Dr Marion Gluck, Founder of The Marion Gluck Clinic and specialist in hormonal health. As part of our popular Meet the Successful Founder series we recently caught up with her to learn about her entrepreneurship journey.
- Can you tell us a little about your background and the company?
I am a medical doctor, and I was trained in Germany, I subsequently moved to Australia with my family.
I’ve always been interested in complementary medicine and realised that traditional HRT did not always suit all my patients. Many of my patients on conventional ‘one size fits all’ HRT therapy did not feel well on it and suffered weight gain, mood swings, loss of libido and breakthrough bleeding.
While working as a GP in Sydney, Australia, I discovered a compounding pharmacy that made-up tailor-made bio-identical hormone prescriptions for each patient. This gave me the opportunity to prescribe bespoke bio-identical hormone prescriptions for each of my patients.
- How did the idea come to you for the company?
As I said, Australia is more advanced for all what concerns compounded medications, so I had the idea to create a similar business here in the UK. I arrived in 2006 and I opened my first clinic and then the first UK compounding pharmacy that has constantly grown and already moved to its third location. Now we occupy a 7,000sqm pharmacy in East London.
- How did you achieve awareness?
Both my businesses have grown thanks to the success that I have achieved with my patients and their subsequent recommendations. I never really advertised my business, but my patients are women in their 40s and 50s who are working full time, raising a family, looking after elderly parents and are often the main breadwinner; in other words, they can’t slow down, they need to be as active, clear-headed, energised and healthy as they were in their 30s.
Once they saw that the alternative to conventional HRT, that I was proposing, was working for them, they just spoke with their friends
- How have you been able to gain funding and grow?
I never got external investments for my business, but just grow thanks to the success of my treatments and the quality of medications that we compound every day at our pharmacy.
- What are the key successes?
I have always thought that the wellbeing of women is very important, no matter where you are in your stage of life. However, I felt that messages around menopause were somewhat discouraging, amounting to a statement of resignation that a woman’s health inevitably declines after menopause.
Menopause is a totally natural occurrence that affects all women when they reach that time of their life. In today’s age, there is no longer any reason that a woman’s health should decline as she ages. Hormones control our wellbeing, energy, moods and metabolism. In fact, they control and nurture – yes, nurture – every function in our body.
It’s the capability of being able to openly address those topics with my patients that has allowed me to gain their trust and at the end to improve the lives of thousands of women.
- What were/are the challenges and how have you overcome these?
Bioidentical hormone replenishment treatment is a pioneering method of treating menopause, perimenopause and other hormone related issues, so gaining trust and recognition in the UK has been challenging. In addition to this, HRT has received bad press and now many women view any hormone treatment in the same light. Changing this perception and educating women that they don’t need to cope with symptoms and that there is help available has been one of my biggest hurdles, but the clinic is now so busy, and patients are flocking to us for treatment, so I feel that we have overcome many of these barriers.
Personalised treatment is more commonplace in other parts of the world but is mostly unheard of in the UK. The NHS do now offer some bio-identical treatments, but the doses are not personalised which may not suit everyone. Education around personalised medication has also been challenging but word of mouth is spreading via our patients, and I hope to see more people understand the benefits of compounded medicine across the UK in the years to come.
- What are your plans now/for the future?
Sometimes a long overdue change is forced upon us by events out of our control. We’ve learned a lot operating as an online clinic over the last six months. We’ve learned that many of our patients prefer to speak with us from the comfort and convenience of their own home. We’ve also learned that there are many patients in parts of the UK for whom traveling to London every few months was too much of a barrier. The change also means that our doctors and staff can enjoy improved quality of life and personal safety in this time of uncertainty.
We’ve come to believe that the indefinite shift to an online clinic is a win, both for our patients and our staff. With this change, we have a new mission of making our life-changing hormone balancing treatments more accessible than ever for patients across the UK, bringing the same quality of care and personal focus as always while removing as many barriers as possible.
Dr. Marion Gluck
Dr. Marion Gluck has gained global acclaim for her work in women’s health and bioidentical hormone balancing therapy which can help reduce menopause and perimenopause symptoms. The Marion Gluck Clinic is the UK’s leading medical clinic that pioneered the use of bioidentical hormones to restore and maintain optimal health and hormone balance for patients. Headed up by Dr. Marion Gluck herself, the clinic uses her pioneering method of bioidentical hormonal treatment to rebalance hormones to improve wellbeing, quality of life and slow down ageing.
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