Now, being a grown-up, I realize that this is a serious procedure to relieve serious ills, but the kid in me loves living in a world where curing a medical problem may require you to go home and get a loved one’s poop to put in your butt. There but for the grace of God goes my family’s poop, I suppose.
I also want to imagine that this woman in the article called the BBC and said “Hey guys, have I got a story for you…”
As I understand that shortly after you start actively living with and engaging in sex with a significant other you more or less start sharing bacterial suites, I would imagine you need a fecal donation from someone you are not closely associated with if you want to change the overall composition of your intestinal bacterial suite.
Surprisingly, this news article came up in over-dinner conversation. Mrs G was having a haggis supper* covered with HP sauce**, I was having a steak and gravy pie supper, also with HP. Not sure if it was the colour or texture of dinner that brought the topic to mind…
I have to ask, if I have a fecal transplant, will my farts start smelling the same as the donors farts? Does my unique gas composition come from the bacteria, or dies it come from other digestive processes?
X supper, where X can be fish, pizza, various sausages, white, black or red puddings and even Mars bars to name a few, all battered and deep fried and served with chips. It’s the Weightwatchers diet for Scots.
You’d think, but it’s not actually so. People’s intestinal biome (which I prefer to ‘bacterial suite’) is not just unique but varies wildly from individuals according to their state of health, their diet, and what types of antibiotics they’ve ever taken. Twins might have completely different intestinal biomes if one of them had an ear infection as a child and took a course of penicillin. Or if one is a vegan and the other is a meat eater.
Ideally, if you needed a fecal transplant, you’d get one from a close relative with healthy bowels. Currently, the healthy bowels part is much more important than the close relative part.
The other thing is that to work best, the bacteria needs to be deposited fairly high up in the intestinal tract. Like, in the small intestine. A homemade poop enema is not going to do it. Or at least, the success rate won’t be anywhere near as close as one done by a gastroenterologist who can put the patient under sedation and snake the dose as far up as possible.
Last I read, there’s a company trying to create capsules with a plentiful replenishment of the friendly biota that are swallowed and break down in the small intestine. It works even better than the other approach, but they are still up against a serious ick factor.
People care enough about me that they’re always warning me of the dangers of ingesting fecal matter. Why, hardly a day goes by that someone doesn’t tell me, “Eat shit and die!”
A colleague of mine is working on the fecal transplant pill. According to her, the patients needing fecal transplants have been so ill for so long that they don’t hesitate at the idea. This is not intended for minor, transient problems but rather chronic, debilitating issues like chronic C. diff infections.
I’m curious about how they get the capsule past the stomach’s acids still intact but have it break down in the small intestine. I am leery of probiotics that come in capsules too, for the same reason. What material would hold up against stomach acids but break down in the small intestine?
But it doesn’t touch on my question about the capsules. I’m really curious about how probiotics survive the stomach’s acids. I don’t think the capsules protect the little critters.
