After gaining extensive business experience in both the private and public sectors, Dr. Erika Crotta changed career directions in 1993 and became a Heilpraktiker (German naturopathic degree) in 1997 in Germany. She subsequently received her PhD in Physiology with an emphasis on Ayurvedic Medicine in 2004 at Maharishi University of Management in Iowa. After completing her eleven years of graduate s
tudy, her career path has been to bridge two different paradigms of health care, Modern and Ayurvedic Medicine which she used, in her National Institutes of Health funded research study, on patients with documented heart disease at the University of Iowa, Hospitals and Clinics. In this study four modalities of the ancient Ayurvedic health care system were used in conjunction with standard modern medical therapies for heart disease. After an intervention period of nine months the experimental group showed a greater decrease in atherosclerosis than the control group. Her greatest desire is to spread this simple ancient knowledge of health that empowers people by becoming more responsible for their own lives. To that end, she has given hundreds of free public lectures on the ancient, simple, and natural healthcare system of Ayurveda. She currently sees clients in private consultation in the North Bay area of Petaluma, CA. Dr. Crotta's training includes 4 years of the graduate curriculum for Heilpraktiker (Naturopathy degree equivalence) in Germany where she gained licensure, (she is not a licensed physician or N.D. in CA, as CA does not recognize European Naturopathy degrees) and she specialized an additional 7 years fulltime in residence at a regionally accredited university in the Midwest studying physiology and Ayurveda (gaining an additional B.S., M.S. & Ph.D.). Her doctoral dissertation was funded by the National Institutes of Health to study the effects of Ayurveda on cardiovascular disease.
