About Dr. Magda Szyrmer, VMD

Home page — About Dr. Magda Szyrmer, VMD

I am a holistic veterinarian, writer, free spirit, and life long explorer.

For 10 years, I worked as a holistic and integrative vet in the United States – in New Jersey, Denver, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Each city and clinic brought with it new adventures, learning, and wonderful animals and pet owners!

I was born in Warsaw, Poland (hence, the somewhat unusual spelling of my full name (Magdalena Szyrmer). My parents emigrated to the United States when I was 5 months old, and I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

My mother would give my siblings and I homeopathic treatments for calming when we were rowdy and wouldn’t sleep at night. We took Polish herbal treatments for upset stomachs. When I had pneumonia as a child, I took antibiotics. I never realized that there was a difference between these treatments. Medicine was medicine. If it worked, it worked, no matter what the philosophy behind it.

As I grew older, I developed many different interests, from music, international travel, learning new languages, and an insatiable curiosity about the world.

I attended Princeton University for my undergraduate education, and later University of Pennsylvania for veterinary school.

During vet school, I developed some health challenges of my own that showed me the limitations of conventional medicine. While invaluable for emergency and life-threatening situations, traditional medicine had few solutions for more chronic and less defined health challenges. However, this experience also opened my world to natural, holistic and alternative medicine for my own healing. With a combination of diet changes and alternative medicine treatments, my own health returned and I have never looked back.

Over the years, I have taken coursework in Acupuncture, Chinese Medicine, Homeopathy, Chinese and Western Herbs, Nutrition, Essential Oils, Flower Essences and many more. I am constantly learning and improving what I have to offer my patients, and it is unlikely that this learning process will ever stop. Animals have been some of my greatest teachers of what is possible. They are always surprising me and teaching me about the deeper mysteries that lie beneath the surface of things.