Sibling Saga

Welcome to The Daily Dump, the number one place to talk about number two. I'm Dr. Hankton, your host. I'm super excited to bring this new conversation into life.

Today we're joined by a dear friend and colleague of mine, Ian Garland. Ian is based in San Francisco and he started his pants less than six months ago. I hope you enjoy his story. Welcome, Ian.

You're actually my first podcast interview, so like, Ian is a celebrity of The Daily Dump, number one. Wow, fabulous. That was a fantastic honor to have you. I think the context for the story I'm going to tell you, vacation.

Be careful of vacation when you let your guard down. I don't know if it means be careful of vacation. It's also anything can happen. There's so much, you know, pain comes from, you know, the contrast, the contrast of life.

Vacation and suffering, it's this contrast that really makes, you know, convection currents work. It makes a crusty bread with a gooey inner dough so wonderful, and it makes storytelling so rich and dynamic. I am sitting back in my seat and I cannot wait to hear what you have to say. You know, that's the beauty of talking shit, is like, anything can come up.

You're just gabbing on a Friday afternoon. Or as we'll find out later, anything can come out. Yeah, anything can come out. Both ends, right?

Yeah. That's what I always say. The Shrek line, he's one of my philosophical mentors is Shrek. There are a lot of great Shrek liners, too.

Well, let's jump in and hear your story. I had just finished a semester of school. It was winter break officially. I was celebrating with myself.

I took myself to a wonderful Chinese restaurant in my neighborhood, one of my favorites. I really balled out. I got Sichuan duck, soup dumplings. I got regular dumplings, all for one.

I had just eaten an edible and was really in a poetic flow state. I love this place. I even got the tea. I was like, give me, give me everything.

That sounds like a great meal. Ate it all up. Was stoked on life. Went back home with a little pep in my stuff.

And I went home and I was like, sweet, you know, I'm all packed. Life is good. My checklist is done. But you know what I can do?

I have a dish or two in the sink. I'm going to clean this dish up. So I get to my sink and I'm doing my dishes. And I was a little bit too hyped on life.

And I vigorously cleaned a plate of mine that had a chip in it. That actually had a crack in it. It was actually a gift to my parents on their wedding day that I inherited. I was like, hey, we don't really want these anymore.

Take them to California. And I grew up eating eggs on these plates. These are special plates to me. So I'm vigorously cleaning it.

And I punched my hand through the plate. And it sliced my thumb. And I'm bleeding everywhere. I don't know if you ever cut yourself on your thumb, but hands bleed a lot.

There's a lot of movement and just a lot of blood that needs to get to the hands. And I cut right on the knuckle. You can see it there. Oh, yeah.

For the listeners who don't have visual aid right now because it's just audio, it has a scar across the top of his thumb. That's pretty wild. Yeah, right on that poetic knuckle. And I cut my hand doing dishes before too.

And like the dish water, like the faucet water, also just like makes your bodily fluids kind of expand. It's pretty gnarly. In situations where people have been bleeding and I have needed to wrap them up and I have been totally good. Being alone, being high, and, well, those two things.

Back full of Chinese food. Body full of Chinese food. I'm like a little paranoid. And like, you know, I'm compressing it.

I'm putting paper towels on it. It's bleeding through multiple paper towels. Like this thing is like pumping. I'm not sure if I hit an artery.

I'm not really like sure exactly what I've done to myself. I know I'm in trouble. I made a mistake. And you have a glorious vacation like coming up too.

You're like, you have to get this fixed. You can go on vacation. The next day I'm going to Florida to visit my grandma. Oh, gosh.

And it's vacation time at grandma's. And I'm so stoked I got my bathing suit all nicely packed. All my little button-down shirts. You know, breezy this.

My Birkenstocks. Which pair of Birkenstocks do I bring? I got all the questions. And yet here I am 12 hours before my 7 a.m.

departure. Bleeding from my hand. Freaking out. So I do what anyone would do in that situation.

I call my mom. My mom's a doctor. I gave her a ring and she didn't pick up. So I did the second best doctor.

Which is calling my older sister, who is also a doctor. She picked up immediately. And she's like, hey, how's it going? I was like, big, shut up.

I'm bleeding. I'm scared. I don't know what I do. What do I do?

Are these family members also like going to Florida to see grandma? Or is this a little trip with you and grandma? Sorry. I got too excited.

Yes. I love excitement. Keep the excitement. They're visiting me in three days after I get there.

So I'm maybe 24 hours after I get there. I'm the first. I'm the first to land in Florida. Mom, sister, dad, cousins, aunts, uncles are all coming later.

But I got, I'm first at bat with grandma. You're like the best grandchild. Like you're there. I'm going to go with grandma.

How are you doing? Let's go on a walk. Come on. Victoria is like, huh, you know, I don't know.

Like, what do you want to do? I'm like, this isn't time for me to make decisions. This is ball. I pass the ball.

Shot clock winding down. And she's like, um, and she's so remarkably chilling in situations that it's alarming because I want like someone to match my intensity. And she's just been around multiple ICUs, emergency rooms. She's way too chill for some stone 20 something that's like a cut on his hand to really give me what I'm looking for.

I start to, you know, like what hospital should I go to? This, that, the other. How do I get there? Lift.

And she's just sort of like, um, Google hospitals near me. It was at that moment that I stopped thinking about everything else in my body and was so focused on my hand and had so much adrenaline, an absurd amount of adrenaline running through my body. Fight or flight. And I just shot myself on FaceTime with my sister.

And I just look like, what the fuck is happening right now? Am I actually dying? Like hand wrapped above your head, profusely bleeding sister on FaceTime and you just dood your pants. Dood.

And I've like sharted before multiple times. Not a shark. Like this is a proper, oh wow. Situation.

Yeah. That was a fool of a situation. Your pants. I tell my sister, she starts cracking up.

Laughing hysterically. She's like, what the fuck? What are you? What's good with you, man?

Are you okay? Someone clearly needs a vacation. I know. I know.

So I take her to, you know, I put her in the sink. I clean myself up. I'm still panicking. She joins, hey, hi guys.

Sorry, I talked about the shower. Ian, you call. How are you? And Vic's like, well, mom, not well.

He's having a situation. What happened? She explains the story. I'm still pressuring my hand.

Thank God for bidets. Oh, yeah. A bidet saved me. A bidet saved me.

Reaching across with my left hand to turn the faucet on for the bidet. It was, I don't know how else I would have managed. Because I'm pressuring with my body the paper towels against my hand. I'm still like bleeding down my arm.

I'm still kind of nervous. Clean myself up. Mom's like, okay, call a lift. Go to a hospital.

You should probably be okay. I call the lift. I change my pants and all that. Single hand.

Single hand can't change. Single hand can't change. And I can also feel my, like, I don't have good sensation in my hands. Oh, my gosh.

Slammin, maybe it's the weed. I don't know what, like, everything just is, like, moving slow. And I feel dizzy. Granted, I pass out whenever I get my blood drawn.

My mom thinks it's because I'm not good with blood. And maybe that's true. I just need a lollipop. And my blood sugar just skyrockets.

So. Do you ask for a lollipop and, like, a superhero Hello Kitty sticker? Which is a sticker of choice or bandit of choice? I actually go for Power Rangers most of the time.

Level choice. I'm now smart enough to ask for a lollipop in advance. Lemon lollipops exclusively. I'm on my way to the hospital.

I calm down a bit. There's no line. I get in. They clean me up.

They wrap me up. My friend picks me up from the hospital. Very sweet of him. We don't get ice cream, which I was very upset about.

Ice cream shops are closed. We come back to the apartment. There's a little bit of a messy scene. Take care of the messy scene.

Blood and glory and all. Zip up my suitcase. Get to bed. See grandma.

We go on a walk. All is good. She says, what's wrong with your hand? I said, oh, I cut it, cleaning the dishes.

Wait, so stitches or no? Glue. Glue. They glued you back.

They glued me. And was the crap in the pants, was that like a symptom of blood loss? Did you inform the medical providers of that? Or did we just like hush-hush and sweep it over?

They didn't ask. I didn't tell. But I will say this, Drew. My body's response to fear is without a doubt a guttural.

I don't know if I'm using guttural right. But guttural is a play on words, if nothing else. A guttural response. My gut just opens up and flows.

What would we call that? There's like fight or flight. And then like if we need that a third, what would that be? Scared shitless.

Yeah. I was scared shitless. I played basketball in high school. I was probably like the 10th man on the team.

So I was a bench player. An all-star practice player. Did not really play unless we were up or down by 20. Absolute value of 20.

Then I entered the game. Before every game, I would have nervous diarrhea. I wouldn't even play most of the times. But I have nervous diarrhea.

Only years later did I also realize, huh, that's unusual. I think I'm learning that there are patterns here. How unusual do you think it is? I think so many people probably have this too.

And there's like a little bit of a taboo to talk about who you're number two. And it's like, y'all, it is something that everyone does. You're grabbing for a basketball game and you're nervous on the bench. Where you like slice your finger open and you grab your pants on the way to the baseline with your family.

But yeah, it's like everyone does it. Yeah, everyone does it. It's a good equalizer. Yeah, it is.

And I think you're right. For me, at least in the story, it's all fear-based. The fear of bleeding and ultimately death, right? Like that's the fear that's there.

Causes a reaction in the body. You know, get that out of you. Shitting yourself is fear of leaving the body. You also alluded to sometimes you fart.

Always mindful of a fart. You never know. Keep them cheeks kind of closed until you can kind of tell what you have for dinner. Is it like a cabbage-based thing?

In that situation, you can be pretty confident. It's going to be gassy. Between what we eat and our gut, a couple of guests lined up that have come my way to come onto the show and do an episode have colitis. I don't know if you're familiar with colitis.

I've done a little bit of research, but my understanding is that's the deal with some of the food you eat and has some pretty severe repercussions on your GI and has a little bit of a control factor over their life. So I have to see what they share when they bring up their colitis story. The only thing I know about colitis is from Lucy and Sky of Diamonds. A girl with colitis goes by.

And I've never asked what that meant. My sister is a gastroenterologist. Oh my gosh. We'll have to have your sister on.

You'll have to have her tell her side of the story. I would love to have your sister on. Yeah. I mean, I can almost add her right now.

Let's even just see. You are a surprise podcast on one with a friend. We'll see. You know, you never know.

Maybe she's in the hospital. Maybe she's mid-scope. In the unit. Yeah.

She lives in New York? Yes. Honestly, she's a quick responder. My sister is laughing at me saying I'm going to be a poop expert by way of this.

I know nothing about fear and poop now, but I'll have to check it. The same way caffeine also makes you poop, I feel like there is probably a connection between caffeine and fear and heart rate going and like all systems go. Get rid of things that are not serving you. All right.

It kind of feels like, you know, in astrology reading, like get rid of things that are not serving you and focus on manifesting abundance and getting rid of the shit in yourself is one of the first steps in that journey. Beautiful metaphor for life. Did your sister text back? Drew, my sister just got back to me.

She said, sure. I just created a group chat with you, me, and Victoria. If you can send her the link, she's ready to jump on. She's lovely.

Hello, Victoria. Hello. Vic, I'm on a podcast with my dear friend, Drew. We're classmates.

Awesome. Hi, Drew. Hi, Victoria. Nice to meet you.

Thank you. Thank you. Drew's making a podcast on poop. And I just told my poop story of when I cut myself and I called you.

Well, obviously, it's one of my favorite topics as a gastroenterologist. I guess for context, too, so I met in school and I've had this idea for the past year and a half just to have a silly, fun, educational podcast platform where people just talk about poop, whether it's they started themselves or they're an expert in the space or whatever it may be. So I've talked about it for days. It's kind of what I spend most of my day talking to people about is the lack thereof or the excessive.

As a professional studying this topic and in and out of it every day, what's the most weird, unusual, or intriguing fact about poop that you know that might catch people by surprise? I should have prepared for this one. Oh, absolutely not. It's off the cuff.

I mean, the microbiome is really fascinating. And the things that you eat are really important. The foods that you eat have a huge impact on your overall health and the way that they impact the microbiome can decrease inflammation or increase it. That's why we highly recommend eating things like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and then especially things like processed foods, processed meats, whether that's bacon and sausage, turkey over-the-counter, red meat, for example, all have a very negative impact and those would have been associated with cancer.

I guess that's my plug-in for poop. Yeah, not only does belly meat make you shit weird, it will kill you and give you cancer. So watch out. It will.

Yeah, it doesn't matter whether it's like, you know, turkey or rose wheat. It's not. It's the additives that are bad. Exactly what you're saying.

Like the food we eat impacts how we feel and then like results in maybe some of our bathroom incidences or behaviors that may make life more uncomfortable or not. Yeah, like if you like dive in more. I mean, I can say like fiber, it helps because it brings water into the stool, which helps bulk up your stool. So that kind of pressure in and of itself kind of helps the compensation propelling being covered.

It also gets broken down in a short-chain fatty acid, which are basically nourishment for the cells that line the colon. It also kind of, the fiber fuels it. It helps with motility and like movement of the gut. So it actually has multiple impacts that are really important.

And they're anti-inflammatory, these short-chain fatty acids. So that's why they are good, as opposed to like the other food they mentioned, which are pro-inflammatory and having linked to cancer, as well as cardiovascular disease and phenol disease. As a little brother, I only got like 10% of that because I did. Could you give me like the five-year-old version of that?

I heard motility. I heard water into the gut. I heard it's like, awesome, I'm going to eat more fiber. But can you say that one more time?

Because I would really like to remember this. Yeah, so fiber gets broken down when you eat. And it actually gets more broken down in your gut by gut bacteria. Because of that, when it arrives at the pollen, the pollen bacteria...

it down and it feeds the gut and it actually provides nourishment the cells that of your pollen which is really helpful it helps basically when it gets broken down too it produces certain byproducts that promote the gut to move so it helps with movement that's why it's good for constipation it also brings draws water and creates a lot of bulk because it's bulk from bacteria um and just bulk because it doesn't get absorbed in the small intestine and the bulk itself kind of mechanically puts pressure on the pollen and that pressure stimulates the pollen so to throw it back at you fiber feeds colon bacteria that feed the rest of that region kicking off a chain reaction that just thumbs up yeah and it also promotes because it's food it promotes certain good bacteria to multiply and they kind of take over more as opposed to bad bacteria and you know it's a field that we love so little bit about i think it's fascinating microbiome we really don't know anything about it we do know that certain bacteria that's kind of the chemicals like the serotonin that they release it has been associated with things like depression and mood so it has a lot of different impacts um about like the foods you eat the stool that you have it's um probably more important than we realize or maybe as important as people are what would be the top food you eat to make you happier to increase serotonin okay that i can't answer but i can tell you that there is actual research out there that suggests that that two kiwis a day have been associated with uh improvement in constipation so that might make you happy if you're kind of constipated obviously comes out of new zealand which is where they all have all the kiwis grown in the kiwi industry but hey it's kind of cool if i can ask you like one more question because i don't know what's the weirdest superstition or belief that you've heard about poop or something that like some of your patients or clients come to you and you're like oh my gosh we have to debunk this this is so totally not true people often think that if they're not eating they won't have bowel movement which to a degree it's correct right because like a lot of stool as i mentioned is like composed of fiber foods that you eat but your body will still make stool anyway because it's mostly composed actually of bacteria you know that's that's actually what a lot of bowel movement is is just bacteria that's like in the gut we're like sloughing off of dead cells from the gut it's not all food fascinating i'm soaking i don't know wow and i guess i say that because people often you know they come if they're in hospital into a colonoscopy and we recommend that they take bowel practice you know the heavy dodo oxygen unless they haven't eaten for a few days so why do i need to take it yeah like we don't want to take chances i don't want to be claiming you out during the procedure i'd rather you do it beforehand yeah wow so fascinating um i honestly i love throwing these questions at you it's so fun i know you do i really do i have endless i got endless questions i'm sure you do you would be surprised how many times people in the office that just kind of throw out these random questions and you know they've been sitting on it for years just kind of thinking about it but never really had some form to ask and you know it's funny to watch their minds turning yeah as this like this podcast is called the daily dump is the name and like thank you i love it yeah i mean i think that's a great great topic i think a lot of people do have a lot of questions it's something that people experience every day and if they don't they're thinking about it every day but at the same time it's kind of a taboo question a topic to talk about but it shouldn't be and i think especially in my field it's kind of all about normalizing it and not finding it weird so it's important what you're doing thanks yeah it totally shouldn't be weird and if the people are doing it every day they're probably also curious why they may not be doing it every day yeah exactly and they probably have even more questions love it thanks so much yeah drew thanks thanks a bunch this is honestly a hoot it's really fun to bring vic in and this felt like a family family family family just a family side chat it is this is like a garland family chat do we get in this space again or um at our parents house um not too far from you yeah that would be lovely i hope to meet you in real life soon absolutely thanks so much uh the question to like close start close out a little bit um if you could have a conversation with any modern day celebrity about their bathroom habits or maybe an accident they've had who would it be and what would you ask them it's lebron james yeah what would you ask lebron james and i know you're a huge basketball fan he is someone that operates physically at the highest level and someone that has been operating at the highest level for longer than anyone else he's 20 years in the nba still to speak physically one of the peak athletes in history like up there with like achilles i think personally how do you poop my man how does the greatest physical athlete of all time poop what's your process what's your mindset because you know it's a part of the routine i have actually one more story for you yeah that's right um and just my mind is now thinking about poop but also farting oh wow and actually this is this is one of my favorite stories ever i'd love to hear one of your favorite stories ever and it involves my grandfather a different one we start talking about this is my mother's father um who uh passed away in 2021 in the winter and this is about his last few weeks on this planet and my role with him in a caregiving space one of the most profound moments experiences of my life it is an unbelievable experience moving in so many ways to be with someone as they die as they gently pass away and i love my grandfather immensely he's a huge part of i mean i love both my grandfathers i spent a lot more time with grandpa norman love him dearly and during his last few weeks as his body was very much just shutting down his gut and his internal you know stomach and intestines and all that was really stopping and so he had trouble you know eating and all of that but his biggest concern at least verbally to me and the and the nexus of his discomfort was the gas that was building up in his body causing him pain and he was like can you help me in so many words because he was struggling with words that can you help me like help me pass some gas and so i would help him pass gas and i watched i don't know what my instagram algorithm was at one point but it was babies putting them into happy baby and then they were like fart or poop and i'd see baby parents do that with babies and i just did it with my grandfather and it works turns out you're like oh my gosh we have to do this this is not going to be comfortable if you don't i helped my very noble very well respected grandfather in his most intimate time passing gas for him he would even sometimes like ask the women in the room or everyone in the room to like leave because this was like like grandson this is grandson grandfather time and helping putting his little legs you know he's putting his legs up and having him fart and just hearing the relief the most intimate special moment peak relationship um through passing gas yeah it sounds like a tremendous like bonding time and like something super powerful that's pretty wild i have not personally experienced um someone's in the life suddenly you know no one expects it to come uh but it always does in some it happens it does come for all of us i feel lucky to have had a rep with it at least one rep with it i'm not looking forward to it but i do know what to expect at least the next time that make make them feel comfortable man passing gas play some music something like a death doula which i think is a real profession but a death doula should know about passing gas because that's something that we all need to do even when we're dying i hope everyone's gonna learn something what did we talk about again today we talked about going on vacation and pooping yourself a spiritual connection via farting and there's always more to learn about your gut health how what you eat impacts how you poop we also learned that you can poop without eating something because most of your poop is just the bacteria that sells in your body shit i didn't think i was gonna learn a super new fun fact about poop today and here i am this was such a blast it's been fantastic to have you and connect with you well i'll be home sometime between june and august so i'll let you know don't cut your finger before you pack that bag nice thanks appreciate it bye and take care if you felt inspired by what you heard today and want to share a story or perhaps have something like a story for us feel free to reach out to us at info at daily dump dot media again that's info at daily dump dot media we also just launched an instagram account and that can be found at daily dump media and as we continue to set out this venture would mean the world to us if you could like subscribe follow do that thing on whatever podcast platform you listen to on today we appreciate all your continued support thanks until next time