it's the responsibility, unfortunately. But it's fortunately, you know, it's unfortunately because of the way we trained to think. But the responsibility is yours. You can make it work. If you don't like the doctor, get rid of them. You're better off with no medicine than bad medicine. So if you take the responsibility, which means you drop the fear, drop the intimidation, drop the belief the doctor knows best, and say, listen, I'm going to get care from someone I can have a relationship with, someone I trust, someone will not poo-poo anything I come to them with. And I have to tell you, when I first started it, so it was a long time before there was any, you know, internet or Google or AI or anything like that, people used to bring me magazine articles from Vogue, from whatever, right? There were a lot of magazine articles. And they would bring them to me and say, what do you think of this, right? Because they always had medical issues. And I read every one of them. And I came back and told them some of them sounded like nothing.

Erika Schwartz
Some of them sounded right. Some of them I learned from. Some of them I didn't. But I never discarded them.

I never said, oh, this is garbage. It's not in a PubMed, you know, medical journal. No, I respected the patient's perspective. And I think that that's where we get into trouble, that the doctor, knowing best, will discard a lot of potentially really good information, which is where biohacking serves a purpose, where A4M serves a purpose. And I think that this is where the change has to occur. And it will, and it does, slowly but surely. It's slowly moving in the right direction.

Melanie Avalon
I think so much of it does come back to the person who is the doctor because I know for me I've had bad experiences with conventional doctors, I've had good experiences with conventional doctors, I've had bad experiences with whatever you want to call it, alternative or non-conventional doctors and I've had good. So I've had like every version.

I was actually really excited when I read part of your book where you were talking about, you're talking about if you are in the conventional system as a patient, like how to navigate it and how to basically use it to your advantage and basically what I do now is I really like working with non-conventional doctors outside of insurance and at the same time I do appreciate being able to get blood tests and such with insurance. So I've basically found the doctors and like all my plan that will like listen to me and talk to me and then I can as the patient make sure I'm getting what I need from that relationship and what's really interesting and I think about it because I have one doctor, my endocrinologist who is absolutely amazing and like he spends so much time with me and really gets to know me as a person, really cares about my labs and you know the plan moving forward and when I have that experience it's helpful because it reminds me because I mentioned earlier that I worry about while they're only getting paid by insurance for this amount of time in the visit but if a conventional doctor can spend more time with me then I guess they do have the choice to have longer appointments. I just don't know enough about how it works like the insurance and the times and like can they not talk to you longer than a certain amount of time?

Of course they can. They just won't get paid.

Erika Schwartz
Yeah, but you know what, if you're doing it for money, then find something else. Go work on Wall Street.

Don't be a doctor. I became a doctor because I thought I was a healer and I wanted to help my patients. I became a trauma doctor because I liked the excitement of trauma.

Melanie Avalon
Oh, you talk about that. That was like so interesting to me.

Erika Schwartz
You know what? But five years later, at the age of 33, I said, you know what? I want to know my patients. And I also understood the limitations of the trauma medicine, right? So I was like, okay, I want to know my patients.

So you know, nobody could tell me. I think that's what really happened is I wouldn't listen to somebody telling me if I want to be a healer. And my goal is to learn how to heal. And you know, people would be like, they'd go to the hospital to have tests done, let's say. And they would say, I'm Dr. Erica's friend. They wouldn't even say, I'm their doctor. And it made me so happy because this was early on. And the thing is that I felt like, you know, and you were taught in medical school, by the way, you don't want to take care of your family, you don't want to take care of your friends, you want to keep your distance. Well, that's total baloney. Because the more you care, the better you're going to be at it. Think about it. And then think of something else you said that was really important, the relationship, right? Well, why is the relationship with a doctor any different than any other relationship? Why would you allow them to get away with bullying you or mistreating you? Would you do that in a relationship with a partner or a friend? If you do, then you have to work on yourself because the answer is no.

Melanie Avalon
I do really agree about this personal relationship, and I don't know what part of me is still questioning the friend aspect to it. Do you think there's any benefit that comes from having a bit of separation, making it more professional?

Erika Schwartz
out of my patients, and I've seen like over a hundred thousand patients so far, certainly some of them I feel closer to than others, right? Some of them have stayed with me forever and some of them have not, right?

So, it's like all relationships, things will change. Now, I think that if I care about the person, chances are that if I care about you specifically as the patient, I will do a better job. If I don't care, I will probably follow the protocol, right? But I won't follow the protocol because I don't follow the protocol.

Melanie Avalon
Do you think it extends, this is just a really quick tangent, to the mental health space? So like your therapist, like they say you're not going to be friends with your therapist. Like would that be a different boundary relationship?

Erika Schwartz
Well, you know, they're very tight on their boundaries, right? They won't, like, for instance, like social things, right? Like if, let's say, there's a party and everybody gets invited to the party, invite your internist to the party, but you're not going to invite your therapist to the party, right? So I respect that.

But having said that, I think that everybody's different and every relationship is different, right? So I could tell you that there are some of my patients, I mean, I wouldn't say that any of my patients are my best friends, right? I would never say that my patients are my friends, although my patients would probably, the majority of them will say they are my friends, because I pay 100% attention. When I'm there with them, they get my completely undivided attention. I won't be looking at anything except for them. I won't be listening or paying attention to anything but them. So yeah, the relationship is much more substantial, but I'm not friends with my patients.

I am friendly, but I am the same kind of warmth that I have now with you, I have with my patients. I don't change. That's the thing. I don't change personality when I'm talking to my patients. I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example that something really interesting that I was in the car, and this is funny because it happened about 20 years ago, and I was in the car and the car phone, and it was on the car phone that this patient was asking me about, my husband was driving and I was not driving anyway. So she asked me something about some medication. I had put her on and she was like, are you sure about it? And I said, no. I said, I've used it on, I don't know, 5,000 other people, and it worked, but I don't really know how it's going to affect you, which happens to be the truth about everything, right? I don't know how it's going to affect you, and we'll see, we'll discuss after you start taking it. And by the way, it wasn't anything major. It was just common sense something. Maybe it was hormones, because in those days it was like as they were a little weird about it. So then she gets off the phone, we get off the phone, my husband looks at me and he says, nobody wants a doctor who says I'm not sure. And I said to him, are you kidding me? As far as I'm concerned, then I'm not the right doctor for this person, because I will never lie.

I will tell the truth. And you know what? I think that that's one of the secret sauces of my success with patients is I don't lie. I tell the truth, and I respect anything they bring to me. I don't consider myself above it or knowing more. I may have experience, which I sure do, but the thing is that that experience may or may not work on the particular patient. So every patient is unique. Every human being is unique. Every one of us thinks uniquely. So unless you listen and you pay attention and respect them and you tell the truth. I mean, I don't want to bully somebody into having their hip replaced. I don't want to bully somebody into having a test.

Erika Schwartz
I don't want to bully somebody into taking a medication. I want them to be my partner. I want to be their quarterback. I want to support them. And if something doesn't work out, I want them to come to me and say this didn't work out, and together we can fix it.

Melanie Avalon
I'm just reflecting on how important it is for everything that you're doing to the full 100% capacity because even subtly, I feel like issues exist with the doctor-patient relationship where even when you think they're being supportive, it's like subtle things. And what I'm thinking of specifically is I've definitely had at least one, maybe two doctors, conventional doctors who were kind and supportive, but who made a comment about like whether or not they would put me on a certain medication. It was never like, do you want to be on this medication? It's never like presented as a question. It's like, I'm going to do this or I'm not going to do this for XYZ. And then I of course would push back if needed, but just like subtle things like that.

Just another really quick tangent. I was talking earlier about not wanting to be overwhelmingly biased. So the section on the medical related errors and things like that, I got so excited because I went to a concert. It was for Allie and AJ. I mean, I don't know if you know who they are, but they were on like Disney Channel growing up. So this was like a pop, you know, a teen pop concert I went to like a month ago and a very eclectic group of people there. The girl I stood by at the concert, she was an epidemiologist and I was so excited to meet her because I actually had never met anybody in that profession. And she was telling me about what she basically does is study disease outbreaks in hospitals to try to find like the cause. She just worked on a paper where they had traced all of these different infections back to like this one doctor who wasn't, I don't know, I don't know what he was doing, but it was like, it was due to him washing his hands. Yeah, something, something like that, honestly. So that was really eyeopening for me because I realized I think I was, I was like, oh, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't even realize that there were people doing that like in the conventional system. And I was like, okay, maybe things aren't as dark as I was thinking if we have people like this looking into it. So I'm just curious, like, have you seen any progress on that front? And like the state of that now, like, like what is the system actually doing to make change? And also, it's mind blowing to me that different hospitals like somewhere for profit or not, or like who owns them, that's all stuff that like, I had no idea about. So what are your thoughts on any of that?

Erika Schwartz
Well, a lot, of course. So public health, this is a very interesting, you brought up like really amazing point. So public health versus individualized health. So public health, what the epidemiologist is doing is looking at populations or particular groups and finding out a common threat, right? Like in this case, it was the doctor. And you know, there's always an index case, right? Where things come from. And these are transmittable diseases, right? Epidemics. And so public health is great. I have no words to describe how amazing public health is, how great it has been historically. Because if you think about cholera and smallpox and diseases that killed millions of people in the 1800s, 1600s and 1900s, whatever, right? That public health has made it better. And so we have to understand that a lot of the medical education comes out of public health, right? Hospitals and medical schools kind of sprung out in public health places because hospitals are kind of public health, right? So that's where medical school came. So medical schools were education in public health, which is what takes you to the protocols that they're following. They're following the same thing because in public health, you're taught how to treat groups of people. So that's how you get thrown into the bucket of the 40-year-old or the 30-year-old or the male, the female, whatever, right? You all belong in the same bucket. But when you're sitting in an office across the table or across from a patient, you're not practicing public health. You're practicing individualized health because I don't care what you're doing. At the end of the day, that person is unique. So whatever you've learned from all the articles and all the education does not necessarily apply to the individual because you're practicing individualized health. So that's really important.

Public health is great. It's saving populations the information they get if they do it right. Individualized health is what you're doing with the individual sitting in front of you. And that is crucial, that you remember that it's an individual. The number three reason for death in the United States is medical errors. You were gonna say, we were talking about that. And COVID kind of moved that down a little bit, but then as soon as it was done, it came right back. So to have number three as such a way a high number of people being basically mistakenly treated in the system is beyond appalling. And this information we've had since the 1970s. There is a doctor who used to be at Sloan, Johns Hopkins, but now he's in Cleveland, I think. And his name is Pronovost and he talks about it. And he talks about how he has helped various hospital areas do better by cleaning their hands, like literally washing their hands, doing simple things. But the other part that he doesn't talk a lot about, he has a TED Talk, which is really nice, but there's something he doesn't talk about which he's published a lot in, which is what is the reason why?

Erika Schwartz
This is the craziness. It's gonna blow your mind.

You know what, because you read it. Physician arrogance. And to say that physician arrogance is causing number three reason why people die in the United States makes me cringe. It makes me wanna give away my AMD. It makes me think, how could we? How could we do that to people? How could physician arrogance be the leader?

Melanie Avalon
of the mistakes.

Erika Schwartz
Let's not do it. How about we just don't practice medicine? If you can go into a room and look at the person sitting across from you, and I mean, I will never sit across a desk from anybody. We just sit kind of huddled together, right? Because I think that, you know, it's crazy, you know, the white coat and the separation. No.

I mean, you want to get the person to believe you, to trust you, to work with you. You want to give them kindness, you want to give them love, you want to give them support. They'll do better, I promise you. I mean, I have the proof in the practice I have, in the people that I've trained over the years. It works without a question. Anyway, but how do you become a doctor in your arrogant? And I could tell you, there are a lot of arrogance today in the biohacking world, in the you know, influencers world, in the world we're talking about. Arrogance is going to actually kill all of us. So why allow arrogance to be all pervasive when you think that medical education doesn't tell them, hey, let's check your ego at the door. There's only one ego in the room. Between you and a patient, there's only one ego, the patient's ego. And if the patient is hurting, is uncomfortable, is unsure, you have to respect them and be kind to them. You cannot put your ego in there. If you have to put your ego in there, take the day off, take the month off, change careers.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, I'm having so many flashbacks to Dr. Ego relationships that I've had or moments that I've had.

Speaking of the patient ego, what about on the flip side patients who, and I've been there myself as well and it's hard to know, it's hard to know if you are there, which is do you see patients who go too far down the rabbit hole of trying to self-diagnose and thinking they have every disease and having a fear mindset surrounding that? Do you see that? And also how can a patient know if they're that, like if they're actually over analyzing or over researching or over doing the things compared to just doing what they should be doing with researching and analyzing and trying to figure it out?

Erika Schwartz
Well, the answer is clearly yes, and especially now that we have so much opportunity, right? And so many sources of information, right? So of course, there are a lot of people who come in and they've overanalyzed. And what I say is, you know, I hear you, I respect everything you're doing, but for me to understand what's going on and try to put in my two cents of it, talk to me about how you feel.

How are you feeling? And how you feel is not a diagnosis. It's not saying, oh, I think I have anemia, right? Like you were saying, or I think I have SIBO, or I have whatever. Let's eliminate the medical jargon and let's just talk about yourself. And you know, because I take care of, I mean, half the patients we take care of are men and half are women, as it turns out. But we took care of a lot of women with hormone issues over the past 30 years, especially during the horrible times when hormones were getting such a bad rep. And you know, when women's hormones are out of balance, they feel horrible. They'll come in, they'll be rude, they'll be short-tempered, they'll be demanding, they'll be unkind. They will feel horrible because they're not sleeping, because they have hot flashes, because they have night sweats, because they have insomnia, because their libido is gone, because they can't eat right, because they don't feel good. And you have to respect that. And you have to be able to say, I hear you. I'm sorry you're going through this. Let's figure out together how to make it better. And you know what's interesting? Within two or three months, they feel great. And they're grateful, and they're not mean. They're not negative towards you. They actually treat you well. And I think just the transformation of that itself, just watching that transformation, makes things so worthwhile to me. It's worthwhile to me to see somebody coming in at the end of their rope, having gone to 50 different doctors who have done more tests and accomplished nothing, to come in to us, and then three months later, being really decent, normal human beings who feel better. You know, you hear this all the time, like, you know, you never know the person next to you that you're seeing in the street or whatever, what they're going through, right? It's the same in medicine. The only problem is that in medicine, we're less respectful and less tolerant of other human beings going through rough times than we are. You know, when we're going down the street, then somebody says hello to you, you know?

Melanie Avalon
I know for me personally the thing that I think just being listened to and being believed but then also I had to get out of the rabbit hole of like trying to figure all the things out and when I finally just let that go is when I think I actually started to get better.

Erika Schwartz
Of course, I believe that, I believe that. But you know what? Unfortunately, and it's not that I'm here to blame anyone. I'm just here to make people feel better and believe that they can feel better.

But unfortunately, it's the system that's pushing you. And because they're pushing you in the wrong direction, it's really hard to push back. Like you said, push back. You don't have to push back to the doctor. If somebody's rude to you, leave. And I'm not exaggerating when I say you're better off with no medical care than bad medical care. And we're getting such bad medical care. It's appalling that I'm having this conversation with you 10 years after the initial release of Don't Let Your Doctor Kill You, which I started writing 10 years before that.

And I only had seven other books that I wrote in between eight books actually, because Don't Let Your Doctor Kill You was just not the right book at the right time. Hopefully now it becomes like everybody reads it, right? Because you need what I have to give you, which is all this information I've gotten so that we don't listen to horror stories anymore. That we can actually enjoy our lives. That we don't live in fear of missing something.

Melanie Avalon
I'll tell you what's really interesting and definitely a paradigm shift for me to think about. Because you mentioned, at least in the 2015 version, that there are two arms of medical care that were, at least at the time, making good movement towards the way things should be with the doctor-patient relationship. And that was plastic surgery type procedures and then maternity care. And so that, Erica, that is so interesting to think about.

Because at least for me, plastic surgery-related things, I don't even put them. It's such a different form of medicine in my head that it's not even in the same bucket. And so it's interesting to step back and be like, oh, actually getting a nose job is a medical procedure. And so how is that so? Because I actually had a septorheinoplasty. And I was like, oh, when I got it done, I was like, oh, this is actually like I'm at a hospital.

Erika Schwartz
this is like, this is medical. Yeah, but you know what, you're right. It's interesting that they got it. They understand that, you know what, maybe because they don't take insurance for the most part, maybe because they realize that it's kind of a, you know, elective procedure, so you don't have to have it done. So they get it. They treat the patients respectfully. They're not obnoxious. You know, maybe they're obnoxious in their personal lives, but they're not obnoxious to the patients.

So you're right. You're right. It's very interesting. And so that has only gotten better. That has only gotten better. The interesting thing about the OBGYNs that was, was the story of my daughter who had had these twins and had a vaginal delivery and the doctor was in Miami, and he was the most amazing doctor I have ever met. He was unbelievable and he was so caring and he was so kind and he basically, I mean, you know, it's a lot easier to just cut you open and take them out. Who cares, right? So he encouraged her to do it and he did such an amazing job. It was fantastic. You know, it's funny. I sent him a book and I guess he never got it because he never read it. I never heard from him again. But listen, he's still busy doing his thing, but yeah, you want people who care. And the reason this guy did such a great job is because he cared.

Melanie Avalon
It was good to read that part too because I've had on the show, Abby Epstein and Ricky Lake, they did the Business of Birth Control documentary and then they have a book on the business. I think it's called the Business of Birthing. That painted a not a very good picture of the maternity situation. They do show where you can be empowered and where good steps are being made, but it also made me really concerned about everything.

Erika Schwartz
You know what? I know them, and I actually worked with them, and yeah, it's so funny, years ago, but it's true. The thing is that you can find fault with everything, right? But that's not what I'm looking to do.

What I'm looking to do is to show you how you can protect yourself and eliminate the flaws or at least diminish them enough that going forward, you can enjoy your life. So, yeah, there's a business in everything. Listen, if you go to IDF and the amount of money that they're making and this, I'll tell you a story, a patient of mine that just recently, six months ago, she was 35 years old. She was trying to get pregnant. She got married two years before. Her whole family, nobody had any fertility issues, and she couldn't get pregnant and went to an IVF clinic. They tested her. They told her, hey, you're not going to have any children. We're going to have to do IVF. I have to tell you, I had some reservations about it, but I didn't really say anything because I thought, let her do whatever she needs to do. Anyway, so she goes through three rounds of IVF. Nothing works. They tell her that her eggs are not okay and that maybe what she needs to do is do a surrogate, a surrogate egg. So, they should implant an egg in her. Her husband goes crazy. He doesn't want to do it. So, they don't do it. I say to her in passing, literally, and I was taking care of her thyroid, literally. I said to her and her lifestyle in general. So, I said to her, I said, listen, why don't you just quit this job? She was in a job where her boss was a very aggressive, negative person. So, I said, why don't you just quit the job, find a job where somebody's nicer to you or kinder? I mean, it wasn't like she had to have a job at the time. Anyway, make a long story short, she quits the job six months later. She's pregnant.

She's now eight months, seven months pregnant. So, she didn't need IVF. She didn't need anything, but how would you know that unless you know the patient? And unless, like you said, it's not about making money. It's about helping someone do better. I'm curious.

Melanie Avalon
When you were updating the book, did you update the manifestos for the doctor and the patient? Was there anything that you added or took away? I'm sure I did.

Erika Schwartz
I'm sure I did. I think I added a lot because when my editor wanted to see the new book, they called it a playbook.

You want more information on how to do it, how to do it, how to do it. Whatever I learned in the past 10 years, which is probably a lot, like how little we know.

Melanie Avalon
you have to fight to keep anything in the book? Like, did the publishers really push back about anything?

Erika Schwartz
No, oh my god, I have the best publisher, my publisher is very supportive of everything.

Actually he was like, okay, it's time for you to bring it out again because he loved that last time and it's interesting because you never know when it strikes a chord and people actually understand because we talk so much, all of us, we're all trying to get our points across and trying to help each other and you don't know when you actually can help except for when you go to the doctor, you know, that you have the opportunity to help.

Melanie Avalon
Why don't you? Well, I can tell you, your book is definitely helping and there's just so many moments, like very small, specific things. I like when there's like things that I just had no idea about that really, really stick to me and then I can't unsee them.

Like what? For example, something as simple as I had never really pondered with over-the-counter medication that these used to be, well, not over-the-counter and that they changed from the, was it from the FDA to the FTC for the like regulations around what can be set on the bottle and how that changes what can actually, you know, be on the bottle, I never thought about that. It's mind-blowing to me.

Erika Schwartz
It is my blowing because you don't want, you go to CVS or Rite Aid or Walnut Greens or whatever, and you have like zillions of medications, right? And like the non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, Advil, Motrin, Aleve, Ibuprofen, like a zillion of them, right? And they're all exactly the same medication. And people don't know it because nobody tells you.

And then you can have the same medication in a larger dose than the 200, which is what those are, right? And get it from the pharmacy and pay a gazillion dollars more for it. It's crazy how everything's about manipulating rather than helping, and how it's all about creating confusion and marketing. It's all about marketing, marketing, marketing. And I don't think we're going to get anywhere with that, except for I hope that people will say, hey, you know what? I've had enough of this. Let me go live my life. Let me exercise. Let me not overexercise, but let me exercise. Let me drink some more water. Let me sleep. Let me eat better. Let me stop drinking alcohol. Let me do things that will make me feel better. Let me live inside my body and see what my body's telling me, because my body will always tell me what's right. All we have to do is listen and respect.

Melanie Avalon
Listen and respect and don't let your doctor kill you and you're good for sure

Erika Schwartz
For sure. For sure. I know.

And the doctor, you know what, I have to tell you, you know, I never even thought of the title until like in the early 90s when I, and I wrote about it in the book, right? In the early 90s, I woke up one day and I was like, I need to write a book called Don't Let Your Doctor Kill You. So I told, and by the way, I was pretty young in those days, right? And I told the guy that was my editor at the time and he said, you're out of your mind. You know, you're too young. Nobody knows who you are. What are you going to tell them? And I thought, well, I'm going to tell them because I've been watching, you know, how you're being killed by the system, that the system's not making you better. The doctor's not making you better. They're killing you. And he said, well, I don't think that book will ever see the light of day because of the name of it. So not only did it see the light of day, it saw the light of day twice. I know.

Melanie Avalon
Was there any thoughts on updating the title or changing the title?

Erika Schwartz
Not a word, not a word. No, but they changed. You saw, they changed the cover. The cover, I like the cover now, it's cuter. And they have Kelly Ripow on the cover, who thankfully, she's a patient for like 20 years and she's always been very supportive and she wrote a little blurb on it. So they changed it.

So it's, I guess, more marketable to the extent that maybe more people will read it and take the message home that they should enjoy their lives, that they don't have to be bullied, that the doctor doesn't know best. Maybe learn more about how to live inside your body and not react. That's the other thing. We all are so reactive. And I say that a lot to people like, you know, having run a trauma center, I can tell you that you will never ever in your life see a life and death situation that you have any control over. You may see somebody drop dead in front of you, right? But you will never have control over it. Unless you're in an emergency room in a trauma center, you never will have anything to worry about. So why react to anything as though it's life or death, right? So maybe the first step is to not react. Whatever you're told, whatever you hear, whatever you read, stop. Don't react. Think about it. You know, one of my favorite things is to say, sleep on it. Because if you sleep on it, maybe the next day it won't be that important. Maybe, you know, a week from that, it's not going to be that important. You know, when somebody says something terrible to you, especially a doctor, you're going to immediately like, oh, I have a tumor, I want it out. Well, maybe you don't want it out. Maybe you'll be better off without you taking it out, having your body heal it. You know, there's so many ways of looking at things, right? That we don't know that if we stopped reacting, we might learn.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, I could not agree enough. One of the personal things I do, I heard this on a podcast somewhere that your brain takes 72 hours to like reset.

So if ever you have something that is a big decision that doesn't have to be made right then, like wait three days and see if you still want to do, you know, your impulsive thing that you wanted to do at the beginning. And it's a game changer for me, honestly.

Erika Schwartz
So all of us, totally, I agree 100%, which is why I don't understand when you go, you know, and the doctor will tell you, oh, this is what I want to do. I want to do the surgery or whatever I'm doing. Instead of you saying, oh, okay, let me think about it. It's like, no, sure, do whatever you want.

Wait, it's my body. What do you mean do whatever you want? Let me think about it, right? Let me think about it. Let me do some research. Let me talk to some people I trust. Let me just sleep on it, like sleep on it for a few days. I mean, you do that in business. You do that at work, right? Why don't you do it when it comes to something a lot more important, which is your body? Yeah.

Melanie Avalon
I love it. Well, this has been absolutely amazing, Erica. Thank you so much for all the work that you're doing. I just cannot express my gratitude enough.

So listeners, get Don't Let Your Doctor Kill You and get the new version, the ultimate patient playbook for navigating modern healthcare. We will put a link to it in the show notes.

How else can listeners follow your work? Where all should they go?

Erika Schwartz
D-R-E-R-I-K-A, Schwartz on Instagram. I think that would be the best way. I think just get the book and I'm findable. I'm not difficult to find and I'm happy to help in any way possible.

So yeah, Instagram is a good way to find me. I'm sure I'm on YouTube.

Melanie Avalon
The last question that I ask every single guest on this show, and it's just because I am what we're talking about at the end, the role of our minds and mindset, and I think gratitude is so important. So what is something that you're grateful for?

Erika Schwartz
for just being alive and watching, being able to help in any way. I'm just grateful that I have this cumulative experience that I've had over the past 45 years of being a doctor to share with everybody so that people don't have to repeat the mistakes that we can move forward and enjoy our lives.

Melanie Avalon
I love it so much. Thank you so, so much, Erica. This was so amazing.

Hopefully we can meet in real life at some point. Yes, and I'd love to have you back on the show and just thank you, thank you. You're the best.

Erika Schwartz
Thank you, Melanie, you're wonderful. You really are wonderful. Thank you so much for thinking of me. Thank you.

Melanie Avalon
good rest of your day and we will talk soon. You too. Bye.

Thank you so much for listening to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. For more information and resources, you can check out my book, What Win Wine, as well as my supplement line, Avalon X. Please visit melanieavalon.com to learn more about today's guests. And always feel free to contact me at contact at melanieavalon.com. And always remember, you got this.