Is Your Gas and Bloating Really EPI?!

Ken Brown  0:00  
Welcome, everybody to gut check project, Episode Number 39. A super cool one because my co host is also our guest, the expert, the person that we all love whenever Eric goes out of town on a mountain biking expedition, which is what he's doing right now. So we have the super smart, super well trained Dr. Stuart Akerman as both our expert guest and our host, Dr. Akerman, thanks for coming.

Stuart Akerman  0:27  
Ah, thanks for having me here. I was more than happy to pay for Eric's vacation so that I can do this.

Ken Brown  0:33  
You are pretty sly like that. That's pretty interesting. You're sort of, you're sort of pushing him out. And so I think that's, you know, he thinks he's having fun. 

Stuart Akerman  0:41  
I made him think it was his idea. I mean, that was really what came down to.

Ken Brown  0:46  
Well, in today's episode, this is really cool because when I said that Dr. Ackerman is both the co host today and our expert is because we're going to tackle a topic that a lot of people have and it is diarrhea specifically related to something called a epi exocrine pancreatic insufficiency and you're like, Huh, I saw a commercial on that. What's that? Exactly. That's what all my patients say. They're like, what is this? They come in and talk about this. So usually whenever Eric and I before we start, Dr. Akerman, what is going on with you and the Akerman family anything personal you want to share?

Stuart Akerman  1:20  
Yeah, could share all kinds of things. It's been definitely interesting. And the quarantine life as we now gear up at the end of the summer trying to figure out what do the kids kids are sort of excited to go back to school not sure what they're going to do, but I never thought they'd have this problem that they've actually watched all there is to watch on TV and they need something else to do.

Ken Brown  1:44  
That reminds me of I think I saw some funny video where somebody was sitting in front of in front of his computer and it goes, you've done it. You've reached the end of the internet.

Stuart Akerman  1:54  
It's kinda like that. There's nothing. You only have so many subscriptions, I guess.

Ken Brown  1:58  
Exactly. Yeah, well in the brown household. I took Lucas to a tournament pretty cool. in Wichita Falls, it was a well run tournament. So kudos to the tournament director out there. It was a college tournament. So Lucas out, unfortunately lost in a tough third set tiebreak to a really good player. And you know, we just kind of move on. And we got so excited to talk about what he learned from that. And then by the time we got back to Dallas, they had canceled the national tournament, which is why he was doing this to prepare for the next one. And so we're dealing with that where we try and make plans and keep these the passion up. So

Stuart Akerman  2:37  
And you know, when we were talking the other night, I actually realized after we hung up that I wanted to ask Lucas, I mean, I know that it's a junior tournament. So there's no betting and things like that. But there must be some sort of handicapping system right because they are rankings. Where was he ranked in comparison to this kid who's several years older than him? 

Ken Brown  2:58  
Well, this was actually a college tournament. So it was for college players. And so he's 15 he played a 21 year old and actually they're just on ranking level is they were both on par so the two he's Lucas was the number one seed in the tournament. And that man was the second was the number two seed so it worked out perfect the bracket got the what I consider the two best players to play in the end. And funny you bring that up because him and I were in Panama right when COVID hit because we had to bust out a Panama he was doing what's called an ITF. And I happen to have a friend there in Panama who lives there and has been doing sort of digital marketing and all this stuff. And he was running a betting website. And he goes it's not he goes people from around the world will bet on anything. And then we started talking tennis and he goes the most rigged sport, like for betting where people like there's all kinds of junior level sports that people bet on because they know that they can kind of tilt the odds one way or the other.

Stuart Akerman  3:55  
Oh my gosh.

Ken Brown  3:56  
There's yeah, it was a whole new world for me. So like when you say that I kind of cringe because I was Just like oh, no, you know, we've got we're going to start like hustling you know peewee baseball and stuff like that.

Stuart Akerman  4:07  
I thought I thought about how he took a, you know, someone who's I think five years or six years older than him to the brink and almost beat him. 

Ken Brown  4:15  
Yeah. 

Stuart Akerman  4:16  
But has such a competitive spirit to be upset by that.

Ken Brown  4:20  
Oh, totally upset, like, on the way home just, you know, I had two match but he had two match points. I had two match points. I just, I just would have you know, I'm like, I know. I know. It's, it's life and what's really cool is that you know, you move on and do that. So I apologize a little bit if I'm a little nasally. I do not know what blew into town, but it is killing my allergies today. So and I, it's not COVID I smell great. Also two things. I don't smell great. But I can still smell things. 

Stuart Akerman  4:48  
Smell things 

Ken Brown  4:49  
Smell things. So let's get back at this. So before everybody's like, well, they're just gonna talk about their family the whole time, I want to reiterate something so we stole Dr. Akerman four years ago, three years ago. 

Stuart Akerman  5:01  
Five years ago. 

Ken Brown  5:02  
Holy cow time passes fast. We stole him from New York because he is a specially trained expert in advanced endoscopy. So he does the things that most of us have not been trained in. And a lot of that involves the pancreas. So you and I got to talking and we had a patient recently who showed up to have her endoscopy done and she said, Hey, do I have this? And I called you in and you looked at that unlike epi exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, I'm like, man, if these drug companies are spending so much time advertising for it, we better just address this head on and let's just have an episode you're a pancreas expert. I'm more of a lumenologists is how I like to consider myself and so the lumen I like colons and I like stomachs and and hemorrhoids but you are an advanced trained person that everybody if you have a pancreas call up Dr. Akerman and make sure that your pancreas is okay. So hat you know, that's what I'm saying.

Stuart Akerman  5:58  
Yeah, so this is definitely something that's getting a lot of press. And, you know, if you look around TV, internet, I mean, it feels like the ads are just constantly jumping at you. And it's something that it gives everyone pause that has diarrhea. And, you know, there are different estimates, but more than 5% in a conservative estimate more than 5% of the population deals with chronic diarrhea in some form. And you know, 5% is a lot of people and not everyone gets to the bottom of what's going on with them and gets that relief and that, that feeling that they know exactly what it is and how to deal with it. And for years, pretty much we knew about inflammatory bowel disease and knew how to evaluate for it and rule it out. And then there's kind of a short list, you know, all we look for what we have, you don't have any of that you probably have IBS.&n...