An Interview with the CEO & Founder of Inner Glow: Dr. Noreen Galaria
Pin It!Dr. Nooreen Galaria sits down to explain why she founded Inner Glow - where the vitamins nourish and treat from within. Her story per the Inner Glow website is as follows:
“Dr. Galaria struggled for years to find supplements that would enhance and improve her patients' medical treatments. Frustrated by the lack of safe, effective, reasonably priced alternatives she began researching and recommending multiple products to each patient to get the necessary combination. A firm believer in blending the best practices of both allopathic and naturopathic medicine she carefully titrated doses to ensure the safest, best doses for her ingredients...Benefit from the science that doctors use to treat their own patients”.
Hello, Dr. Galaria, thanks so much for joining us. I know you have a super tight schedule at your practice, so I appreciate your time.
Let's start with, have you always wanted to be a dermatologist?
I was born and raised in Canada. I didn't actually always want to be a physician or go into medicine. I loved science but I only became interested in being a doctor after I was studying for my undergraduate degree. I started medical school in Canada and then got married and transferred over to an American medical school. It was there where I had my first exposure to Dermatology. My husband and I both applied to the University of Rochester to do our residencies. He did plastic surgery and I did dermatology. I did research on the aging of the skin and my husband did research on wounds and skin healing.I then did a fellowship in laser and cosmetics.
Can you tell us about your journey on how the idea of the vitamins was born?
We moved to Utah, where I was an assistant professor at the University of Utah. While I was teaching residents, that's when I really initially thought about what eventually became the vitamins, as within dermatology there are a lot of chronic conditions such as eczema, that you will have for the rest of your life.
I was teaching at the Children's Hospital, and I would see these really sick children with chronic conditions. We would give them one medicine after another medicine to try and help them.
I used to think, if only I could even make these children like 10% better with something natural, so that they didn't need an injectable medicine, such as a pill or cream substitute, it would make such a difference in the lives of these kids.
I started researching, what could I do as an adjunct to medicine? I think when I look back, that's probably where the vitamins first started.
The children's chronic conditions were the catalyst for the shift, where I started reading all of the research that would come out on nutrition and the skin.
For example, if you're a kid with eczema and you get a lot of omega-three or you get a lot of yogurt in your diet, it decreases the child's severity of eczema and so forth. This is where my initial journey started, when I was with these kids, thinking if I could help these kids with these chronic conditions, even bring small changes, it could really change their quality of life.
What kind of research did you do for these vitamins?
It was a long process, even though my husband and I had so much skin research before starting R&D for this product. 10 years later, these vitamins were born.
How did you test that this research was valid, that these ‘vitamins’ that you were envisioning could help people?
We are lucky that we have our own offices, as we have probably seen, a quarter million patients since we have been in Virginia. We have a lot of opportunities to really test out our theories. And so long before the vitamins were launched, we already knew what was going to work.
You said it took 10 years of research, but when did you decide that this is enough research? And we are ready to commit to making a solution for these problems?
You know, that's an interesting question. I never set out to make a vitamin - I really set out to help my patients.
So what would happen, for example, somebody would come in, and they'd say, Dr. Galaria I've got hair loss. I would advise them based on the research I had done and say something along the lines of - if you take so many milligrams of this, and so many milligrams of this for three months and let's see what happens.
I would know, through research that if the patients took those ingredients, that it should help. But what actually happened, we started seeing that there is a lot of differentiation between the quality and potency of these ingredients, depending on where they were made and the quality of materials, including how much ‘filler’ the supplement contained. The filler is the extra stuff added, that is not needed in the product. The patients would come back, and I started to see that a lot of times, people would not get the results that they needed, not because the research wasn't correct but because the vitamins were not made from quality materials.
During that course, I could also see when a combo of ingredients/supplements were making a difference, people were needing to take lots of different bottles/products to get what they needed, and a lot of times, they just were not getting good quality. About 4 or 5 years ago, I remember getting so frustrated and deciding these patients can't get what they need, so I am going to have to create these vitamins myself.
What was the process, once you had your research complete? For example, did you pinpoint the ingredients first, or find the source?
I pinpointed the ingredients that I needed first, using only ingredients in the vitamins that had been scientifically proven to be beneficial. Inner Glow combined these ingredients to create a superior vitamin that was backed by years of scientific research.
I talk a lot about Pycnogenol which is an ingredient in the age defense vitamins. Pycnogenol is a type of pine bark that is really good for your skin. You can go to any pine tree, you know, scrape off a little bit of the bark, like you do with cinnamon to get cinnamon powder, and you can put it into a vitamin and sell it as pine bark. However, the only Pycnogenol that has been tested comes from one specific forest in the Bordeaux region of France. There is something about the sun and the saltwater there, which makes the antioxidant in that tree bark the most potent antioxidant you can make for the skin.
The problem is the Pycnogenol is expensive. And in COVID, and with all the shipping delays, it is even harder to get. When we were sourcing the ingredients, there were a few things that were important to me such as what the ingredients were, and the potency of these ingredients. But there were also some other things such as the vitamins had to be made in the USA. Hence, if I sourced ingredients from elsewhere, it had to be something I could have shipped here and that the FDA registered facility would approve because typically vitamin quality is not controlled.
From what I understand vitamins aren't regulated by the FDA, is that correct? But you are using an FDA regulated facility to make them. Can you explain why?
That is correct. So supplements, in general, do not come under the banner of medicine. But I hope one day, they will. You can make vitamins in any country, put anything you want in, and it is called a supplement. Some vendors are selling people garbage and people are then buying these supplements because they are hoping for some health benefit.
That is why we chose FDA registered companies in America, so the ingredients in the vitamins will adhere to the same high standards that medicine would have gone through.
How many months on average does it take to see a visible difference?
Age defense includes ingredients that slow down aging, improve your skin, and certain improvements, you can see immediately, or within a week or two, such as oil production or you don't burn as easily. With the Age defense vitamins, about three-quarters of people notice a real energy boost within a few days. But you will need to use the vitamins for at least a couple of months before you see a real difference.
For the hair vitamins, we usually say it takes about three months to see a difference. Our hair vitamin has all eighteen building blocks that you need for really good hair growth. And when you give someone those building blocks, the hair will start to grow. But for it to go from the root to a point where you can actually see it takes about three months.
Wrapping up, do you have any advice for our readers on how to look and feel good?
I always say the best makeup is just really good skin. As dermatologists, we spend a lot of time counseling patients when their palette is clean that their skin will also look good. Then whatever else they apply will look amazing!
Due to the pandemic, we do not socialize the same way, but you know, this is hopefully behind us very, very soon, in a matter of half a year or so. We will have to then emerge into the real world again, and we must do what we need to, to really take care of ourselves, rather than just kind of making ourselves superficially look good using filters, which I see increasingly being used by my patients.
These vitamins go one step further because the tagline is to nourish your skin from within. I tell people that the skin is just a window to the inside. So if you are taking care of your insides, you will have that inner glow. People will look at you and will see that you are healthy, you are vibrant, you are glowing, and that's a look that no amount of makeup and no filters can achieve.
Thank you so much for joining us and sharing this wonderful story about how the Inner Glow company was founded. I also wanted to mention I love that the fact a portion of these sales goes to support underprivileged women around the world. As the website states:
Women Developed, Women-Owned, Women Supportive.
You know the importance of taking care of yourself and the importance of helping others. When you take Inner Glow you can feel good because you are doing both.
Needless to say, I love these vitamins, they can be purchased at Inner Glow Vitamins. These vitamins are made in the USA in an FDA regulated facility from top quality ingredients. Inner glow vitamins are also:
Made with non genetically modified ingredients
Made without being tested on animals
Sustainability focused
Have no added sugar
Dairy and Gluten-Free
Kosher
Halal
Wow, that's a LOT of great things that are part of these vitamins. For our readers, please check out InnerGlowVitamins.com! Additional information and social media handles are listed below:
Dr. Nooreen Galaria is originally from Canada and now lives in Northern Virginia. After graduating top of her class from Jefferson Medical College (Philadelphia, PA) completing her training in Dermatology, Dr. Galaria was an Instructor at the University of Rochester and an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah and at Primary Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Galaria has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and is the author of several book chapters. She has presented papers at major national meetings including the American Academy of Dermatology, Society of Investigative Dermatology, and the American Society of Dermatologic Surgery.
Besides being the CEO/founder of Inner Glow Vitamins, she and her renowned plastic surgeon husband, Dr. Irfan Galaria own GalariaMD - a practice that specializes in plastic surgery and dermatology.
Check her out and follow her on:
https://innerglowvitamins.com/
https://www.instagram.com/innerglowvitamins/
