Kindling Health
Menopause clinic · by video · UK
You were told it was stress, or your age, or nothing at all.
Kindling Health is a menopause clinic run by doctors who trained in it specifically. Forty-five minute first appointments, prescriptions to your door, and as many follow-ups as it takes to get you right.
This is not a pitch, so we will write it the way we would say it. Most women who come to us have already been to their GP two or three times. They have been offered an antidepressant, or a sleep hygiene leaflet, or a follow-up in six weeks that never quite answered anything.
None of that is a failure of the person in front of you. A GP gets ten minutes and, until very recently, almost no menopause training at all — the average across UK medical schools was a single afternoon. We built this clinic because the appointment needs to be longer, and the doctor needs to have done the reading.
Everything below is what you would actually get: what the first appointment covers, what we will and will not prescribe, who the doctors are, what it costs, and what happens to your records if you decide to stop. Read it in order. It was written to be read in order.
Dr Imogen Vasterling
Clinical Director, Kindling Health
Chapter one
The forty-seven symptoms nobody connected for you
Joint pain. Ringing ears. Rage that arrives on a schedule. Burning mouth. Waking at 3am with your heart going. Forgetting the word for fork. None of these were in the leaflet.
Joint pain
Told it was wear and tear, or the running you did in your thirties.
Ringing ears
Referred to audiology. Hearing normal. No further explanation.
Rage that arrives on a schedule
Called a personality problem, not a hormonal one.
Burning mouth
Sent to the dentist twice. Nothing found either time.
Waking at 3am with your heart going
Written up as anxiety. Offered a beta blocker.
Forgetting the word for fork
The one that frightens people most, and is spoken about least.
Skin that itches under the surface
Formication. Rarely mentioned in any leaflet.
Recurrent urinary infections
Course after course of antibiotics. No one checked oestrogen.
Frozen shoulder
Physio, six months, and no one asked about your periods.
Flooding periods you plan your week around
Common in perimenopause. Not normal to endure alone.
Ten of forty-seven. The full symptom score is the first thing we take, and the reason so many women say the first appointment was the first time the list made sense as one thing rather than nine unrelated complaints.
Chapter two
What a first appointment actually covers
Your first appointment is forty-five minutes with a doctor who has read your history before you join the call. We take a full symptom score, review your risks properly, and leave with a written plan you can show your GP.
Appointments are by video, from wherever you are. No waiting room, no car park, no half-day off work.
Before you join
Your doctor has already read your history
You send your notes, medications and a symptom questionnaire when you book. Nobody starts the call by asking you to explain yourself from the beginning.
Minutes 0–15
A full symptom score, taken seriously
We work through every system — sleep, mood, joints, skin, bladder, libido, memory — and score it. It becomes the baseline we measure every later change against.
Minutes 15–30
Your risks, reviewed properly
Family history, blood pressure, migraine with aura, clotting history, breast history. We tell you what the evidence actually says about your situation, including where it is uncertain.
Minutes 30–45
A written plan you can show your GP
Doses, route, what to expect in week two and week eight, and what would make us change course. It arrives as a PDF the same day, addressed to you and written for your GP to read.
Chapter three
Prescribing: what we can and cannot offer
We prescribe body-identical HRT, vaginal oestrogen, and testosterone where it is clinically appropriate. We do not sell supplements, compounded pellets, or anything with the word bioidentical on a private label.
We prescribe
Body-identical oestradiol — patch, gel or spray.
Micronised progesterone — capsule, or the coil if you have one.
Vaginal oestrogen — for urinary and genital symptoms, alongside systemic HRT or on its own.
Testosterone — where it is clinically appropriate, and monitored with bloods.
Non-hormonal options — for women who cannot or would rather not take oestrogen.
We do not
Compounded pellets or troches — unlicensed, unmeasurable, and we will say so plainly.
Supplements — we sell none, and take no commission on any.
Private-label “bioidentical” products — the word is marketing, not pharmacology.
Blanket testosterone — not without a reason, a baseline, and a review.
Prescribing without a plan — nothing leaves this clinic without a follow-up date attached to it.
Prescriptions go to a UK pharmacy and arrive at your door. If a medicine is not right for you, we would rather tell you at the first appointment than at the fourth.
Chapter four
The doctors, and what they trained in
Every doctor here holds a British Menopause Society qualification and sees menopause patients as the whole of their practice, not as an interest tacked onto a general list. You will see the same doctor at every follow-up unless you ask to change.
Dr Imogen Vasterling
Clinical Director
MBBS · MRCGP · British Menopause Society Advanced Certificate
Sixteen years in general practice before menopause medicine became the whole of her work. She runs our prescribing review and our complex-case clinic.
Dr Rosalind Quintrell
Menopause Specialist
MBChB · MRCOG · BMS Principles & Practice of Menopause Care
A gynaecologist by training, with a particular interest in genitourinary symptoms and in women who cannot take systemic oestrogen.
Dr Anouska Thavendran
Menopause Specialist
MBBS · MRCGP · BMS Advanced Certificate · Faculty of Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare
Works mostly with early and surgical menopause, and with women whose first symptoms began well before anybody thought to look for this.
Chapter five
£290
a year — first appointment and every follow-up
£290 a year covers the first appointment and every follow-up. Prescriptions are charged at cost plus £3 delivery. Stop paying and your records are still yours, sent as a PDF within 48 hours.
There is no per-appointment fee, because charging by the appointment makes women ration them, and getting a dose right usually takes three or four conversations. There is no tie-in and no cancellation fee. If you leave and come back a year later, you pay the annual fee again — not a penny more for having gone.
We are not an NHS service and we do not pretend to replace one. Your GP stays your GP, which is why every plan we write is addressed to them as well as to you.
Chapter six
Three accounts, in their own words
Published with permission, lightly cut for length, and otherwise exactly as they were written.
I had been to my surgery four times in two years. On the third Kindling Health appointment my doctor adjusted the dose again and I slept through the night for the first time since 2021.
Anita, 51
Leeds · with us since 2024
What I remember is that she had read everything before we started. I did not have to perform being ill. She asked about my hands, and I had not even written the hands down.
Frances, 47
Cardiff · with us since 2025
I went in expecting to be sold something. She told me testosterone was probably not the answer for me yet, and why. I have never had a private clinic talk me out of anything before.
Denise, 55
Newcastle · with us since 2024
The last part
Book a first appointment
Forty-five minutes, with a doctor who has read your notes first. Usually within eight days. If we are not the right service for you, we will say so on that call and you will not be charged.
£290 a year, cancel whenever you like.
Kindling Health
© 2026 Kindling Health Clinic Ltd · Registered in England