Zeina Abdalla did not set out to run a healthcare company. But since taking on the challenge of transforming what a clinic can look like through her company, Metabolic, she has been on a mission to empower women to place their health at the center of their lives. Not just because being healthy and feeling good instantly impacts all aspects of our lives, but because of the ripple effect it has on the people around us, from families and friends to co-workers.
Abdalla’s road to the world of medicine is a rather unexpected one. Before becoming the cofounder of Metabolic, she spent 11 years helming the successful digital media business Fishfayce, which catered to luxury brands. She built it from scratch into something so distinctive that it shifted the way the market curated the digital footprint of inperson experiences in the region. But when Covid hit, the events industry evaporated overnight, and with three small children at home, Abdalla chose to step back and take stock of what she wanted to do next. She took a year off. She assessed her life. And in 2023, she joined the company alongside her husband and his co-founder, elevating what is typically a purely clinical setting into an exceptional destination for well-being.
Initially, that company was called GluCare. Health, a tech-enabled clinic in Dubai focused on diabetes care. Abdalla’s arrival came at the moment they started to reshape it. “We decided to launch Metabolic as an umbrella company above GluCare,” she explains, alongside a direct-to-consumer brand called Zone. Health, built around peptide therapy, weight loss, and hormone treatments not typically covered by insurance. Two brands, two names, and (as she discovered when the startup network Endeavor put the company through its rigorous interview process, causing total confusion. “They were like, We don’t understand your brand. Who are you?” she remembers. It became the catalyst for a rebrand that clarified what had been true all along: this wasn’t only a diabetes clinic. “We deal with anyone that wants to get ahead of their health, not to manage disease, but to bend risk,” she says. “Diabetes, thyroid issues, obesity, women’s health, PCOS, perimenopause. They’re all interlinked, at the end of the day.”
Metabolic might be all about giving its clientele the best service across a myriad of health issues in one easy location. But Abdalla is determined that her company go the extra mile for every visitor. She wants each guest who walks into one of their clinics to feel as if they are entering a welcoming, friendly space filled with people who have their best interests at heart. “We don’t want to look like a clinic or feel like one. A lot of folks simply don’t like going to the doctor,” she explains. Abdalla is obsessive about the patient experience, from the inviting artwork on the walls to an attentive and warm staff and even a friendly coffee bar where visitors can wait for results from the in-house lab. Using state-of-the-art testing and diagnostic devices that leverage AI to get detailed results, a baseline check-up in the morning could lead to a same-day on-site consultation with a cardiologist, a discussion with a nutritionist, or perhaps even a session in the kitted-out on-site gym.
Everything at Metabolic is built around making patients comfortable and the journey seamless, with open and truthful interactions from a team that empowers them to address any issues that might be discovered. “You’ve got thirty minutes with your doctor, and if you feel welcome, if you feel seen, you can have that open dialogue,” explains Abdalla. “The moment you feel like someone is judging you, or that they are in a rush to maximize the number of patients they see in a day, you shut down and are less likely to share information.” For the co-founders, their clinics should be a place where health needs are pinpointed, addressed, and met in real time.
That openness is also the engine of Abdalla’s public advocacy. She talks about her own perimenopause, diagnosed at 43, without flinching. Followers who discover her story on social media are always reaching out. “They’re like, But you’re only forty-three; how are you already in perimenopause?” she shares. “But there’s no specific age it happens.” Abdalla has been pre-diabetic twice, and she has shared those struggles too, explaining what she is doing to deal with the issue head on. “I’m not saying do it, I’m just saying this is what I’m doing, and maybe it could also work for you,” she says about sharing her health journey. “Vulnerability breeds connection,” she points out. “If you don’t share what you’re going through, then how can you help the next person?” Underneath the advocacy is a simple, recurring observation about the women who walk through the doors of Metabolic. “As a woman, in general, I feel like we always prioritise others, our kids, our husbands, and our partners,” she says matter-of-factly. “But you typically need to ‘put your oxygen mask on first’ before you can take care of other people. How can you be of help to others if you’re not doing anything for yourself?” Abdalla sees it constantly: women who notice something is wrong with their bodies and quietly explain it away. “If I didn’t do what I am doing, I would have had no idea that I was in perimenopause,” she admits, “because I have such a hectic and busy lifestyle with the kids and everything; I would have just continued to brush off the symptoms or made everything else a priority.”
What stops women from getting checked, she says, usually isn’t denial so much as not knowing where to start. “Some people don’t know where to go. They don’t know who to see,” she says. Her answer is to simplify everything down to data and small, sustainable, incremental changes. Asked what she’d prescribe to a woman who feels like she’s “running on empty,” her answer is almost stubbornly modest: “Start from the basics. Get your baseline, see where you’re at, and then from there decide to take your health in hand, one step at a time.”
The ambition now is scale, with plans underway for new locations in Silicon Oasis and London in the summer and Los Angeles by next year. Her strategy is to build them with consistency in mind so that what visitors have come to expect from Metabolic in the UAE they will find at the company’s future outposts around the globe. “When you go to a Four Seasons in another part of the world, it’s going to be the same look, feel, smell, and overall experience,” she explains about her vision for how this Dubai-born company will be perceived internationally.
Abdalla still describes the work she does in the same terms she used on day one, when she walked into an industry she knew nothing about and trusted the people around her instead. “I’m not expected to know everything,” she admits. “I bring in people that are smarter than me at what they do, and that’s the key.” It is, in its own way, the same prescription she gives every woman who walks through her door: you don’t have to have all the answers. You just have to start.
