Dr Terblanche trained and practised as a consultant in critical care medicine at Guy's & St Thomas' for 20 years, holding senior leadership roles in one of the country's largest intensive care services. In that environment, he routinely managed complex deterioration, physiological failure, and the limits of what medicine can reverse.

Critical illness is what unmanaged risk and loss of reserve look like under extreme time pressure. Many processes seen in intensive care—inflammation, loss of muscle mass, cardiovascular strain—mirror the biology of ageing, only accelerated. His research focused on preventing deterioration in organ function in critically ill patients. That experience informs how Health for Life approaches preserving capacity and managing risk decades earlier, not just at crisis point.

Dr Terblanche completed both an MSc and a PhD in clinical epidemiology—the discipline that examines how evidence is generated, where bias enters, and how findings can be misapplied in individual care.

Health for Life's approach—conservative where evidence is weak, decisive where it is strong—follows directly from this background. The clinic's evidence framework, imaging policy, and emphasis on physical capacity reflect what the data can genuinely support, not what is fashionable.

Dr Terblanche has spent years studying healthspan and longevity medicine as part of ongoing professional development, reviewing the evidence base for interventions aimed at preserving function and reducing age-related disease. This bridges his intensive care and epidemiology background with the specific requirements of managing health trajectories in people who are currently well but at risk of future decline.

For Dr Terblanche, this work is not abstract. His father suffered a first heart attack at 55, which brings long-term cardiovascular risk into sharp personal focus. He applies the same principles to his own health that underpin the clinic: structured physical training, disciplined risk management, and long-term thinking.

"I do not recommend investigations or interventions here that I would not be prepared to undertake myself," he says. "The standard is simple: recommend only what you would accept."

Health for Life is not built around a personality; it is built around a method: physician-led, evidence-based stewardship of health over time. As Clinical Lead, Dr Terblanche's role is to ensure that this method is applied consistently and conservatively, in the long-term interests of those who trust the clinic to help them manage their health trajectory. As the team grows, the same standards of evidence, judgement, and follow-through will govern who joins the clinic and how they practise.