STRAIGHT MATE: DR RUPY AUJLA.

RECOVERING FROM SERIOUS ILLNESS GAVE DR RUPY AUJLA A NEW UNDERSTANDING ON HEALTH – STARTING WITH THE FOOD WE EAT. HE TELLS MATT MYERS ABOUT HIS DIETARY PRACTISE AND HIS BOOK THE DOCTOR’S KITCHEN.

DNA: You’re a doctor who educates on eating healthy; how that came about is quite dramatic, isn’t it?

Rupy Aujla: When I first became a doctor, I got ill myself. Because of the stress, late nights and such, I started suffering with something called Atrial Fibrillation, which is basically where your heart beats irregularly and very fast. So I had tests done with an amazing medial team including cardiologists, and ended up having a good look at my lifestyle. I examined what I was eating, and doing generally on a daily basis, and overcame my problem through food and medicine. But it also included working on lifestyle factors such as sleep, exercise, meditation and other things which all led to reversing my medical condition.

So, The Doctor’s Kitchen grew from there?

I started researching during my medical training, and began to preach what I was practicing as a GP to my patients. I developed a habit of writing down recipes that inspired and motivated people to eat their way to health. Then the idea of The Doctor’s Kitchen popped into my head, not only to create recipes, but talk about the medical research behind the ingredients. It was a nice portal for my patients. Did that feel somewhat risky?

A doctor talking about food and medicine is quite unusual, so I was fearful of a possible backlash when I began on YouTube and other social media platforms, but the response has been amazing. I started The Doctor’s Kitchen when I was in Australia. You say that the “future of medicine is functional”. What do you mean by that?

It’s about lifestyle medicine, and looks at the basics of why someone is ill and the cause of the symptoms. It’s looking at how a person eats, sleeps and their stress release strategy, and figuring out what’s wrong in their geology. Geology is pretty amazing when it comes to how our cells regenerate and function, and how we deal with daily life stresses. For our ‘machines’ to go wrong, something is going wrong much further down the line. It’s really a back to basics approach.

Many gay men adhere to what they believe are healthy practices in terms of exercise and diet – are we setting a good example?

It depends on the context. If a man is looking after his health and eating right and feeling good about himself, then that’s great. But it depends what the aim is. If the aim is to always look good, and I’m not saying that all gay men are like this,