Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb in my name
Speaker 1: is Julie Douglas. In this episode, we are talking about poop,
Speaker 1: which is which is great because I feel like with
Speaker 1: my daily life with a toddler, like poop is uh
Speaker 1: is an important subject. It's it's always coming up. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's always coming out, all right, um, but it's it's
Speaker 1: one of the things that I end up talking about
Speaker 1: with the child when we talk about poop and when
Speaker 1: he needs to poop and how we're going to go
Speaker 1: about it, and then uh, and then when we have
Speaker 1: conversations about it on like the changing table, when I
Speaker 1: put his night diaper on him and he starts talking
Speaker 1: to me about poop and because he knows that the
Speaker 1: night diaper is there in case of night poops. So
Speaker 1: it's fitting. I was on saying that I should uh
Speaker 1: hand over another portion of my day considerations of poop.
Speaker 1: It's fertile ground to tread on. Yes, um, we are
Speaker 1: of course going to be talking about pecal transplants, which
Speaker 1: we've talked about in a cursory way in the past,
Speaker 1: but we thought, you know what it really deserves this
Speaker 1: day out there in the sun. Yeah, like the episode
Speaker 1: that we talked about it, and like we didn't even
Speaker 1: have fecal transplant in the in the title and uh
Speaker 1: and afterwards, I kept kicking myself. It's like people are
Speaker 1: going wild about pecal transplants, wild about it. They are,
Speaker 1: I mean, the headlines everywhere about fecal transplantation and and
Speaker 1: you know Coldbert Daily Show, everybody's throwing in jokes about
Speaker 1: it because you just can't resist the scatological implications here.
Speaker 1: And uh, so we decided, yeah, let's go back, let's
Speaker 1: let's discuss it. Let's discuss some new uh um information
Speaker 1: that's out there about the procedure and about the technology
Speaker 1: and the idea behind it, and uh and just really
Speaker 1: own up to it. Because that's another thing about now
Speaker 1: being the father of a toddler, is that I am
Speaker 1: far more um open about poop. I'm more likely to
Speaker 1: make a poop joke, I'm more likely to discuss it,
Speaker 1: I'm more likely to just be open about about what
Speaker 1: my my own bowel movements are doing in the course
Speaker 1: of the day. It's just really changed my life in
Speaker 1: that respect. Welcome to the world of schatology. It's a
Speaker 1: beautiful place. Um. Well, yeah, Feces as a medicine really
Speaker 1: goes back to the fourth century China, where it was
Speaker 1: orally given to those suffering from food poisoning or severe diarrhea.
Speaker 1: And in the sixteenth century in China, a fecal suspension
Speaker 1: called quote yellow soup was created for the relief of constipation, fever, pain, diarrhea,
Speaker 1: and vomiting. And fast forward, fecal animals were first used
Speaker 1: to treat pseudo membrennous colitis. So it's been around this
Speaker 1: concept of using this beneficial gut flora. Yeah, to your point,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's an idea that existed before modern medicine,
Speaker 1: and modern medicine has gotten back around to it and
Speaker 1: seeing the value in it. Yeah. I mean essentially there's
Speaker 1: gold in them their poo. Yeah. And I love to
Speaker 1: throw out this quote because I think it's true. Um,
Speaker 1: this is according to Stanford microbiologists Stanley Falco, the world
Speaker 1: is covered in a fine patina of feces. And you
Speaker 1: and I have discussed this before, Like any time that
Speaker 1: you're digging into the dirt, you have to know that
Speaker 1: there are particles of dinosaur poop there, right, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: there's there's poop in the ground, there's poop, you know,
Speaker 1: potentially the air around you. I mean, you're every day
Speaker 1: you're dealing with poop. We in our lives, we often
Speaker 1: try to to limit ourselves not only from the reality
Speaker 1: of poop, but just the the notion of poop. Um.
Speaker 1: We we don't like to think about it in terms
Speaker 1: of our our water purification systems or or or anything.
Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons our toilet systems haven't really
Speaker 1: evolved out that much because we're we're far more content
Speaker 1: just to say, all right, it works, it flushes the
Speaker 1: pool away in clean water. I don't want to think
Speaker 1: about it anymore. But all that poop has been really beneficial, right,
Speaker 1: because if you think about all the dinosaur done, the
Speaker 1: billions of pounds of it that seated the earth, that
Speaker 1: helped other creatures to sprout forth, and other sort of
Speaker 1: plants and animals to subsist. So there's a definite symbiotic
Speaker 1: quality to it, although you don't tend to think about
Speaker 1: that when you're thinking about living with someone and there microbiota, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the microbiot is key here because we've we've
Speaker 1: we've devoted whole episodes of this in the past talking
Speaker 1: about just the the the the microbiota, the the the
Speaker 1: creatures that that make us up. They live inside us
Speaker 1: um and they live in our poop. I mean, our
Speaker 1: our poop is is mostly bacteria, and in a sense,
Speaker 1: we are our poop and the senior we own up
Speaker 1: to that the center, we can we can really get
Speaker 1: along with a number of the the implications of the
Speaker 1: studies that we're discussing in this episode. Yes, so it's
Speaker 1: not really like I am what I eat, It's I
Speaker 1: am what I poop. Right, Yeah, I mean we're not
Speaker 1: just this brain where this whole body, and we're not
Speaker 1: just this the body as it would exist if if
Speaker 1: it was taken to a mortuary and flush clean of
Speaker 1: all its fluids, and because those fluids are essentially us
Speaker 1: as well, not only our blood but even our our
Speaker 1: waste products are kind of parts of us on the
Speaker 1: way out. And as I had mentioned before, we don't
Speaker 1: tend to think about this like what is what's my
Speaker 1: gut microbiota doing right now? Is there any crossover with
Speaker 1: someone I live with? And this is from a new
Speaker 1: York article Roller Derby of Microbiome, the author very Nique
Speaker 1: Greenwood explores the idea of whether or not we colonize
Speaker 1: each other with our own bacteria, specifically with gut bacteria,
Speaker 1: and she talked to Balfour Startur, who is a gastroenterologist
Speaker 1: at the University of from Carolina at Chapple Hill, and
Speaker 1: he specializes in inflammatory bowel disease like crones, and he
Speaker 1: says that there is a growing stack of evidence, some published,
Speaker 1: some not that people who have lived with inflammatory bowel
Speaker 1: disease sufferers for long periods of time had higher rates
Speaker 1: of it themselves than people in the general population. He
Speaker 1: also cited a two thousand seven study that was published
Speaker 1: in the journal Cell in which scientists deliberately transmitted gut
Speaker 1: bacteria of mice genetically predisposed to develop intestinal inflammation to
Speaker 1: healthy mice, and this caused the healthy mice in turn
Speaker 1: to develop the condition. So here we see essentially the
Speaker 1: seating of the condition through a fecal transplant, again changing
Speaker 1: the organism by changing the contents of its bowels. Again,
Speaker 1: this is just um well, not necessarily in the case
Speaker 1: of the mice. But when star Toro was talking about
Speaker 1: more about people just who are living together, uh, who
Speaker 1: have those trace bits of gut bacteria essentially feces being
Speaker 1: exchanged here. So that's just the tiny bit that would
Speaker 1: be colonizing your own microbiota. Yeah, and again colonization is
Speaker 1: key here. I mean, just to throw out a few
Speaker 1: quick stats that we've hit in the past, I mean,
Speaker 1: the human mouth alone contains five hundred to a thousand
Speaker 1: different types of bacteria, and of those, only a hundred
Speaker 1: to two hundred live in a mouth at any given time.
Speaker 1: And that's just a mouth. When you take into account
Speaker 1: the entire human body, Um, it really begins to skew
Speaker 1: the idea of what is an individual and what is
Speaker 1: a a collective. Yeah, because we've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: like we're just host for for bacterial cells when you
Speaker 1: look at how very colonized we are by them. Now,
Speaker 1: we want to talk a little bit about a couple
Speaker 1: of conditions that are very difficult to treat because this
Speaker 1: will actually play into fecal transplants. And the first is
Speaker 1: something called Clostridium deficily or see death if you will,
Speaker 1: death on the streets, and it's a bacterium that releases
Speaker 1: toxins that attack the intestinal lining and cause inflammation of
Speaker 1: the colon, and according to the Centers for Disease Control
Speaker 1: and Prevention, C DIFF is linked to a quarter of
Speaker 1: a million hospitalizations in four deaths a year in the US,
Speaker 1: and deaths from CEDF increased four hundred percent between two
Speaker 1: thousand and two thousand and seven due impart to the
Speaker 1: emergence of a stronger strain. Yeah, this can be especially
Speaker 1: a huge problem for the elderly. UM in some sort
Speaker 1: of a care environment, and just to throw some symptoms
Speaker 1: that you UM, just to know what we're dealing with here.
Speaker 1: You can get more severe infections of C. Deaf causing
Speaker 1: watery diarrhea up to fifteen times per day, severe abdominal pain,
Speaker 1: loss of appetite, fever, blutter, puss in the stool, weight loss,
Speaker 1: and then in extreme cases C. Deaf infection can lead
Speaker 1: to a hole in the intestines, which can be fatal
Speaker 1: if not treated immediately. So is it is this is
Speaker 1: the affection spirals out of control. UM. It can cause
Speaker 1: a lot of major health problems. So this is this
Speaker 1: is not a condition to take lightly. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: been associated with hospitals quite a bit because the strain
Speaker 1: that emerged is one that has become antibiotic resistant. And
Speaker 1: so not to scare anybody who may or may not
Speaker 1: have to visit a hospital. But it turns out that
Speaker 1: in an October issue of the American Journal of Infection Control,
Speaker 1: but they reported that the incidents is ce deaf and
Speaker 1: hospitals nearly doubled between two thousand and one and two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten, with mortality increasing from six point six
Speaker 1: percent in two thousand and one to seven two percent
Speaker 1: in two thousand and ten. And again, as you had
Speaker 1: mentioned in the other really this can be terrible. This
Speaker 1: is this is a big blow to the body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's it's interesting just to think about
Speaker 1: antibiotics and their role in this and another condition, another
Speaker 1: condition they're going to talk about and and think again
Speaker 1: about the body is this collective of all this bacteria
Speaker 1: and uh and and and as as well as our
Speaker 1: actual cellular structures and so forth. But in dealing with
Speaker 1: bad bacteria, when you you're using powerful antibiotics, it can
Speaker 1: all it can almost be like carpet bombing a city
Speaker 1: to deal with some sort of insurrection or some sort
Speaker 1: of a crime problem or what have you because you
Speaker 1: end up just laying waste, and sometimes you're creating an
Speaker 1: opportunity for quote unquote bad bacteria to rise up and
Speaker 1: take advantage of the new environment. Yeah, because with those antbiotics,
Speaker 1: you have carpet bombed all the good bacteria. And it
Speaker 1: turns out that in about except for a course of treatment,
Speaker 1: that of first time patients will suffer again. And up
Speaker 1: to sixty percent of patients who have experienced two episodes
Speaker 1: are doomed for another. So there, up until now, and
Speaker 1: we will talk about people transplants and a little bit
Speaker 1: there really wasn't a good course of action to take
Speaker 1: against this, Yeah, because again it just keeps being a problem,
Speaker 1: and so you've destabilized the region and then no matter,
Speaker 1: subsequent carpet bombings don't seem to be helping somehow. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: another bacterium reeks quite a bit of havoc and again
Speaker 1: very hard to treat. We're talking about k pneumonia or
Speaker 1: albusiela um. Pneumonia is a type of Gram negative bacteria
Speaker 1: that can cause different types of healthcare associated infections. We're
Speaker 1: talking about pneumonia, bloodstream infections, wound or surgical fight infections,
Speaker 1: and meningitis, and it too has developed antimicrobial resistance and
Speaker 1: recently to the class of antibotics known as carbon panems.
Speaker 1: So this is something that's really hard to treat right now. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that the of the cell of bacteria,
Speaker 1: they're normally found in the human intestines, where they don't
Speaker 1: cause any disease. Where it becomes a problem is when
Speaker 1: they enter the respiratory tract to cause this pneumonia or
Speaker 1: the or the blood to cause a bloodstream infection. The
Speaker 1: thing about this is that as debilitating as they are,
Speaker 1: it is known that fecal transplants can vanquish these And
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick print when we get back.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about how all this goes down.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back, and yes, we're talking about vecal transplants,
Speaker 1: or to use the more official term, fecal microbiotic transplantation
Speaker 1: or f e m T. That's right, And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we kind of touched on this. We tend to think
Speaker 1: of our do is just purely waste material, but by weight,
Speaker 1: sixty of our stool is bacteria. And we're talking about rich,
Speaker 1: beneficial stew of bacteria in a healthy individual. All, yes,
Speaker 1: that that turd is is alive there. Um, when when
Speaker 1: my son personifies the his waist and calls it a
Speaker 1: mama or a daddy pooh or something often baby poos,
Speaker 1: So they tend to come late in the movement. Um,
Speaker 1: he's he's really not too far off the off the chart. Um.
Speaker 1: And so the idea here, I think this is one
Speaker 1: of those ideas just to to to rond a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, when when you when you get past the
Speaker 1: shock headlines and the jokes, it really makes a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of sense, Like there's nothing really that wild or
Speaker 1: crazy or horrific about it. Um. You know, we've thrown
Speaker 1: articles about people transplants up on our Facebook page before,
Speaker 1: and we have a number of Facebook followers, and we
Speaker 1: have some some very bright bulbs out there, and some
Speaker 1: people who are just you know, getting their their hands
Speaker 1: around some science and as well, I mean people of
Speaker 1: all ages and greeds and and some people you know,
Speaker 1: react very viscerally to that. They're like, oh god, I
Speaker 1: would never do that. That's that's horrible, that's disgusting sounding.
Speaker 1: But but that's just the surface. Let when you actually
Speaker 1: get into the science of it when you when you
Speaker 1: look at yourself not as this singular individual, but as
Speaker 1: this this colony of bacteria. It makes perfect sense that
Speaker 1: you would deal with this imbalance by by by bringing
Speaker 1: balance in with a healthy um stool sample and implant
Speaker 1: that or somehow get that to the bowels. Well, but
Speaker 1: first you have to get over the idea of pumping
Speaker 1: into your colon someone else's poop, right, right, So if
Speaker 1: you think about it more like this, Hey, it's a
Speaker 1: treatment that's done by a colonoscopy. A lot of people
Speaker 1: have colonoscopies, right to's scary about that? I mean you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be. I mean, it's just it's an orifice. It's
Speaker 1: an orifice. There's a way and there's a way out,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you're gonna let professionals go in there. It's
Speaker 1: just how it works. It involves anesthesia or at least adation.
Speaker 1: There's a full bowel clean out previous to a f
Speaker 1: MT in a limited diet prior to the procedure out.
Speaker 1: How this all goes down is you get a healthy
Speaker 1: stool sample. That's key. They're not just grabbing anybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you you know, in the past, I think it
Speaker 1: was done more like, hey, maybe my brother or uncle
Speaker 1: give me a little sample, and you know that they're healthy.
Speaker 1: And then of course the stool gets sampled later to
Speaker 1: make sure that it's healthy. Yeah, it gets betted anyway,
Speaker 1: stool samples mixed with sailing and then pumped into the
Speaker 1: colon and then, as you say, the end result, uh,
Speaker 1: is a rebalance of gut flora that can eradicate the
Speaker 1: seed diff because on its own, your gut flora has
Speaker 1: been demolished. It cannot it just can't stand up to
Speaker 1: the sea diff. But someone else's, which is quite hardy,
Speaker 1: can really do a lot of damage to c DIFF. Now,
Speaker 1: I also want to add that the mixture can also
Speaker 1: be fed via a naso gastric tube. So this is
Speaker 1: the one that that goes in through the nasal passage
Speaker 1: and down the throat and down into the stomach. But again,
Speaker 1: rather different than poop. Just thing, don't it's it's hard
Speaker 1: not to hear that and not think they're gonna put
Speaker 1: poop in my nose. I know it's impossible to to
Speaker 1: get past the revulsion of that and the comedic value
Speaker 1: of that, but uh, you know, again, it's just an orifice.
Speaker 1: It's a way into the inner workings of your body.
Speaker 1: It's actually a bit trickier than a colonoscopy, like doing
Speaker 1: it through through your bum um. So even though some
Speaker 1: people might be put off by the idea of a colonoscopy,
Speaker 1: it's probably the better way to go. Now. Just to
Speaker 1: give you an example of of what sort of effect
Speaker 1: it has and how quickly it takes effect, the Mayo
Speaker 1: Clinic in Arizona that their fm T team first performed
Speaker 1: a fecal transplant in two thousand and eleven for a
Speaker 1: patient with severe c diff And of course this stool
Speaker 1: was from the brother and according to Robert Ornstein of
Speaker 1: the Mayo Clinic, he says, unbelievably, the patient left the
Speaker 1: hospital twenty four hours after the procedure after having them
Speaker 1: bedridden for weeks. That is how effective this treatment is.
Speaker 1: D there and there are plenty of examples of success stories.
Speaker 1: This is not one of those things where you know,
Speaker 1: they say, well, one person used this crazy technique and
Speaker 1: it happened to work in this one instance, but it
Speaker 1: hasn't really been vetted. We've seen we've seen account after
Speaker 1: account of of f m T s producing results restoring
Speaker 1: the balance to two bows. That are plagued by by
Speaker 1: these conditions that we've discussed. In fact, just to to
Speaker 1: go back to the K pneumonia, just last month here
Speaker 1: in UM at the Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, they
Speaker 1: treated a thirteen year old girl who who had this
Speaker 1: condition with a feel microbiotic transplant and they used it
Speaker 1: to successfully clear the infection. Yeah, and we will not
Speaker 1: go through the litany of things that happened to her
Speaker 1: because of K pneumonia, but it was I mean, she
Speaker 1: was suffering greatly because it was just one thing after another. Now,
Speaker 1: I think another good marker of this being a success
Speaker 1: is the fact that someone is monetizing it. And when
Speaker 1: I say someone, I'm talking about a company called open Biome.
Speaker 1: It was that's biom bio Emy. It was launched in
Speaker 1: two twelve and it is the only independent nonprofit school
Speaker 1: bank in the country in the US. It is the
Speaker 1: brainchild of m I T post doc associate Mark Smith.
Speaker 1: And what they do is they collect, test and provide
Speaker 1: becal samples too hospitals and thirty three states for these
Speaker 1: f m T s. Yeah, I was looking around and
Speaker 1: it looks like the prices currently you're looking at two
Speaker 1: fifty per sample of the poop. And again that's vetted poop.
Speaker 1: This is good stuff, this is premot poop, and this
Speaker 1: is what the hospital would pay for it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't really go to the website in order or
Speaker 1: or certainly don't binding off Amazon if it looks like
Speaker 1: someone's selling it. Um. Yes, So that's a two fifty
Speaker 1: million lead sample of a fecal microbota prepared for lower
Speaker 1: transplant delivery, which we already talked about, or a thirty
Speaker 1: million leader sample for the upper trans planned delivery again
Speaker 1: through the nasal passage and down in the stomach. The
Speaker 1: person who donates the poop, well, they're paid forty for
Speaker 1: each deposit. Now, if you want to become a paid
Speaker 1: donor to open biome, you have to undergo really thorough screenings.
Speaker 1: Of course, we're talking about question health history with a
Speaker 1: physician to a travel history analysis, and of course recent
Speaker 1: use of antibotics, because if you've used antibotics, and you're
Speaker 1: probably not a contender, right right, because you've carpet bombed
Speaker 1: the civilization that's producing the poop that they're interested in.
Speaker 1: I like how this could be a real game changer
Speaker 1: in um UM College dudes making a little extra money, like,
Speaker 1: no longer do they have to I would not restrict
Speaker 1: it to the dudes. Oh well, that's true, that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean I was just thinking about it in terms
Speaker 1: of sperm donation. Of course, the other side of that
Speaker 1: being egg donation. But but the poop donation easier than both. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's great. It's like again, it's kind of
Speaker 1: again like a blood bank donation, although you're getting paid
Speaker 1: for this now one waste material anyway, right, what are
Speaker 1: you gonna deal with it? It's gonna flush it um.
Speaker 1: Once a donor sample is reviewed by a lab for
Speaker 1: any infectious agents in the health of the bacteria. The
Speaker 1: donor's blood is then tested for standard blood borne diseases
Speaker 1: we're talking about hepatis, ABC, syphilis, HIV, AIDS, and then
Speaker 1: finally you can progress to the actual physical donation part
Speaker 1: of it all. Yeah. Again, so you can think about
Speaker 1: it in terms of any kind of blood or tissue,
Speaker 1: uh sample that is that is taken and then reused
Speaker 1: and sort of transplant environment. Is it's going to be vetted,
Speaker 1: it's gonna they're gonna look for all these various diseases
Speaker 1: before it ever takes that it's the saline blended form. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the one of the things about this it
Speaker 1: leads you to the question of like how good is
Speaker 1: that poop sample? You know, Like then you begin to
Speaker 1: really sort of great. And I'm sure, right, I'm sure
Speaker 1: that lab is like, this is great. It's got so
Speaker 1: much beneficial gut flora in it. But there's one researcher
Speaker 1: who really took this to the extreme, and I'm talking
Speaker 1: about hunting down artisanal hunter gatherer poop. Now, this is
Speaker 1: from the first paragraph of a Popular Science article by
Speaker 1: Emily Gertz, writing about the scientists who traveled around the
Speaker 1: world to give himself an f MT essentially, and it
Speaker 1: goes a little like this. This is him writing, quote,
Speaker 1: as the sunset over a lake aase in Tanzania, nearly
Speaker 1: thirty minutes had passed since I hadn't served at a
Speaker 1: turkey baster into my bum and injected the feces of
Speaker 1: the heads a man, a member of one of the
Speaker 1: last remaining hunter gatherer tribes in the world, into the
Speaker 1: nether regions of my distal colon. Indeed, those are the
Speaker 1: words of Jeff Leach Lee, and he at this point
Speaker 1: It's important to know that he'd been living with the
Speaker 1: hasda uh, these hunter gathers for for over a year.
Speaker 1: He was he was immersed in their culture, and he
Speaker 1: was His prime motivation, he claims, was to study quote
Speaker 1: microbial extinction, uh, something I believe we suffer from in
Speaker 1: the Western world and maybe at the root of what's
Speaker 1: making a six. So the idea here is he's interested
Speaker 1: in these people's um microbiota in their stool because they
Speaker 1: perhaps they have things that we no longer have because
Speaker 1: we've been carpet bombing our our stool for so long
Speaker 1: with antibiotics that we don't even have a natural sample
Speaker 1: to turn to in the world around us. That's his
Speaker 1: his curiosity, his his argument. Yeah, Now the heads are
Speaker 1: um wandering foragers and they eat a diet of roots,
Speaker 1: berries and game. Okay, this is one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why he was interested, because they don't have the influences
Speaker 1: of the Western world. Now. According to the study, which
Speaker 1: compared stool samples from sixteen Italian urban nights and twenty
Speaker 1: seven heads of foragers of both genders, the heads of
Speaker 1: guts are home to a microbial community unlike anything that's
Speaker 1: been seen before. In a modern human population. And the
Speaker 1: idea is that perhaps the gut floor is what the
Speaker 1: human gut microbiome looked like before our ancestors figured out
Speaker 1: to farm about twelve thousand years ago. So again, he's
Speaker 1: very interested in seeing what the sort of set point
Speaker 1: is before all these other influences began to change our diets.
Speaker 1: Primordial pop if you will, poop Alyssa curtaindon she's a
Speaker 1: nutritional anthropologist from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, says quote,
Speaker 1: many of the bacteria are species that the researchers had
Speaker 1: never seen before, and even familiar microbes were present in
Speaker 1: unusual levels and the hads of belly. So I start
Speaker 1: to think about this, like if you began to extrapolate
Speaker 1: this or normalize it, then you can see how stool
Speaker 1: samples might be divided into different price points, as I
Speaker 1: had said, depending on the donor's dietary profile. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like you might be able to flip through a book, right,
Speaker 1: just like a donor book and um, and then if
Speaker 1: you especially if it continues to bear out that gut
Speaker 1: flora can influence anything from like Parkinson's dissay ease to
Speaker 1: obesity you may see this normalized to such a degree
Speaker 1: that people are willingly undergoing f m T suh. Not
Speaker 1: because they're in pain and they have something like c DIFF,
Speaker 1: but because maybe they just want to try to lose weight,
Speaker 1: or maybe they even feel like it would rebalance there
Speaker 1: their emotional states. Yeah, because as we discussed before, I mean,
Speaker 1: the mind does not exist in its own little bubble
Speaker 1: out here in the ether. H. It's not piped into
Speaker 1: us from some external soul. That the way that we
Speaker 1: think every day, the way we interact with their environment,
Speaker 1: it's all depending on what's going on in the body
Speaker 1: as a whole. So yeah, it would make I could,
Speaker 1: I could easily see that that reality coming about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we we even have an episode I think it's
Speaker 1: called as the gut, the second brain, that goes more
Speaker 1: into this idea of our guts regulating our moods. But
Speaker 1: of course all of this um, this idea of taking
Speaker 1: of just willingly doing a f m T is dependent
Speaker 1: on that normalization factor. And what is more normal than
Speaker 1: taking a pill? Yeah, I mean it's here in the
Speaker 1: modern Western world espectially, we love taking pills. We don't
Speaker 1: even care what what's in it. We'll take it. Just
Speaker 1: give it to us. You say we can treat something
Speaker 1: with a pill, great, give me four of them. So so, yes,
Speaker 1: some scientists have been looking into ways to take f
Speaker 1: MT and get it away from the UH, the Turkey
Speaker 1: based nasal UH to being um conoscopy route and getting
Speaker 1: more into something that is UH that is more medicinal
Speaker 1: UH in form and so a study published in October
Speaker 1: this year to fourteen in the Journal of the American
Speaker 1: Medical Association showed that the ingestion of frozen fecal matter
Speaker 1: contained in capsules resulted in a success rate among subjects
Speaker 1: suffering from recurring seed death infections. So it's the idea,
Speaker 1: you freeze it, put in the capsule and then send
Speaker 1: it on its way. I mean, it's taken the same
Speaker 1: route as those those nasal upper transplant to delivery system.
Speaker 1: So why not. Yeah, And again we're talking about fecal
Speaker 1: matter that was you know, surveyed, and it was sampled
Speaker 1: and made to be sure that it was healthy, and
Speaker 1: once it was capsulized, it was that was given to
Speaker 1: the subject. They were giving fifteen capsules on two consecutive
Speaker 1: days and then observed for up to six months. And
Speaker 1: now This gets really granular here. It says their daily
Speaker 1: number of bowel movements dropped from a median of five
Speaker 1: a day prior to the first capsule to two on
Speaker 1: day three and one at week eight, And it says
Speaker 1: subjects experienced no serious side effects. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: a no brainer, right, because you're talking about capsules taken,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of minutes a day, as opposed
Speaker 1: to a colonoscopy, which is an actual medical procedure. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, so we get into a pill form. Um,
Speaker 1: we we get past the jokes and the shock headlines.
Speaker 1: We get a better understanding of how our bodies work
Speaker 1: and the importance of our microbiota. UM. Maybe we were
Speaker 1: even rebranded at some point, the cause you still have
Speaker 1: vecal in the title. Yeah, what do you want to
Speaker 1: rebrand it? Um? You know, I feel like if we
Speaker 1: were to rebrand it from vecal microbiotic transplantation to uh,
Speaker 1: something like intestinal microbiotic transplantation. I don't know if if
Speaker 1: that would work, but like that would be I think
Speaker 1: that would soften the blow a little bit. I M
Speaker 1: T I MT maybe a b MT. Yeah, we could
Speaker 1: just get bowl in there. I think we could do.
Speaker 1: But I feel like bowel has really entered into the
Speaker 1: vernacular or just in a positive off there and just
Speaker 1: call it a microbiot a transplantation, an empty Okay, I
Speaker 1: think we've got our thing, you know, the whole like
Speaker 1: you know, get rich quick team that we've been looking for.
Speaker 1: I think this is we apply for that small loan
Speaker 1: and then we start just marketing these I m T
Speaker 1: s out of the house stuff works office. I think
Speaker 1: there's only one additional thing standing in our way. What's that?
Speaker 1: That's the Federal Drug Administration. Yeah, because the FDA is
Speaker 1: still has yet to really get behind this as of
Speaker 1: this recording. As you're listening to this in two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: past this point, I mean, hopefully that the reality will
Speaker 1: change somewhat, but you know, they have a number of
Speaker 1: concerns because we're talking about a waste product being reutilized
Speaker 1: for use as a medicine, and they have a number
Speaker 1: of concerns about that. Yeah. In two thousand and eleven,
Speaker 1: when we first covered this topic, there there are a
Speaker 1: lot of naysayers out there saying it's not going to
Speaker 1: come to market because it's actually the cheaper version of
Speaker 1: trying to treat something, even though it's the more effective
Speaker 1: one and it's not going to get monetized. But here
Speaker 1: we are in two thousand and fourteen and we see,
Speaker 1: you know, now there's a pill form and it seems
Speaker 1: to be moving forward. So I feel like it's just
Speaker 1: a matter of time. Robert Ornstein's I'm just gonna read
Speaker 1: this little bit from him. He says that the microbiome
Speaker 1: of the gut is not inactive. It's diverse and plays
Speaker 1: many roles in health and well being that are just
Speaker 1: now being explored with molecular biology and the sequencing of
Speaker 1: these species. This can only get bigger. It's like the
Speaker 1: beginning of the space program. And I say, here here
Speaker 1: to that. Indeed, and you know, and we're gonna We're
Speaker 1: gonn continue to have studies are gonna come out about this.
Speaker 1: They're going to be more long term studies about that.
Speaker 1: That's one of the the reasons that has often been cited,
Speaker 1: UH concerning the FDA's concerns is that we don't have
Speaker 1: long term studies and potential side effects of of stool transplantation. UM.
Speaker 1: But but we'll see, like I say, is it's I
Speaker 1: think it's all going to come out in the end. Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't even mean to do that. Yeah, it was beautiful.
Speaker 1: Of course. One of the most exciting things I think
Speaker 1: it's come out of this is a little product called
Speaker 1: pooper RONI whoa are you talking about poop sausage? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I am all right, Well, um, when is this coming
Speaker 1: to market? Never? Well, you know, there's weirdly, there doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be any companies buying for this process, this
Speaker 1: this bacterial fermenting of sausage using fecal matter. Yeah, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that probiotics are a big deal, right, A
Speaker 1: probiotics yogurt is a big deal. Want why not poop
Speaker 1: sausage exactly? And that's what a bunch of scientists in
Speaker 1: Spain reasons when they were trying to say, hey, maybe
Speaker 1: we could introduce this probiotic profile to fermented sausage because
Speaker 1: we use bacterial fermentation. We've did a whole episode on
Speaker 1: fermenting and uh and and what's involved there? So we
Speaker 1: use these these in the preparation of our food. That's
Speaker 1: no big mystery, that's no revelation. And they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's two kinds of bacteria used most often in probiotics,
Speaker 1: and they're far more abundant and infant poop than an
Speaker 1: adult poop. And hey, they thought scratch head a lot
Speaker 1: easier to get. You can just get it out of
Speaker 1: the diaper, right, Yeah, and lo and behold these food
Speaker 1: microbiologists at Calonia's Institute of Food and Agriculture Research in Spain.
Speaker 1: They absconded with the poop. I say, I'm just counted.
Speaker 1: Uh probably they okated with the parents. They took the
Speaker 1: poop of forty three infants and they used it in
Speaker 1: the production of something called fhuet. I think I'm saying
Speaker 1: that right sauce. Yeah, and uh no. It is important
Speaker 1: to note that there was no actual poop in this sausage.
Speaker 1: We may say poop sausage, but the only bacteria cultured
Speaker 1: from the poop was used to create the poop sausage.
Speaker 1: And yet there's the association, right right, But you know,
Speaker 1: baby poop is kind of its own holy thing. I
Speaker 1: feel like we're a lot better about that. You have
Speaker 1: the baby showers where people actually engage in the game.
Speaker 1: Still where they have the candy bar in the diaper.
Speaker 1: I've heard about this, actually seen it, but it exists supposedly,
Speaker 1: So I feel like that's a sign that people are
Speaker 1: they're more okay with eating consuming baby poop or something
Speaker 1: made with baby poop than they are with this run
Speaker 1: of the mill adult human poop. No, especially if you
Speaker 1: consider that you know, newborn mostly is subsisting on mother's milk. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's not a lot of crazy. I mean, presumably
Speaker 1: there's no like Kraft macaroni and cheese in there. Right.
Speaker 1: They are wholly blameless creatures, and the same can be
Speaker 1: said of the the bacteria live in their excrement. There's
Speaker 1: purity and innocence in their poop, is what we're saying. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: So there you have it, fecal transplantation, poop, sausage. Anything
Speaker 1: you could want out of a podcast, we just pumped
Speaker 1: it into you. But do you want more, Well, head
Speaker 1: on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: If you were streaming this episode off of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com, Uh, do check out the
Speaker 1: landing page. In addition to you know, artwork, we always
Speaker 1: make sure that we have links to related content, So
Speaker 1: I'll include links to that microbiome article that we sourced
Speaker 1: as well as our podcast episode, uh and any other
Speaker 1: related We've done a number of episodes that deal with
Speaker 1: human waste and uh and digestion. We did a whole
Speaker 1: series on how food travels from one end of our
Speaker 1: body to the other end. So check those out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's the pooping duck episode two. I don't want to
Speaker 1: spoil that. Oh the colt uh? All right, Um, maybe
Speaker 1: you guys have some thoughts on f m T s.
Speaker 1: My question to you is, would you undergo an fm
Speaker 1: T if you found out it was like the beneficial
Speaker 1: sort of vitamin D. Although some people are on the
Speaker 1: fence about vitamin D, but it was like super beneficial
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah. Not just a life threatening situation where hey,
Speaker 1: this is your only way out of it. This is reinfection.
Speaker 1: We treat it, but just in terms of a near
Speaker 1: future situation where someone says, hey, you're feeling a bit blue,
Speaker 1: how about a little brown? How about it? Yeah? Alright,
Speaker 1: Like I'm telling you, you can really do this. I
Speaker 1: am keeping all right, send us your thoughts and you
Speaker 1: can do that by emailing us at Below the Mind.
Speaker 1: It has to work dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it have stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com