Prevention of Pancreatitis in Children
There are ways you can protect your pancreas and reduce your risk for pancreatitis and other serious health problems like EPI:

1. Limit alcohol consumption. By drinking less or not at all, you can help protect your pancreas from the toxic effects of alcohol and reduce your risk for pancreatitis. A number of studies, including a population-based study in Denmark involving 17,905 people, found that high alcohol intake is associated with an increased risk of pancreatitis in both men and women.

2. Eat a low-fat diet. Gallstones, a leading cause of acute pancreatitis, can develop when too much cholesterol accumulates in your bile, the substance made by your liver to help digest fats. To reduce your risk for gallstones, eat a low-fat diet that includes whole grains and a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables. To help prevent pancreatitis, specific foods to avoid include fatty or fried foods as well as full-fat dairy products. High triglyceride levels, or the amount of fats carried in your blood, can increase your risk for acute pancreatitis. So, it's also important to limit foods high in simple sugars, such as sugary sweets and high-calorie beverages, that could raise your triglyceride levels.

3. Exercise regularly and lose excess weight. People who are overweight are more likely to develop gallstones, putting them at greater risk for acute pancreatitis. Losing extra pounds gradually and maintaining a healthy weight by eating a balanced diet and engaging in regular physical activity can help prevent gallstones from forming.

4. Skip crash diets. The caveat to losing weight is to do it gradually. When you go into crash-diet mode, prompting quick weight loss, your liver ramps up cholesterol production in response, which increases your risk for gallstones.

5. Don't smoke. Studies show that smoking cigarettes is linked to acute pancreatitis. Researchers in Sweden followed 84,667 healthy women and men between the ages of 46 and 84 to examine how smoking affected their risk for acute pancreatitis. The study, published in the journal Gut, revealed that people who smoked the equivalent of at least one pack of cigarettes a day for 20 years had more than double the risk for non-gallstone-related acute pancreatitis than non-smokers had. Quitting smoking reduced the smokers' risk for acute pancreatitis to the same level as that of non-smokers.