New Gillvray Health clinic in Cambridge treats health ‘as a whole’
Gillvray Health has launched a Lifestyle Medicine Clinic in Cambridge – the first of its kind in the city.
The clinic, in a newly-renovated space at 19E Hills Road, opened on Wednesday (19 June) and is focused on helping individuals, corporations and clinicians to improve health and wellbeing, while aiming to reduce cases of preventable diseases.
Founded by CEO Dr Claire Gillvray, the lifestyle medicine lead for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, and Lucy Hibben, a breath coach, meditation teacher and senior yoga instructor, Gillvray Health combines traditional medicine with holistic care.
Speaking to the Cambridge Independent from Nuffield Health in Cambridge, where she also works, Dr Gillvray said: “I’ve been a medical doctor for 25 years.
“I am dual-trained as a psychiatrist and a GP, and I have a master’s in sports and exercise medicine.”
Dr Gillvray, also a trained nutritionist, has been working with Lucy for a number of years.
“We have been thinking about how we use lifestyle, not necessarily instead of medication – it could be alongside it – to really try and help people create healthy behaviours and improve wellbeing,” she explained.
Dr Gillvray stressed that all the treatment offered at the clinic will be “evidence-based”.
“It will all have science behind it, about how you can either help people prevent disease or help people who have chronic diseases improve their outcomes,” she said.
Dr Gillvray said that the building has been developed into “a really lovely space, which has room for traditional medicines”.
She added: “We’ve got a couple of clinic rooms in there – and also an area that is a gym space, for getting people in and doing some moving, some yoga and some breath work, and we have a training space at the top of the building which is beautifully light and airy, and an outdoor area as well.”
Lucy has been a yoga teacher for many years.
She said: “Alongside that, I’m also a breath coach, so I teach people how to use their breath to really impact their health and how they feel, which is a really powerful tool that is very accessible.
“And I’m also a meditation teacher as well, so I use these three different disciplines, alongside the work that Claire does, to help people to be more in control of how they are feeling, to help people manage themselves on a day-to-day basis.
“These are tools that we all have access to – a little bit of movement, mindfulness, breathing. Claire and I work alongside each other to treat the person as a whole.”
Gillvray Health is a member of the Cambridge Judge Business School Accelerator Programme. Find out more about the clinic at gillvrayhealth.co.uk.
