Vir­ginia von Schaefer

Dr. V has prac­ticed med­i­cine and surgery for over 25 years. She is now a retired gen­er­al, vas­cu­lar and trau­ma sur­geon who has been pro­vid­ing bio-inte­gra­tive con­sul­ta­tions to patients of all ages in a vari­ety of clin­i­cal settings.

Her pas­sion is uti­liz­ing the basic prin­ci­ples of cell biol­o­gy and bio­chem­istry to solve med­ical prob­lems. Her focus is to eval­u­ate and treat the whole per­son, tak­ing into account the mind, body, and spir­it con­nec­tion to restore bio­chem­i­cal balance.

Dr.V came to study med­i­cine after her first preg­nan­cy turned out to be a tumor, result­ing in a sep­tic deliv­ery of a pos­si­bly can­cer­ous growth. The expe­ri­ence of this event opened her eyes to the prac­tice of med­i­cine and moti­vat­ed her to quit her job, return to school to study sci­ence and pre­pare to go to med­ical school.

To that end, she attend­ed Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty under­grad­u­ate school and majored in bio­chem­istry and cell biol­o­gy at the height of new dis­cov­er­ies in cel­lu­lar anato­my and phys­i­ol­o­gy. She had her first child as a “pre-med” and was the first woman with a child to be accept­ed to Colum­bia Col­lege of Physi­cians and Sur­geons med­ical school in NYC. Her sec­ond child was born dur­ing med­ical school and her next three chil­dren were born dur­ing intern­ships in both Inter­nal Med­i­cine and Surgery.

She com­plet­ed sur­gi­cal train­ing at an affil­i­ate of Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty in NYC, spe­cial­iz­ing in Trau­ma Surgery and came to Cal­i­for­nia in 1994 to com­plete a Vas­cu­lar Surgery Fel­low­ship at Har­bor UCLA. One year after com­plet­ing the pro­gram she sus­tained a total spinal cord con­tu­sion at C4 and C5 and had to stop active­ly prac­tic­ing surgery.

In the process of her recov­ery she turned back to her orig­i­nal pas­sion, cell biol­o­gy and bio­chem­istry. With new inspi­ra­tion and insight she explored the world of meta­bol­ic treat­ment using the prin­ci­ples of bio­chem­istry, endocrinol­o­gy and nutri­tion for prob­lem solving.

When not work­ing Dr.V enjoys spend­ing time with her chil­dren and three Ital­ian grey­hounds, gar­den­ing, cook­ing and writing.