The Weekend Intelligence: How to prepare for an invasion

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style, every Home, Foreign. Last year my colleague Katie Bryant was visiting her partner's family in Lithuania. In the kitchen she found a pamphlet Every household in the country has received one. On its cover, a cartoon of a nuclear family. Mom, dad, two kids on their laps, Big bold lettering if war or crisis comes, what should I do? It's filled with practical advice about first aid kits and stockpiling food and having an emergency plan and so on. But it's the introduction that's revealing. As our long history and current events in the world have shown, security and independence need to be constantly defended and strengthened. It goes on to talk about how to survive the first three days until public authorities restore essential services or provide the necessary assistance. What's hinted at here is made concrete later when it mentions occupying forces for Lithuania and the other NATO member Baltic states. For the alliance's chief, Mark Rutte, there's only one force causing concern. Conflict is at our door. Russia has brought war back to Europe and we must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents and great grandparents endured. I'm Jason Palmer and this is the Weekend Intelligence. NATO is already a bigger club because of the war in Ukraine. Sweden and Finland fast tracked their way in after the war started four years in. And the worry is only growing about what Lithuanians, including Europe's Defense Commissioner Andreas Kubilius, call Day X. We need to remember that if Day X comes and Putin decides to test Article 5 somewhere in the Baltic region, we shall face the aggression of a Russian battle tested army, which is now much stronger than it was back in February 2022. Katie went back to Lithuania to see what preparedness looks like today beyond the regular forces and the NATO backstop. She spent time with a civilian army in freezing Baltic temperatures, asking not how the state, but how communities and families and individuals are confronting the threat of invasion. Barovika, Lepsi, Rudoniki. There are a lot of mushrooms here. You know, we have like beautiful forests, we have beautiful lakes and.

0:58

Which is your favorite mushroom?

3:54

Baravikas.

3:57

Oh, yeah.

3:58

How come you can, you know, it's this mushroom. My grandfather told me when he was like little and he was working like a shepherd. They pick them and they were, let's say, cooking them on the fire. Just, you know, you don't need nothing. You just cook them for a few minutes and then you eat them.

3:59

As you might be able to tell from the gunshots in the background, mind, sadly, aren't in a forest picking mushrooms. We're at an army base in eastern Lithuania, standing in the middle of a model town. There's a stone house opposite an empty school building and a replica church. The buildings are connected by an underground tunnel. Fake casualties painted with lifelike wounds are being carried through it as we speak. Encircled by a pine forest, it's an eerie spot. Next to us, there's an empty playground. A child's swing is creaking in the wind. Army packs piled at his feet.

4:19

Our unit is. How to say? Simple, simple, simple. Troopers. We're just trying to understand and to learn how to penetrate the buildings and everything, just to be prepared, just to be ready and know what to do.

5:04

Mindogis is a member of the Riflemen's Union, a voluntary paramilitary organization first established during Lithuania's war for independence in 1919. It was dissolved during the Soviet occupation and reformed in the 1990s. The organization trains civilians to defend their country. Membership has doubled since the start of Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine. On most days, Mindaugas is running an engineering company. But yesterday, after being dropped into the forest by armored vehicles, he was learning how to clear enemy trenches.

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We were dropped by the Bradleys. Then we walked and we stormed the trenches.

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And today he's about to secure the school building and underground tunnel while under simulated enemy fire.

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It was nice. It's good weather, nice company.

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His eyes are glinting as he says this. The sun may be shining, but it's also minus 11. The exercises involve wading through fresh snow with his rifle and supplies. The majority of these riflemen, like Mindogas, are in middle age. They're fathers and husbands from all walks of life. I realize one of them is a bartender from my hotel. As they're loading their guns and stocking up on simulated grenades, many have frozen beards and eyelashes. I follow Mindogas and the others through the school building, clearing it room by room before climbing down into the underground tunnel. My partner is Lithuanian and we visit his family a couple of times a year. With each recent trip, war has felt closer. There have been more signs for bomb shelters, more German soldiers on the streets on their first permanent deployment since World War II. And more talk of what people here call Day X. What would you do if that day comes? Russian tanks roll over the Lithuanian border to close the gap between Belarus and Kaliningrad. Or attempt to push into Estonia under the pretext of protecting its Russian speaking population. You wake up in the morning to alerts on your phone of a new war in Europe. What do you do here on the border? They have a plan.

6:19

In 1988 I joined the Saudis movement for independence and 100,000 population. They gathered to the meetings. Somebody must to make orders on the streets. I managed thousands of people. We created structures and it was the beginning.

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Back in the late 1980s, Vigenius Vitalius Vilkalis helped organize Lithuania's movement against the Soviet Union.

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You know, I was younger and I didn't feel no fear. A lot of cocktails and at that time, a lot of smokers. We smoked. I don't know how we survived.

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Thirty years on, he's moved from the street to the halls of power. He's now the director of the Mobilization and Civil Resistance department at the Ministry of Defence.

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To manage alone people is very difficult job. You have to make structures.

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He's still working against the Kremlin, only now in an independent Lithuania. It's Virginius job to prepare the people for a potential invasion.

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Civil protection package, Cyber security, of course. Minister of Defense provides cybersecurity education for business entities because it's very important in case of cyber attacks. Physical security is very important because if we are speaking about unknown situation, about mobilization, martial law.

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It's a huge task.

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Approximately 100 state mobilization tasks to fulfill state significant functions.

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He works with organizations outside of the government, prepping them for mobilization too.

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NGO who in peacetime works, do crisis job, Food bank, Red Cross, Caritas multisellulars and we are part of us.

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And he coordinates with institutions to get key workers ready.

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There are also workers, clerks, personnel who works in critical infrastructure, doctors, policemen. For them they say open for you, your front line will be the same. You have to Continue.

10:16

A lot of his planning is focused on the days immediately after an invasion.

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Everyone at home have to have surviving of food for three days and nights.

10:33

Three days and three nights. That's how long the government anticipates it would take to get things back up and running effectively. Many Lithuanians I speak to have a plan for Day X. Some already have evacuation bags packed. A few told me they would leave the country. Others plan to get their family out while they stay behind to help the resistance. One father told me he's built a house off grid where his children could be safe while he serves with the Riflemen's Union. But Linus Kriala knows that plans can go out the window when chaos strikes.

10:40

Of course, no plan survives the reality of shock, and hopefully it's never going to be employed the plan itself. But I think you have to have a conversation of what to do when you open your mobile phone and it doesn't work. There is no network connection and you try to have some fresh water and the tap is not working and you want to go to a supermarket and it's not there, it's closed. Be a huge shock for a lot of people. And I think you cannot kind of prepare for this scenario fully, but at least you have to have a conversation about it and at least have a bag ready for 24, 48 hours or 72, possibly hours, not to be as susceptible to the change of circumstances as you would be in case it ever happens.

11:30

Linus is a security analyst. He also makes TikTok videos explaining this new reality Lithuanians find themselves in. On camera his manner is clear and calm as he outlines the looming risks from President Putin's Russia.

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Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine is of existential importance for the Baltic states as well, primarily because Putin always maintained that his ambitions go beyond Ukraine.

12:34

Putin consistently talks about the war in Ukraine as a struggle against the west as a whole. It has become central to his ideology, and he has never personally accepted the end of the Soviet Union or the independence of the Baltic states.

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Unless Ukraine succeeds in defending itself and also defending Europe as a whole, we could face a strong enemy, even if weak economically weak, possibly socially and politically, but still strong militarily, which clearly pursues imperialistic ambitions and sees that as its own raison d', etre, like a way of continuing its own existence.

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And Putin plans to increase that military capacity at an alarming rate.

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That's the most worrying part, which includes Russia's military buildup and future plans of having a military extended to 1.5 million troops, or maybe even going further than that.

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Putin's calculations will ultimately depend on the United States. President Trump's threats towards Greenland cast doubt on the very future of NATO. For small frontline states, it's an existential problem.

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We want every Lithuanian citizen, no matter the age, education, physical readiness, to have a place in countries defense, because that would be a very important signaling to Russia also that you will not be able to succeed here.

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This is known as the doctrine of total defence.

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We will fight you. We will fight you as a country that has a military, but we will also fight you as a society, which is a very strong deterrent factor, I think, and I do think Russia understands it.

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In the hope of deterring attack, every citizen should get ready to resist. So once you have your survival bag packed, you have a choice to make. Do you leave? Do you stay and keep your head down, or do you stay and resist?

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I think the main thing is just to stay out of the cities. The cities are the, let's say that's where the people are mostly killed.

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Mindy, the mushroom lover who runs an engineering company, is choosing the final option. In the event of an invasion, the Riflemen's Union would become part of the military. He has a plan to keep his young children safe so he can go to the front line.

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Just before this exercise, my daughter put me, let's say, on the table and talked with me about everything, while fighting and everything. And I had to talk with her that understand that if we will be prepared, nothing will happen.

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For Mindaugas, it's memories passed down of Soviet occupation that drive him to military resistance.

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I think we lost like 70% of our, let's say, family. My grandfather's brothers and sisters were killed or sent to Siberia. So we have, let's say, strong will to. Not to stop, not to stop. And sometimes we are exhausted. But you're thinking that you need to do this, you have to do it.

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Between 1944 and 1953, 300,000 Lithuanians were deported to Siberia and other distant parts of the Soviet Union. The aim was to decapitate society's leadership. Political leaders were targeted, but also authors, poets and teachers. Mindaugas family fell victim to the purges because they were landowners. In total, over a quarter of the population was deported, murdered or forced into exile by the Soviet regime. Society was hollowed out.

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I'm talking with my children about the sacrifice because it's hard for them, for me also. But they have to understand that freedom is not cheap. What we have here, somebody paid by blood. So that's the main thing. If you want to have something, you have to pay for it. So if you want freedom, you have to pay by blood. Just is what it is. Life is life.

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If day X comes, not everyone would be willing or able to fight. So some people are finding different ways to resist an invasion. The Ministry of Defence runs civil resistance training courses. There are over 30. Just in the week that I'm visiting my fixer and I head to Jurbakas, a town in eastern Lithuania. The training is at the local hospital, a squat beige building opposite a cemetery and a small wood. There are about 15 women on the course. Lots of them are wearing white hospital jackets. Hi, nice to meet you all. My introduction is met with severe stares. Luckily, I spent enough time in Lithuania not to take this personally. The atmosphere soon relaxes. The instructor, Vaida, runs three of these training courses every week. At first sight, the session could be confused for a normal first aid class. There's a dummy torso in the corner to practice resuscitation. That's until the PowerPoint clicks through to a carefully labelled diagram of a bullet tearing through bone. Vaida tells the group that there is armed war and there is unarmed war. She runs through advice for survival, from what to pack in an evacuation bag to how to build psychological resilience against disinformation online. Then she moves on to talk about resistance. Her focus is on understanding the dangers and acting where you can. She highlights the different ways you could disrupt enemy forces, removing road signs and blocking the street to slow them down, or collecting information on enemy weaponry. Her PowerPoint cycles through different types of armored vehicles, guns and drones, and how to recognize them. The women in the room are quiet and focused. Vaida hands out black tourniquets fastened with Velcro. She tells everyone it's necessary to tie them as fast as possible to prevent the victim from bleeding out. The woman sitting next to me fastens hers quickly and shows me her handiwork. She tells me she's tied bandages before, but this is her first time tying a tourniquet. She looks pleased with it, but says it isn't fast enough. Vaida gets everyone to discuss different scenarios around an emergency. For example, you live with your 12 year old child, an elderly 80 year old mother. When the crisis starts, your car is being serviced in the garage. What do you do? Ruta, the woman sitting next to me, is asking and answering a lot of question. We stay behind. After the session, Ruta tells me she's a nurse at the hospital and she lives next to A forest nearby.

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There is a nice view.

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From our window. We see deer, we see foxes. We see far into the distance, horizon, sunsets. Sometimes outside her home, she hears strange sounds. The sound is faint, but we recognize it. That type of sound, I recognize it's not cars. It's just from the training ground. All kinds of bullets, all kinds of explosions echo to us. Ruta's home is close to the border with Kaliningrad. Noises from Russian military exercises drift through her patch of forest. So she understands the threat Lithuania is facing and tells me she wants to support the resistance.

20:45

I want to help.

21:41

You have to. I am patriotic, yes, I'd go to war. I'm about to ask another question when I realize that she's crying. She tells me her mom is 82 and lives alone. Her father died recently. If an invasion happens, Ruta is a frontline worker. She would have to be at the hospital and she's worried about who would look after her mother.

21:42

I will have to go to work. As far as I understand, it will

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be mandatory for me. I have a sister who lives close by.

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Maybe somehow we would come up with something. I don't know.

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Sitting there with Ruta, I think about my partner's parents who live on the edge of a wood in northern Lithuania. I realize I have no real comprehension of the trade offs and decisions involved in preparing for war, or of what it actually means to stay and resist instead of flee. As we leave, Ruta tells us to ignore her tears.

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It obviously makes people anxious living here in the Baltic states and in the region, because it seems that there is no easy way of dealing with it. And we are living in a permanent kind of environment of insecurity.

23:11

Linus Khoyala, who spends his days helping people understand the growing danger, has witnessed this anxiousness firsthand.

23:23

I had a case of walking here in Vilnius and the woman approached me a couple of months ago and her question was very blunt. She. She asked me whether my daughter is still in Lithuania.

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Linus has a 15 month old baby daughter. It felt like more of an accusation than a question.

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The question was whether I still think that Lithuania is safe for my own family, because I do talk about security issues. So probably they think the people or the women that asked me the question thought that I maybe knew something more. And if my family is already out of Lithuania, that means, well, something could happen in the nearest future.

23:48

Like Mindless had family members who were deported to Siberia during the Soviet occupation. But for his generation, millennials and younger, life in Lithuania was, until recently one of Optimism.

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I was surrounded by care, by warmth. I lived in a cozy home where everyone is doing stuff for me as if I would be the last generation.

24:36

Karolis also grew up in an independent Lithuania.

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At that time, like 1990s, early 2000s in Lithuania you had this idea that the history is totally over and we are just moving towards this bright future. Westwards, like go west.

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But when he was in his 20s, at his final year of university, things started to change.

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The Russian attack of Georgia was the first sign. And then it kept on coming closer and closer to us Lithuanians.

25:09

I speak to give different dates for when the danger from Russia became real to them. For some it was the war with Georgia in 2008 or the annexation of Crimea in 2014. For many it was the full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

25:17

And then Ukraine of course brought it back. And suddenly all of this memory which is in the blood, it becomes alive.

25:34

Carolus realized that the relative peace and stability of his youth was coming to an end.

25:43

This poison empire brought. It doesn't evaporate so quickly, you know, generations, you need generations. But I have two small kids by now and I see the danger that all of these history books, all of these family stories which I heard from 1940s, 1950s, we might just go into this vicious circle. Well, I don't want that because it makes no sense. I lose. I lose purpose. I don't understand then what this world is about.

25:48

Those family stories from dark eras of Lithuania's history inform the films Karolis makes today. In 2019, he made a film about a Lithuanian geographer from the 1930s, Kazis Pakstas. Watching the rise of Nazi Germany on one side and the Soviet Union on the other, Pakstas proposed creating a backup Lithuania. He even drew up plans to move the nation to Madagascar.

26:26

When I read his story and I read how he been walking around Lithuania, the corridors of lithuanian ministries in 1938 and 1939, ringing a bell like crazy and saying, the end is coming, we need to do something. And nobody believe him or they were ridiculing him. That felt like me because I had this feeling for quite some time. But when I was saying it to people, I would see that they would look at me skeptically, like as if I'm being paranoid, but sorry to say, everything fulfilled.

26:56

This fear for Lithuania's future led Carolus to join the Riflemen's Union. Like Mindaugas and so many others, he serves in their armed resistance unit.

27:29

When I'm in an exercise in the forest. And I think if that would actually come and my kids would need to choose between having no father, but having a father dead for the right cause, and having a father who somehow chose to shut up and retreat and, you know, swallow it, which I saw in my family like, and I saw in a lot of people I knew this generation of my grandparents, my parents, the generation that kept silent for quite some time.

27:39

If Lithuanian independence is threatened again, Carolis wants to leave a different legacy for his children.

28:24

I don't want my kids to grow in that. And I've been watching children of Lithuanians who collaborated and children of Lithuanians who died. And of course, for a small child, it's a great loss to lose a father, parents. But somehow, after some time, those people of parents who did something, who did not obey, they were more human, more dignified, more free.

28:32

Carolus has thought long and hard about the kind of person he wants to be if De X comes, about what kind of father he wants his children to remember when he's dead and gone, whenever that may be. Like Rutte, he's facing up to the sacrifices and personal costs of resistance. It's something that many people I meet here simply aren't yet ready to do. And I can understand why people want to avoid the subject of an invasion, why families and even politicians across Europe have skirted this topic altogether. But for some people, that reality arrives into their lives anyway, whether they're ready to address it or not. In a small village in southern Lithuania, the local library has been turned into a control room. Men in suits are hunched over laptops, cables looping over piles of laminated library books. A couple of army guys are milling about. A woman from the Ministry of Defence shows me around.

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There are several consultants from different institutions from Ministry of National Defence and also we have representatives from Ministry of Environment.

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And I think maybe that's the end.

30:48

We also have representatives from Lithuanian armed forces.

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They're all here to settle a dispute which has come to a head this week. The government wants to build a new military training ground here in Captiamistis. The proposed area would affect 90 homes. 13 families would definitely have to leave. 77 are in the non shooting area. They can choose whether they would like to stay or sell their homes to the government. But many in the community are staunchly against the proposal. So today the government has taken over the local library to run one on one consultations with homeowners.

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So in this space we have meetings and consultations.

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Right now, Captcha Amistus and the surrounding area is part of the Suwalki Corridor, a stretch of land between Belarus and Kaliningrad. The region has been cited as a potential target for a Russian invasion. A strike here would cut the land connection between the Baltic states and the rest of NATO. Back in the library, residents are waiting in the corridor for their consultations. There's a table piled with the pamphlets on how to react in a war next to a bowl of Ministry of Defence branded sweets. Some residents I speak to are confused, angry and upset. None of us want this training ground and we don't really need it. Others, however, are behind the government's decision.

31:37

I trust the Lithuanian military. I trust that if they decide that it's needed, it's needed.

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Next door to the library is the local history museum, where I meet the manager and curator, Odetta. At first, she's wary of speaking to me. We talk with the mics off for a little while before she agrees to an interview. She tells me she grew up here under the Soviet Union. She remembers there were constraints, like not being able to celebrate Christmas, but overall it was an ordinary life. And it's just that our family was not touched by either exile or other such terrible things. Odetta raised her children here. One of her sons recently moved back home. We set our home up as we

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have dreamed all our lives.

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And in fact, a year or two ago, my husband and I were talking and said, how nice we made our dreams come true. We are surrounded by beautiful nature, beautiful life, and we do not want anything else in life. She doesn't deny the threat from Russia, but for her, it isn't enough to make her uproot her life. And she's emotional at the idea that to some people this makes her an enemy of the state. I do really love Lithuania. I do love my country. I raised my children and taught them to love their country, to love nature. Before we leave, Odetta gives me a quick tour of her museum. Her demeanor transforms. Her shoulders are now bouncing in excitement. All this was created from scratch for Odetta. Leaving her home right now for a future invasion which may not happen, is not a price she's willing to pay. All the time. I imagined that my house was my fortress. All misfortunes remain outside the door. When you get back, when you come home and you feel good, you feel safe, you know that nothing will ever

33:28

happen to you in your home.

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It's a shame, but we don't feel that security anymore. We don't feel it at all. The thing is that probably we won't hear the peacefulness and the sounds of nature anymore. When I imagine, I don't imagine anything. We live and wait. Odetta's not alone. Opposition to this new military ground has spread well beyond the local community. Residents told me that people from outside the area have been turning up at town hall meetings criticizing the plans. Later this week the president and major politicians from opposition parties are descending on the area. Objection among the local community has accelerated into debates about the nature of Lithuanian defence against Russia, with some people questioning the lengths that society is willing to go to. This year Lithuania's government plans to spend almost five and a half percent of its gdp GDP on defence. That's among the highest in Europe. To some people that means trade offs, diverting spending that could go towards local communities. Hi Nicholas. And these divisions, according to the man I'm calling en route to our next stop, are being amplified by Russian disinformation.

35:00

So usually I kind of have a habit of my analysts to kind of go through the, through the signals which is happening. And beginning of December we see that there's a new topic trending on Russian language propaganda channels. It's a specific thing. And also on some TikTok accounts we see that there is a polygon of military based topic trending.

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Mikolas Katkas studies how Russian information networks infiltrate Lithuanian media. He tells me about the role they've played in this escalating debate about the military ground.

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Russians do what we do usually in the state of kind of uncertainty. They're usually trying to come up with a ready made that, trying to hijack the decision. So they sell cryptocurrencies, crypto scams by day and night or something.

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These accounts frame the debate as the local people against the state, Focusing on the divisions between the regions in Lithuania and the centre of government. The aim is to exacerbate existing tensions in society, to sow division and mistrust.

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In the second stage, the old Lithuanian, I would say anti government people are joining it. And these people is a wide collision between, you know, natural government haters and just, you know, just people having dividend political opinions to two people who have been convicted or have some ties with Russian kind of propaganda.

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Fabricated claims are promoted to turbocharged descent. Nicholas's team found false assertions about the potential health damage from the site and the impact on the environment.

37:58

We see that people who started it by asking questions which were very obvious like what's going to happen to us, you know, why the government's not speaking to us. They become, you know, propaganda broadcasters kind of parroting the talking points which were first formulated in the Russian telegram groups.

38:09

Russia linked accounts are also pushing the idea that the training ground is useless and wouldn't help against an invasion anyway, a claim I heard echoed by a debtor. I don't think a training ground will provide security. If it were some kind of defensive fortification, it might provide security. Miklas work is a reminder that society here and across Europe is already under attack. Your emotional response to the idea of an invasion, your trust in the government and willingness to serve, is in itself another front line. Karolis, the film director who became a rifleman, sees his country increasingly conflicted over the looming crisis.

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I think that is one of the key divisions in society. What to do in case they do attack

39:21

as the nation grapples with onslaughts from Russian bots fuelling rows over military grounds. For Carolus, this is as much about internal conflict as external pressures. He tells me about Lithuania's two national symbols, which for him represent the dueling impulses in Lithuanian identity. The first is a mounted warrior, the

39:31

man on a horse, the knight, which is called Vitus. And it's this like, energetic warrior type.

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I see this everywhere I go. It's on Lithuania's coat of arms. Some of the riflemen had it stitched into their uniforms. There was one from the interwar period in Odetta's museum, which had been hidden in a beehive during the Soviet occupation. It's even on the mod's suites at the consultation meetings in Captchaamistis. That's the part that wants to stand up and fight. But then there's this symbol, which is

40:04

this thing called the Sorrowful Jesus. Rupin Toyeles the. The wooden God who sits like that.

40:31

Carolis put his head in his hands to demonstrate the pose. This is another figure I recognize, the pensive Christ. I've seen it carved into churches in Vilnius.

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It's a constant shift between those two stages, I think, either being totally passive and silent and calm and not too talkative and alone. If you hop on a bus somewhere in the province, people would just sit far away from each other. But then at some point they become also very, sometimes even aggressive, energetic. Then you might say, when things need to be done, usually they wait until the last point, but then they act. And when they do act, they can act in a collective way, unify somehow. Me, myself as a personality, I'm more of a sorrowful Jesus, probably. I would feel totally comfortable sitting with a book the whole day at home, not talking to anyone, not, you know, I'm fine with that. That's my natural me. But I would want more of Vitus at this point and less of a sorrowful Jesus, I would say.

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So Carolus has made his choice to listen to the warnings from history, to spend his weekends with the riflemen in the forest on behalf of the future he wants for his country and the legacy he wants to leave his children.

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I lived abroad and I missed home. This is my home. And when I'm saying that, I don't mean that it's the best place on earth. It's not that it's the best society or whatever, but just feeling of home, you know, like I know that I won't feel at home anywhere else. And if I need, I need to defend my home.

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I came to Lithuania because of alarm bells ringing across Europe, but the trip has reminded me what I love about it. The huge smiles that erupt unexpectedly from serious faces. The sound of pine trees knocking together. No matter what Putin, or indeed Trump does next, this country is already changing. Ruta and Odetta's beloved forest, the peace they cherish so much, is being filled with sounds of war. A generation raised in peace, looking west is now raising their children under the shadow of invasion. And a generation that grew up with stories of Siberia is wondering just how fragile their freedom is. Sam,

42:39

Thanks for listening to this episode, which was reported and produced by Katie Bryant with help from Carolis Wisnowskis, fact checking by Noah Flora and sound design by Nico Ralfast. The Executive producer of the Weeknd Intelligence is Gemma Newby. If you know someone who might enjoy listening to this or any of our other episodes, you can now share them with non subscribers. Go to the episode page in the app or on our website and select Give as a gift. We'll all see you back here on Monday. That new thing? Yeah, we've got it. The Drop by GNC bringing you all the newness that matters. Hand picked by the pros who actually know what's up and what's proven to work. We keep you on top of the trends and dialed into what's next. Whether you're crushing it at the gym, leveling up your game or thriving every day, the Drop by GNC is where the latest solutions in health and wellness land first non stop innovation and fresh finds daily explore what's new and what's next on the Drop by gnc Lunch was great but this traffic is awful. Um, can we stop at a bathroom?

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45:31

Sound familiar? Those stomach issues may actually be a pancreas issue called exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, or epi. Creon pancrelipase may help manage epi. Creon is a prescription medicine used to treat people who can't digest food normally because their pancreas doesn't enough enzymes.

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Creon may increase your chance of fibrosing colonopathy, a rare bowel disorder. Tell your doctor if you have a history of intestinal blockage or scarring or thickening of your bowel wall, if you are allergic to pork or if you have gout, kidney problems or worsening of painful swollen joints. Call your doctor if you have any unusual or severe gastrointestinal symptoms or allergic reactions. Take Creon as directed by your doctor and always with food. Do not chew capsules as this may cause mouth irritation. Other side effects may include blood sugar changes, gas, dizziness, sore throat and cough. These are not all the side effects of Creon. Call 8639110 or visit creoninfo.com to learn more. That's creoninfo. Com. I'm asking my doctor about epi and if Creon could help.

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