Speaker 1: Hello, Stuff you Should Know listeners, Welcome to the Saturday
Speaker 1: Selects Chuck edition. Uh. This week, I'm going with one
Speaker 1: from January entitled Fecal Transplants Colin, You're gonna drink that poop? Uh.
Speaker 1: This one came up recently and I can't remember exactly
Speaker 1: why my real life. Oh I know why because I
Speaker 1: was watching the Great Tig Nataro show One Mississippi UM,
Speaker 1: which has a second season that's starting kind of right
Speaker 1: about now, and on that show, I think she had
Speaker 1: a fecal transplant, and I think she did in real life,
Speaker 1: so it made me think of this one. It's just
Speaker 1: being a really interesting kind of um. Despite the fact
Speaker 1: that their poop shakes cutting edge medical uh technology, I
Speaker 1: guess you would call it, or at least procedures and
Speaker 1: um and a serious note it it really helps people
Speaker 1: out who have real problems. So UM. We do make
Speaker 1: quite a few jokes, but it was pretty cool show,
Speaker 1: So give it a listen to. I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and we are
Speaker 1: so fly by the seat of our pants. We just
Speaker 1: now decided which of the two episodes we're going to
Speaker 1: record first. That's never happened. I looked at Josh while
Speaker 1: he was talking. I pointed to the thing, and he
Speaker 1: just nodded. That's we're gonna do poop. We're doing poop. Yes.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear intro for this, because I
Speaker 1: can't imagine what kind of intro you would have for
Speaker 1: drinking a poop shake exactly zero intro. Okay, now you've
Speaker 1: put me on the spot, all right. Um, I had
Speaker 1: only recently heard of this. You me pointed it out
Speaker 1: to me about six or so months ago. And then
Speaker 1: pressto Obama, change Joe, We've got a an article on
Speaker 1: the site. Finally get this pretty a new article, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was at least October, and the earliest this
Speaker 1: has come up a couple of times in our show already. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did a little video that's now vanished on fecal transplants.
Speaker 1: That's right. Oh yeah, that's right, that's where it came up. Um,
Speaker 1: and then this but yeah, this article is by a
Speaker 1: dude named Nicholas Gerbas or Jervis. I don't know who
Speaker 1: he is. He's a freelancer. But this guy is top notch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wrote some funny sentences, he did. And but it's
Speaker 1: like every every sentence in this article was underlying and highlighted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very good, comprehensive article on poop shakes, good thick stuff.
Speaker 1: M Um, so chuck, did you know that if you
Speaker 1: are infected with something called the neuro virus, which is
Speaker 1: very frequently contracted in dorms, prisons, cruise ships, aren't they
Speaker 1: all virtually the same thing? Pretty much? When you put oop,
Speaker 1: each gram of stool has literally billions of neuro viruses
Speaker 1: in it. Yeah, and I believe one of the ways
Speaker 1: you can contract this is by eating sushi from fish
Speaker 1: that had been swimming in contaminated waters. Right, Oh, is
Speaker 1: that the same one? The norwalk virus and the neuro
Speaker 1: virus are the same one. Oh okay, Yeah that sounds familiar.
Speaker 1: That was in the first pilot one point all right, um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, okay, So the neuro virus um that you
Speaker 1: can get it from eating sushi, you can also get
Speaker 1: it if you happen to be friendly with a person
Speaker 1: who's just filthy and has the neuro virus and doesn't
Speaker 1: wash their hands after pooping and then shakes your hand
Speaker 1: or feed you like a gummy bear or something with
Speaker 1: their poopy fingers, and um, you accept that gummy bear
Speaker 1: and like maybe their fingers like get inside of your
Speaker 1: mouth just a little bit. Then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you have the neurovirus and you're in big, big trouble.
Speaker 1: For the most part, though, it was always regarded as
Speaker 1: like this UM kind of just just a terrible thing
Speaker 1: to have for a few days. Is extremely very virulent, UM,
Speaker 1: extremely easily passed. It could survive for days weeks on
Speaker 1: a surface UM. But ultimately you just pooped a lot,
Speaker 1: you vomited a lot, and then it was done. Not
Speaker 1: so any longer. Thanks to the rise of misprescribed antibiotics UM,
Speaker 1: about fifty of antibiotic prescriptions are considered unnecessary. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: try to avoid it. It's a it's good and it's
Speaker 1: nice that you're doing your part. I try to do
Speaker 1: my part too. And it stinks that, like we have
Speaker 1: to suffer, right because other people are getting antibiotics at
Speaker 1: the drop of a hat. But that's the point and
Speaker 1: one of the one of the reasons why you and
Speaker 1: I choose to suffer. People haven't caught on yet. Is
Speaker 1: because if you expose a virus or bacteria to an antibiotic,
Speaker 1: something intended to kill it, and it it doesn't kill it,
Speaker 1: that antibiotic or that that virus or bacteria has just
Speaker 1: been effectively naturally selected and it goes on to reproduce
Speaker 1: and reproduce and eventually develops resistance to these antibiotics, and
Speaker 1: so the medicine we have becomes useless to it. That's
Speaker 1: happened with Nora virus. It's also happened with another very
Speaker 1: nasty virus called Clostridium difficial. Yeah, it is melli difficial. Difficial,
Speaker 1: but is what French and Spanish for hard and difficult.
Speaker 1: I think so. And the reason they call it that
Speaker 1: is because this is a very intractable bacteria. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is uh, it's become a They call it an
Speaker 1: emerging epidemic, which is kind of scary to say that,
Speaker 1: but especially in hospitals, uh, in nursing homes, because it
Speaker 1: generally affects old folks and they will um, I guess
Speaker 1: they're so jacked up on antibiotics that their gut that
Speaker 1: can't kill this thing once it gets in there, well, yes,
Speaker 1: or if they're on antibiotics for something else, like they
Speaker 1: they're in the hospital for something else that they're given antibiotics,
Speaker 1: the antibiotics going and just wipe their guts clean of
Speaker 1: good bacteria and bad bacteria. See, normally we have bacteria
Speaker 1: that fight see difficial. But if it's all gone, then yeah,
Speaker 1: you're in big trouble. The claustradium comes in and finds
Speaker 1: root and gives you a lot of problems and maybe
Speaker 1: kills you. Yeah, it is is a big deal. Um.
Speaker 1: Gastro Intestinal infections as a whole are way up these days. Um.
Speaker 1: The death number doubled from two thousand seven and I
Speaker 1: think more than seventeen thousand people a year in the
Speaker 1: US die from uh, gastro intestinal infections. Yeah. U of
Speaker 1: the gastro intestinal infection fatalities are in patients sixty five
Speaker 1: and older. Sadly, Um, the next biggest age group is
Speaker 1: five and under. Yeah, the only young. And it's a
Speaker 1: really nasty way to die. And two thirds of those
Speaker 1: are the C differiceeals specifically, so, which is why they're
Speaker 1: calling it an epidemic. Um. And the way you die
Speaker 1: from this is you vomit and diarrhea so much that
Speaker 1: you become dehydrated. When you become dehydrated, your electrolytes are
Speaker 1: out of balance. The electrical system that keeps your heart
Speaker 1: and rhythm malfunctions, so maybe you have a heart attack,
Speaker 1: or you have a stroke, um or you uh go
Speaker 1: into shock and die. Yeah, and even if you're young,
Speaker 1: it's important to stay hydrated when you're sick like that.
Speaker 1: Even if you have the stomach flu or something and
Speaker 1: you're vomiting up stuff, you've got to try to at
Speaker 1: least keep some water down. And if you can't, then
Speaker 1: you should probably go to the hospital and have fluids
Speaker 1: introduced intravenously. Yeah, it's not a bad idea, better safe
Speaker 1: than sorry. I always keep an IVY in the trunk
Speaker 1: of my car just in case I start to dehydrate.
Speaker 1: So I think we've made the case that see different
Speaker 1: seal is a big problem, right it is. And the
Speaker 1: fact that it's they call it intractable, like it's just
Speaker 1: really hard to get rid of. Even once you get
Speaker 1: rid of it, Um, there's like a relapse, right Yeah.
Speaker 1: And um, when you're on antibiotics, you have a seven
Speaker 1: to ten seven to ten time greater chance of contracting it.
Speaker 1: And even two months after you finished the course of antibiotics,
Speaker 1: you're still three times it's likely to contract this normal.
Speaker 1: So you really want to stay away from the antibiotics
Speaker 1: if at all possible. Yeah, of course, if you need them,
Speaker 1: take them. We're not advising you to not take things
Speaker 1: to make you better. But if you have the sniffles,
Speaker 1: if you have like a nasal infection or something like
Speaker 1: a sinus infection in then what they call them, you
Speaker 1: kind of need to tough it out for the greater
Speaker 1: good of humanity. All right, let's talk about bacteria and
Speaker 1: what is called the micro biome. Uh, that is an
Speaker 1: ecosystem in your body of little tiny bacteria, like a
Speaker 1: hundred trillion bacteria in the human body doing all kinds
Speaker 1: of good stuff. Yeah, and there's ten times the amount
Speaker 1: of foreign bacterial cells in your body than your cells,
Speaker 1: actual human cells, ten times more, and that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: We've talked about good bacteria and bad bacteria before, and
Speaker 1: probably the the monsters inside this thing, right, what was
Speaker 1: that one? Yeah, probably digestive systems here that too. But
Speaker 1: anyway to recap quickly, we have lots and lots and
Speaker 1: lots of helpful bacteria, and there's a burgeoning field in medicine.
Speaker 1: Some might call it a fringe on the fringe right now,
Speaker 1: but um, it's called medical ecology, and it's kind of neat.
Speaker 1: It's basically like, instead of going to war with your body,
Speaker 1: they're saying you should be more like a gardener and
Speaker 1: manage your body like a garden of all these live
Speaker 1: things inside of you. Flora, bacterial, flora. You don't want
Speaker 1: to kill these things, no, especially not the good ones.
Speaker 1: And that's what we've been doing with antibiotics. We just
Speaker 1: send something in there that kills everything that's right. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a really cool thing, have you heard the Human
Speaker 1: Microbiome Project have. Um. This is based on examinations of
Speaker 1: two forty two healthy folks that they've tracked for two years,
Speaker 1: and they're basically sequencing genetic material of bacteria recovered from
Speaker 1: sites on the body. And they've recovered more than five
Speaker 1: million jeans at this point, so they're really like mapping
Speaker 1: this stuff out for the next wave of medicine coming
Speaker 1: through down right, Like, that's got to be a pretty
Speaker 1: good first step toward tailoring medicine to avoid killing good stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this goes along with your hygiene hypothesis that we
Speaker 1: just talked about when we recorded yesterday and the five
Speaker 1: second role, yeah, which is that's probably out already, right yeah, okay, Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, the hygiene hypothesis is that if you're exposed
Speaker 1: to bacteria, you learned who your body, your microbiome begins
Speaker 1: to include um bacteria that can defend against the bad stuff,
Speaker 1: and so if you're exposed to it early on, you
Speaker 1: have a greater advantage towards um being healthy as an adult,
Speaker 1: having a fewer allergies, that kind of stuff. Have you
Speaker 1: ever had a friend that had a kid that was
Speaker 1: a little cookie with the bure l I've seen it,
Speaker 1: like before you touch my baby here, scored scored, squored
Speaker 1: all over you. Yeah, usually when the baby is very young,
Speaker 1: although I also have friends that like won't touch babies
Speaker 1: because they think they're just dirty. It's hilarious that we're
Speaker 1: I was like, are you. I don't hold babies usually
Speaker 1: because I'm afraid I'm gonna drop them. Um, And I
Speaker 1: thought you just saying football, that's probably one of the problems. Well,
Speaker 1: that's how you carry a baby. The doesn't rhyme go
Speaker 1: facing the armpit, elbow, over the body, all the real
Speaker 1: tight in run like hell, I think that is it.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think you cradle and nuzzle. Um. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: I thought my friend was afraid of dropping the baby,
Speaker 1: and he's like, no, I don't touch them because there's
Speaker 1: just like bags of germs. All humans are filthy dirty,
Speaker 1: and babies just don't appear that way because they haven't
Speaker 1: been around long enough to stink really bad. You know,
Speaker 1: they smell all downy sweet, and you just from the
Speaker 1: day you're born, you start smelling worse and worse and
Speaker 1: worse until the day you die. Have puppy breath to start.
Speaker 1: I remember going, man, I remember my father's bathroom experience
Speaker 1: as being a kid and being like, oh my lord, like,
Speaker 1: am I going to smell that way one day? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I remember that too, and then that mixed with like
Speaker 1: shaving cream smell, and you don't like it now I
Speaker 1: smell that way. I know you don't. You smell fine.
Speaker 1: Uh So back to bacteria. Um. If we're talking about
Speaker 1: millions and millions and millions of these in our body,
Speaker 1: um our mouth has hundreds of thousands of bacteria species,
Speaker 1: not just bacteria and they are in our teeth and
Speaker 1: our gums, on our tongue. There in our lungs, which
Speaker 1: we didn't think we used to have them in our lungs.
Speaker 1: Apparently there's two thousand per square centimeter. And uh, the
Speaker 1: gut is where you're gonna find some serious action to
Speaker 1: thirty thousand different species of bacteria. Yeah, and they live
Speaker 1: in colonies. Were starting to learn colonies, Um, where they they.
Speaker 1: I guess bacteria kind of likes to stay with their
Speaker 1: own ilk. And if you put it all together, you've
Speaker 1: got like a whole neighborhood of bacteria. But um, I
Speaker 1: am pretty confident. And once we start to figure out
Speaker 1: like this colony tends to live in this part of
Speaker 1: the body, and this colony lives here, I'll bet it
Speaker 1: helps things function more correctly. And if you move colonies around,
Speaker 1: I'll bet you you find dysfunction, life balance or not life. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's all the reasons why it's still free.
Speaker 1: G Like you you you you just kind of put
Speaker 1: your finger on it, like there's balance and all that too,
Speaker 1: but esoteric, right, But as as you and I know,
Speaker 1: homeostasis is the goal of everything that's right. We've talked
Speaker 1: about it before. So you've got in your mouth, you've
Speaker 1: got bacteria in your guts, and I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the fact that bacteria have more cells in our bodies
Speaker 1: than we do kind of supports this idea that um
Speaker 1: Nicholas Gerbis Gerbis pointed out is that bacteria probably the
Speaker 1: most successful life forms on planet Earth. Yeah. What are
Speaker 1: these guys doing? Oh well, they are breaking down things
Speaker 1: and too other things. They break down nitrogen into the
Speaker 1: in the soil to make it absorbable for plants. They
Speaker 1: produce vitamins in your gut. Yeah, bacteria do. Yeah, how
Speaker 1: about that? They produce oxygen that we breathe. There's waste processes.
Speaker 1: They help maintain your protective qualities of your skin, which
Speaker 1: is nice. They those plants, they kind of they turn
Speaker 1: the tables on those plants. They break down nitrogen the
Speaker 1: soil four plants to take up, and then when we
Speaker 1: eat the plants, they break the plants down into a
Speaker 1: digestible slurry grass. What's it called bolus time? I think
Speaker 1: time time than bolus time. They also help prevent, prevent
Speaker 1: and reduced swelling, which is a big deal because swelling
Speaker 1: can be one of the danger factors if you're sick
Speaker 1: or injured. A lot of times people die simply because
Speaker 1: they can't get the swelling down in order to perform
Speaker 1: procedures they need to perform. So thank you back Terry
Speaker 1: for helping with that. Um. And then we were talking
Speaker 1: about babies to chuck, Um, if you wouldn't hold the baby,
Speaker 1: then you probably shouldn't like shake hands with the baby's mother,
Speaker 1: because that's where the baby gets most of his or
Speaker 1: her initial bacteria's from the mother. There's about six hundred
Speaker 1: different species found in breast milk. Um. The sugars and
Speaker 1: breast milk go directly towards motivating bacteria in the baby's gut. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's a change in um, the vaginal microbiome, Yeah, where
Speaker 1: they think that possibly the baby is basically coated in
Speaker 1: this upon entry into the world. Yeah. That's called Lactobacillus
Speaker 1: john sony. And that is present when you're pregnant and
Speaker 1: you're vaginal micro biome, right, and they think that you
Speaker 1: get coated on the way out. Yeah, And then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you're like, Okay, I've got some defenses here,
Speaker 1: and these guys are going to be my friends for
Speaker 1: the rest of my life. Well, the lacto basilus actually
Speaker 1: helps them digest the milk. So um, little little babies
Speaker 1: that come out. That's why they say, if you're born
Speaker 1: in a cesarean fashion, then you might not have what
Speaker 1: you need to digest the milk. You might have problems there,
Speaker 1: you might have uh fewer defenses against IBD, inflammatory bowe
Speaker 1: disease and um what else Merca staph infection. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that skin. They think that there's studies that suggest that
Speaker 1: you're more prone to Merca infections on the skin. UM.
Speaker 1: This is still very much under debate, huge debate between
Speaker 1: cesarean and natural birth stuff. It's like a hornet's nest man.
Speaker 1: But they think that you know, there there is a
Speaker 1: definite link they imagine between amritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory
Speaker 1: bowel disorder sorry UM, which includes like Crohn's disease and
Speaker 1: all sort of colitis um. And it's a big deal.
Speaker 1: You can lose parts of your intestines, you can die,
Speaker 1: you can become malnourished UM. And there's like a one
Speaker 1: point seven billion dollar expense in healthcare just from inflammatory
Speaker 1: bowel disorder alone in the US. UM. And they believe
Speaker 1: that that's linked to some sort of problem with bacteria
Speaker 1: in the guts. So all of this small talk about
Speaker 1: bacteria has been leading to the setup of this podcast,
Speaker 1: which is drinking the poop shake. Yeah, the fecal transplant,
Speaker 1: and they call it a transplant, and it makes it
Speaker 1: sound a little more like a medical procedure than I
Speaker 1: thought it was. Uh. There's no cutting, there's no laser ing,
Speaker 1: there's nothing like that. Um, this has been practiced. Something
Speaker 1: like this has been around since fourth century China. I
Speaker 1: was looking. I couldn't find anything on that. Could you
Speaker 1: really now, I couldn't. We should email the author here. Um.
Speaker 1: But it has been around in earnest since n Dr
Speaker 1: Ben Eisenman UH from Denver General Hospital pioneered this. Uh.
Speaker 1: I guess it's a procedure. I was gonna say technique. Um,
Speaker 1: And it really didn't come around in earnest until about
Speaker 1: two thousand. So here's how it works. You're donor gets
Speaker 1: screened for hepatide us in HIV and other disease causing
Speaker 1: germs that you don't want. They take the stool of
Speaker 1: the donor poop poop, they blend it um with saline
Speaker 1: or this is so gross. Four percent milk in a
Speaker 1: medical blender. Yeah, sure, it's not that Queason art. I
Speaker 1: bet it is a Queason art sense that you would
Speaker 1: use milk if you want to propagate moss on something.
Speaker 1: A little bit of buttermilk, a little bit of um
Speaker 1: sugar in a and just take some moss and throw
Speaker 1: it in a blender altogether, press, blend, take it and
Speaker 1: painted on whatever you want. It's right and it will grow.
Speaker 1: See our moss podcast for that one. Yeah. Uh. So basically,
Speaker 1: you have the stool sample of the poop four percent
Speaker 1: milk and in milkshake machine and you mix it up
Speaker 1: and you feed it to the patient through Uh, you
Speaker 1: don't have to drink it. No, there's different ways to
Speaker 1: introduce it, but one of them it does end up
Speaker 1: in your stomach, and I don't understand how you don't
Speaker 1: just in immediately throw it right back up. All right.
Speaker 1: So the two methods um that Josh will explain are
Speaker 1: nassa gastric and nasso duodenal. Yeah, we never figured that
Speaker 1: one out in our Digestive episode the remember they duodenum
Speaker 1: duodenum um. Yeah, Well that's a tube that goes through
Speaker 1: your nose and if it's naso gastric it ends in
Speaker 1: your stomach, which means you have poop going directly into
Speaker 1: your stomach. And don't think that four percent milk makes
Speaker 1: it any easier to take through your nose, through your
Speaker 1: throat into your stomach. Or the nasal duodenum goes through
Speaker 1: your nose into your stomach and then into your intestine,
Speaker 1: so it bypasses your stomach and it goes directly to
Speaker 1: where you want it. The intestines. Wow when that. You
Speaker 1: can also do a a an enema that's designed to
Speaker 1: stay in rather than flush back out. Um enema. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you think? I say, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: just they should call the other ones out of us,
Speaker 1: I guess. Or a kolonoscope, not a kaleidoscope, although that
Speaker 1: would work if you turned it around and I guess
Speaker 1: broke all the glass out ahead of time. Is there
Speaker 1: just be like a funnel. Then that's true. Um. But
Speaker 1: the point is that you have someone else's poop, a
Speaker 1: healthier person's poop, in your stomach, and they expect that
Speaker 1: about of the living bacteria found in that poop is
Speaker 1: going to stick around and you're intestines, what you're doing.
Speaker 1: The whole point of a fecal transplant is to repopulate
Speaker 1: your gut flora so that your immune system can get
Speaker 1: back in order. The best way they thought about to
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, they have. They have another cocktail that
Speaker 1: they're working on, which is just a bunch of like
Speaker 1: bacteria that I guess you could take as a pill.
Speaker 1: But man, this works. Yeah, it seems to UM. One
Speaker 1: of the stats we have here is that people who
Speaker 1: have undergone this and it's still well, we'll get to help.
Speaker 1: Often it's practice here in a second but UM one
Speaker 1: study found that long term follow up, seventy seven fecal
Speaker 1: transplant patients reported a CURATE after just one of these
Speaker 1: and percent uh if you married that with additional probiotics
Speaker 1: and antibotics and or an additional poop jake right for
Speaker 1: c deficial. Yeah, that's percent. That's awesome. I don't think
Speaker 1: that there's anything that has that kind of success rate.
Speaker 1: Maybe aspirin maybe so. But yeah, it's definitely been shown
Speaker 1: to work. And you know it is fringe, but you
Speaker 1: can still get it done in hospitals. That's where you
Speaker 1: want to do it. Yeah, you don't want to do
Speaker 1: this at home. This is not UM. In fact, a
Speaker 1: couple of the best sentences in this article or in
Speaker 1: this section. First of all, the preparation you prepare like
Speaker 1: you would for a colonoscopy. But as our who's who
Speaker 1: who wrote this again, Nicholas gerbis Gurbus Gerbas put it
Speaker 1: this way, Nikki G. Nikki G says, the patient prepares
Speaker 1: for the procedure via the traditional taking no prisoners date
Speaker 1: with the thunderbucket ritual used by colonoscopy patients. Yeah. He
Speaker 1: went from like science writer, science writer, science writer, Mad magazine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then he also says, uh, this is not a
Speaker 1: great dy project because stool is a level to bio
Speaker 1: hazard number two, if you don't test the samples for disease,
Speaker 1: you could end up in pain. And then third, remind
Speaker 1: us never to drink a frozen margharita at your house.
Speaker 1: He just went like funny for one paragraph and then
Speaker 1: right back to the business. Right. Well, Um, he says
Speaker 1: that you want to screen the stool that you're putting
Speaker 1: into the patient, and um insurance doesn't cover this, not yet, no,
Speaker 1: but they think it will as early as this year,
Speaker 1: earlier this year, soon early, um. But even still it's
Speaker 1: not very cost prohibitive. It's about a thousand dollars. I
Speaker 1: saw there's a hospital in Madison, Wisconsin that does it.
Speaker 1: That's pretty it's not bad. And most of that cost
Speaker 1: is for screening the stool for disease. I thought it
Speaker 1: had been the milk or yeah, or pressing them blend
Speaker 1: buttons right, or holding your breath all the nose clips. Um.
Speaker 1: So uh. One of the interesting things you're moving forward
Speaker 1: is how this is going to be, like you said,
Speaker 1: affect insurance, and how it's going to be classified if
Speaker 1: it if and when it becomes like super legit because um,
Speaker 1: what is on the horizon is that the f d
Speaker 1: A has declared feces a drug in this case because
Speaker 1: it's being used as a drug in a way, it's
Speaker 1: already a class to biohazard right. So now it's a
Speaker 1: class to biohazard drug according to the FDA, which means
Speaker 1: which is good because that means it's on the way
Speaker 1: to becoming um investigational status. Right. Do you remember with
Speaker 1: the Dog Show episode where we were talking about how
Speaker 1: there's the um other bre I can't remember what it
Speaker 1: was called, but it was like a breed that didn't
Speaker 1: fit in anything else. Miscellaneous maybe and um, that's how
Speaker 1: the a k C begins to recognize a breed like
Speaker 1: at first places it in this miscellaneous. I get the
Speaker 1: impression that this is the same process the FDA is saying,
Speaker 1: like that's a drug, and by doing so, we're halting
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. You can't just do it any longer,
Speaker 1: really nearly, like now there's a law attached to it.
Speaker 1: But we're also classifying is something that we officially recognize
Speaker 1: that you can now apply for funding to study and say,
Speaker 1: the FDA recognizes this is a drug. We want to
Speaker 1: understand it better, so give us some money. So interesting, though,
Speaker 1: how are they going to regulate like this is a
Speaker 1: drug that is poop? How are they going to regulate that?
Speaker 1: As far as I mean, because we should point out
Speaker 1: that most of the time the donor is a family member,
Speaker 1: family or um. But it doesn't have to be or
Speaker 1: even a blood match. But I think because you share
Speaker 1: the same environment, you're probably likelier to have a similar
Speaker 1: gut for I think it's probably has to do with
Speaker 1: it just being so east dude, don't you think maybe
Speaker 1: because you don't want to just take some random person's
Speaker 1: poop and drink it. See. The thing is is I'd
Speaker 1: almost rather have a stranger's poop because like what if
Speaker 1: you know, what if I were doing this and like
Speaker 1: the donors like just staring at you, like my poop
Speaker 1: is going in your stomach right now? Is a random
Speaker 1: stranger you can't do that. Talk about surgical theater. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's gonna be really interesting how they move
Speaker 1: forward with this. UM. But like we said, huge results, um.
Speaker 1: And according to the cdc C difficial kills fourteen thousand
Speaker 1: people annually. So, um, it's a big problem. And they
Speaker 1: second help with metabolic syndrome maybe. Yeah. So metabolic syndrome
Speaker 1: is a collection of risk factors like UM insulin resistance,
Speaker 1: having a lot of weight around the middle UM, and
Speaker 1: basically it adds up to a higher risk for UM
Speaker 1: type two diabetes UM, coronary artery disease stroke yeah, stroke. UM.
Speaker 1: And they've found that uh poop transplant can actually can
Speaker 1: actually reverse the course of this disorder. They found this
Speaker 1: in mice, right. Yeah. They think that um, what it's
Speaker 1: going on is that them it would it improves your
Speaker 1: insulin sensitivity, reduces triglycerat levels, and they think that it
Speaker 1: has to do with the way that you metabolize sugars. Wow.
Speaker 1: And they also found in rats that if you take
Speaker 1: the poop from a lean rat and transfer it to
Speaker 1: an obese rat, the obese rat loses weight, no other
Speaker 1: interventions whatsoever, all just from a poop transplant. And again
Speaker 1: they think it has to do with the way that um,
Speaker 1: the bacterial colonies, um, help us digest flute food, help
Speaker 1: us absorb nutrients. UM. So who knows, like poop transplants
Speaker 1: could be the weight loss wave of the future. Well,
Speaker 1: they definitely know that the bacteria in a uh, skinny
Speaker 1: person's gut is different than an obese person's cut and humans,
Speaker 1: so there could be something that um. And we're like,
Speaker 1: we're just now beginning to wrap our heads around the
Speaker 1: idea that like the gut, there's something there. Um. There's
Speaker 1: this thing called the enteric nervous system uh. And it's
Speaker 1: basically your lower brain and it's located in your intestines.
Speaker 1: Your intestines have a sheath of neurons, but a hundred
Speaker 1: million neurons, which is as many neurons as in the
Speaker 1: heads of a hundred and five bees, by the way,
Speaker 1: but that's more than like your your parasympathetic nervous system
Speaker 1: has and the vagus nerve. Do you remember we were
Speaker 1: talking about orgasms, UM, and women can still women who
Speaker 1: are paralyzed can still have orgasms because the vegas nerve
Speaker 1: goes around the spinal column directly from the from like
Speaker 1: the pubic area the gut to the brain. Well, they
Speaker 1: found that nine of transmissions in the vegas nerve go
Speaker 1: from the gut to the brain rather than vice versa.
Speaker 1: They're also figuring out that neurotransmitters, a lot of them
Speaker 1: are produced in the gut. All of our serotonin is
Speaker 1: found in our gut UM, so there's definitely something going on.
Speaker 1: They're like, well, yeah, it's this second brain developed to
Speaker 1: carry out digestion and all this stuff independent of the
Speaker 1: brains of the brain can do other stuff. But scientists
Speaker 1: are also saying, like, what we're looking at is way
Speaker 1: too complex to just be dealing with digestion, UM, So
Speaker 1: what else is there? Now they're starting to figure out like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's neurotransmitters, there's a lot of smarts in this gut brain,
Speaker 1: and they're linking it to things like Parkinson's has been
Speaker 1: linked to autism spectrum disorder UM. They're starting to figure out,
Speaker 1: like we need to pay more attention to what's going
Speaker 1: on with these microbes in this gut because there's definitely
Speaker 1: something here and I feel like this medical ecology thing,
Speaker 1: it would be a big revolution in science. I think
Speaker 1: they're onto something for sure. So I'm sure it'll get
Speaker 1: more prop or funding as it gets more legit, and
Speaker 1: at d A I'll have a lot to do with that.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling this is going to become too
Speaker 1: legit to quit in very short order. Boop shakes all around.
Speaker 1: M Ah, you got anything else, sir? Do you want
Speaker 1: to say fecal transplant one more time? Fecal transplant? If
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about fecal transplants, you can
Speaker 1: type those words into the search part how stuffork dot com.
Speaker 1: And it's time now. If for you're listening, Mai, Josh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this uh condoms in the River. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I know who this one? This one's mind blowing. Did
Speaker 1: you read this one? Yeah? Um, guy's been an avid
Speaker 1: listener for some time. I came aboard around Afprodisiacs, got
Speaker 1: booked and listened to the entire catalog. Josh, you requested
Speaker 1: any info to make sense about the ubiquity of condoms
Speaker 1: on New York City streets. While I can't shed light
Speaker 1: on how they got there, I can share with you
Speaker 1: some first MD experience what happens to them from that point.
Speaker 1: I'm a sailboat captain for the sail uh for a
Speaker 1: sail training and charter company on the Hudson River, and
Speaker 1: I learned very quickly after starting to work here that
Speaker 1: you don't touch the river water right after it rains.
Speaker 1: This is because the New York City sewage system is
Speaker 1: so old that the rain water from storm drains and
Speaker 1: raw sewage are mixed together and treated by one system.
Speaker 1: When we get a lot of rain, that system is
Speaker 1: overwhelmed and the overflow is released untreated into the surrounding
Speaker 1: bodies of water, including the Hudson River. Now, after a
Speaker 1: long rain, you'd expect to find what I suppose you'd
Speaker 1: call a representative sample of condoms among the floating garbage.
Speaker 1: But I'm still trying to figure out why condoms represent
Speaker 1: a grossly disproportionate percentage of the overall floating trash. It
Speaker 1: should be Dorrito's bag, condom, McDonald straw, Yo play light,
Speaker 1: and fit cup condom is actually condom condom condom Spiderman
Speaker 1: action figure underneath the condom condom condom dead rat. The
Speaker 1: situation is disturbing enough on its own, but I teach
Speaker 1: a kid's sailing camp during the summer as well, and
Speaker 1: the younger kids inevitably asked me what all those white
Speaker 1: things are, and I just say, those are Coney Island whitefish.
Speaker 1: And we had someone else right in that called Coney
Speaker 1: Island whitefish, so I guess this is what they're called. Okay,
Speaker 1: not in what if He's like, those are French letters.
Speaker 1: Uh so those are cony and whitefish, and then I
Speaker 1: walk away without further explanation. It's best. That's the best
Speaker 1: way I can think of to avoid further questions from
Speaker 1: the kids and potential lawsuits from parents. Other things I've
Speaker 1: seen come up from the Hudson River, in case you're curious,
Speaker 1: include mating crabs, a sunburned pig, an entire telephone pole
Speaker 1: in three Dead Bodies. That's disturbing, and as Jonathan actor, singer,
Speaker 1: sailor and speed dating host, I know this guy is
Speaker 1: quite a renaissance dude. Yeah, thank you, Jonathan. Uh if
Speaker 1: you have any awesome incredible stories. We want to hear
Speaker 1: them um, whether they pertain to the podcast or not.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, is It,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works dot com