What is Fecal Transplantation & how is it saving lives?

Get ready for one of the strangest medical treatments you've ever heard of.

Fecal Transplantation

Also known as bacteriotherapy it is the transfer of stool from a healthy donor into the gastrointestinal tract of a patient.

To put it in blunt terms: the patient is given an enema and their poop is replaced by that of a healthy person.

The healthy donor's poop has been liquified in a saline solution and is injected directly up the bum.

They also do poop in a pill now and if this chart beneath is accurate it would appear to be highly effective.

The importance of bacteria

Antibiotics are the first line of defence for most doctors when treating infections.

This may be effective in treating symptoms but it also has the effect of killing off many of the "good" bacteria in the digestive tract which can lead to a recurrence of infection or potentially worse.

It should be noted that antibiotics are at the top of a long list of chemicals we willingly ingest which are known to kill off that good bacteria.

Finely balanced eco system

Fecal transplants help replenish the bacterial balance in the diverse eco system of the intestine, the all important organ responsible for feeding our body.

This eco system is as diverse and as complex as any rainforest. When there is something in the eco system out of balance with the whole, just as it is in a rainforest this imbalance has far reaching consequences.

In what situations are fecal transplants required?

The most common use currently is for an infection known as Clostridium Difficile Infection (CDI)

C. diff. is a serious infection and is on the rise throughout the world.

The CDC reports that approximately 347,000 people in the U.S. alone were diagnosed with this infection in 2012. Of those, at least 14,000 died. Some estimates place that number in the 30,000 to 50,000 range, if the U.S. used the same cause of death reporting methods as most of the rest of the world. source

Fecal transplant has also shown promising results with many other digestive or auto-immune diseases, including Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Crohn’s Disease & Ulcerative Colitis (UC).

It's all about diet

The poop is taken from super healthy people who are disease free and eat a well rounded diet. It is said that it's harder to become a poop donor than it is to get into Harvard.

At around $40 a poop it's not a bad job to have on the side. Especially if you fancy increasing your diet to increase the quantity of poop! Perhaps it could even replace your job?

On a more serious note

Both my sisters suffer with the diseases mentioned above. One of them has Ulcerative Colitis and the other has Crohn's so I know how debilitative these diseases can be. In some cases fatal.

So I am all for this idea which is successfully putting an end to the constant diarrhoea, permitting some semblence of normality to return to their lives.

Final thoughts

In truth this technique still feels like we are bypassing the obvious answer which is as it always is: improve the diet and the body will follow.

But as a short term solution to revitalising the body... why not?

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