There’s a moment I remember very clearly
It was 2014. My son was about to turn one. And I was sitting in a consultation, not as the doctor, but as the patient, being told I had multiple sclerosis.
I had spent years training to deliver news like that. I knew the clinical pathways, the treatment options, the statistics.
As it turns out, medical training is excellent preparation for giving a diagnosis. It is considerably less useful for receiving one.
That moment changed everything.
From the NHS to private practice and everything in between
I qualified as a GP after graduating from Medical School at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and spent the next two decades working across NHS practice and private healthcare, both in independent clinics and for large corporate providers.
I loved the work, especially my patients. But the MS diagnosis cracked something open that I couldn't ignore. Because suddenly I understood, in a way no amount of training can teach you, what it feels like to be the person waiting for results, navigating a system that wasn't designed with you in mind, and trying to make sense of your own body.
Becoming a patient made me a better doctor. And eventually, it made me question everything.
Building something new
Balancing life as a GP, a new mother, and a patient with MS was, to put it mildly, a lot.
I was exhausted. I was searching for something that would help my energy levels and support my brain at the same time. Everything I tried was full of ingredients that seemed to complicate things rather than help them. I couldn't find what I was looking for.
So I created it.
That was the beginning of Noggin The Brain People. Born not from a boardroom or a business plan, but from a very personal realisation, that brain health doesn't always need a medical degree. It just needs care.
As my energy improved something else happened.
I had the urge to write.
I started making notes — about what it felt like to go from doctor to patient, about what I'd learned, about all the people I'd sat across from over the years who were navigating something similar and doing it largely alone. Those notes became a memoir. The memoir became a conversation with a literary agent. And that conversation became the start of a whole new chapter — and a career I hadn't planned but couldn't imagine not having.
Trying to stay in medicine
Leaving GP practice wasn't an easy decision. It was a gradual reckoning with what MS made possible and what it didn't.
I wasn't ready to walk away from medicine entirely. So I found another way in. I spent two years working in Alzheimer's disease research at Scottish Brain Sciences — a different kind of doctoring, but medicine nonetheless. Sitting at the intersection of neuroscience and human experience.
What I do now
I no longer practice clinically. But twenty years of medicine, two years in research, and over a decade of living with MS shapes every word I write and every stage I stand on.
I write about brain health, what happens when life doesn’t go to plan, and the reality of navigating healthcare as a patient.
I speak to corporate audiences and conference stages about the things that matter most to people in midlife who are trying to understand their own health without being sold something.
And I try to be honest. About what the evidence says. About what the system gets wrong. About what it actually feels like to be the patient.
Because I know. I am one.
About Clara
MBBS University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, MRCGP (2007)
20+ years clinical experience across NHS and private practice in General Practice
Founder, Noggin The Brain People
2 years Alzheimer's disease research, Scottish Brain Sciences
TEDx and corporate health speaker
Author of “Doctor, Interrupted- from doctor to patient and back again” and “Heads Up - how to look after you brain so it will look after you”
Living with MS since 2014