I am my poop
May 9, 2017 5:29 AM   Subscribe

So, you might have heard about fecal transplants- did you know they can have strange side effects? Listen to this six minute Melbourne radio segment (ABC Melbourne) that perhaps isn't meal appropriate.

Fecal transplants have been around for a while, as attempted treatment for dysentery in the middle ages* and in modern medicine since the 1950s*, however we are still learning more about the human microbiome and what happens when we change it. Research suggests that although the treatment works quickly, the gut flora undergo changes for at least three months afterwards.

Additionally, some faecal transplant patients have reported a change in mood- 'catching' depression from their depressed donor. Others report a change in weight (either under or over) again, to match the donor.

With more research to be done, perhaps it isn't time to DIY the procedure at home. (Horrifyingly real website.)

* facts from Interview with Associate Professor Patrick Charles linked above.
posted by freethefeet (29 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 


Is there a transcript?
posted by paper chromatographologist at 6:09 AM on May 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


Clicked on the DIY link, saw poop in a blender, noped out.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:12 AM on May 9, 2017 [4 favorites]


Ok but what if you could get like...Kelly Ripa's poop?
posted by schadenfrau at 6:56 AM on May 9, 2017 [6 favorites]


So if there's someone whose physique and personality I really like, do i..... uh.... you know - just.... ask them?

or....
posted by entropone at 6:57 AM on May 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


Mod note: So, yeah, this is about poop, I know, but if folks could stifle the urge to fill the thread up with early jokey stuff so people who might want to talk about the science and medical aspects can do that, it would be the opposite of shitty. Thanks.
posted by taz (staff) at 6:59 AM on May 9, 2017 [17 favorites]


"People who never had depression and received a faecal transplant from someone who has, can get depressed for the first time in their lives..." and they do go on to say that this could just be because the patient had obvious serious health issues anyway.

Or the idea that you're getting a poo injection might, y'know, bring you down. Especially the ones that are introduced per nasum. If my life has to include such procedures then fine, I'll take them. But there's nothing about the idea of having a shit smoothie piped through my schnozzle into my upper digestive tract that will make me compare it to a summer's day.

If you've got an hour and don't mind things like finding the microbiomic link between bacon and heart disease, and so on,, there's a great talk about the intricacies of diet, microbe metabolism and the whole gut ecosystem here by Claire M. Fraser, Director of the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. The sort of talk with detailed diagrams and 'because of this, I've changed my diet' stuff in. YHBW.
posted by Devonian at 7:08 AM on May 9, 2017 [9 favorites]


Or the idea that you're getting a poo injection might, y'know, bring you down.

Funny because to me it sounds really interesting... and with a bit more research, if this whole personality / weight thing can be nailed down, I would absolutely consider it as an elective procedure...

If it turns out we actually have 3 brains - human, lizard, and gut - and the gut one can be more or less engineered and modified at will, sign me up. I would like to be more active, with a slimmer build, and a more enthusiastic and positive outlook on life. And less runny stool.
posted by Meatbomb at 7:21 AM on May 9, 2017 [18 favorites]


Metafilter: less runny stool.

That said, the connections about gut flora and heath, starting with babies, how it (flora) develops, and similar gut-research on outcomes in adults is darn interesting.
posted by k5.user at 7:28 AM on May 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


This sounds like the premise for a great horror movie, and it's a shame Ed Wood isn't around to make it.
posted by PlusDistance at 7:53 AM on May 9, 2017


This sounds like the premise for a great horror movie, and it's a shame Ed Wood isn't around to make it.

Suddenly, "The Human Centipede" seems a bit more like research.
posted by briank at 8:12 AM on May 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


We like to imagine ourselves, the true core of ourselves, our soul, or innermost self, or what have you, to be somehow separate from our bodies, so discoveries like this always surprise us. But they shouldn't. Even though your gut microbes aren't part of you in the genetic sense, they're clearly a big part of you.

Heck, the microbes in your guts outnumber the other cells in your body. It should be obvious, intuitive even, that they'd have an impact on our behavior. But it isn't because we keep wanting to imagine that our true selves are separate from, above, such things.

As for engineering your microbiome to deal with mental problems, that sounds fascinating! Clearly more research is needed to see if the effect is controllable, if it can be used to produce what we'd term positive changes, and so on. But if so, yow! That's a whole new front opened up in all manner of medical and behavioral issues.
posted by sotonohito at 8:22 AM on May 9, 2017 [2 favorites]


Craigslist time!

Fat dude in search of skinny poop. Money no object.
posted by Splunge at 8:29 AM on May 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


Craigslist time!

Fat dude in search of skinny poop. Money no object.


I never knew Peter Thiel was on Metafilter.

I mean, seriously, that would be the next thing for him.
posted by Samizdata at 9:01 AM on May 9, 2017 [4 favorites]


> I never knew Peter Thiel was on Metafilter. I mean, seriously, that would be the next thing for him.

Next? What do you mean, next? They're already doing blood transfusions from young people to retain youthful vigor, so I'm pretty certain that they've engineered their gut bacteria to be in perfect balance, and they don't just poop, they uberpoop.

(Who guessed that Brave New World was going to come about with different genres of gut bacteria as the great differentiator?)
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:59 AM on May 9, 2017


I'm not buying this personality stuff because heavy use of broad spectrum antibiotics should also produce personality changes and there is zero evidence for this (or even evidence free claims of this!). This is the like the long lost twins have 10 strange things in common stories that ignore the infinite number of things they do not have in common.

I have no problem with gut biome transplant stuff though. If it works out it will be really cool and useful.
posted by srboisvert at 10:09 AM on May 9, 2017 [4 favorites]




This gut biome stuff is pretty fascinating. I lost about 70 pounds several years ago after I essentially stopped eating anything containing flour or sugar (I was actually avoiding salt, and most everything that contains flour also has high amounts of salt).

I was also taking probiotic supplements at the time to fight persistent, low-grade staph infection that manifested itself in zits and so on, on my arms and neck. It's something I normally get the temperature and humidity changes suddenly. A pharmacist had recommended lactobacillus acidophilus tablets for the condition, and it worked.

I often wonder if my weight loss was due in part to taking those supplements. Although I was walking for about two or three hours a day.

I experience Norovirus earlier this year, which totally nuked my gut flora. For the next few weeks I had zits on my face. My wife also came down with it, but it took her almost a month to recover. She came down with a weird virus and rash that we thought was scabies at first (but it wasn't).

I wish there were more semi-technical explanations about how the gut biome affects other parts of our body. I have heard that the gut biome can influence schizophrenia, for example.

That said, I tend to trust my doctor (and my pharmacist), rather than woo woo stuff...
posted by My Dad at 10:33 AM on May 9, 2017 [2 favorites]


Rabbits invented this.
posted by lagomorphius at 12:12 PM


Hee.
posted by zoetrope at 10:35 AM on May 9, 2017 [4 favorites]


Also if the theory that the appendix is an emergency intestinal flora repository there should be big differences in effectiveness in this treatment or any other gut biome effects between people who have their appendix still and those who do not.
posted by srboisvert at 11:27 AM on May 9, 2017 [4 favorites]


if folks could stifle the urge to fill the thread up with early jokey stuff

Remember, Metafilter has community norms against shitposting.

But seriously, this is interesting stuff. I have a few colleagues in neuroscience who have gotten very interested in the connections between gut flora and behavior. The connections, to be sure, are subtle, but real. Some brain-gut interactions are probably mediated by the immune system, and our understanding of how the brain and immune system interact is itself extremely limited, but it is almost certainly more important than is generally recognized. Some brain-gut interactions may be more directly mediated through viscerosensory and visceromotor systems, the former of which have privileged access to a part of the cerebral cortex called the insula, which is intimately involved in various cognitive processes including (but not limited to) feelings of disgust, decision-making, and moral judgments. The significance of the link between these processes and the information provided by the gut about the state of its microbiota (or the ability of the microbiota to hijack this link) is very unclear, but really provocative.

TL;DR, the scientific evidence around fecal transplants and cognition is a bit shitty, but I don't think we should be immune to our gut feelings that some movement here is likely. Poop jokes.
posted by biogeo at 11:37 AM on May 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


" broad spectrum antibiotics should also produce personality changes " I doubt there has been research on whether use of broad spectrum antibiotics changes mood. In fact, I bet this type of investigation is something drug companies avoid like the plague. I used to work at a hospital, and there was this abbreviation WNL, it means "within normal limits." The joke was, it means, "We never looked."
posted by Oyéah at 11:38 AM on May 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


I hope, and trust, that the blender is clearly labeled.
posted by CynicalKnight at 11:43 AM on May 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


Having just had my first colonoscopy ("you're fine, see you in 10 years"), which involves a through gut cleansing, I've wondered whether the gut biome I've been growing and hosting for 51 years will grow back different, and if so, what changes might be in store? I suspect there's not a lot of research on this, or the effects of broad spectrum antibiotics because the field is so new.
posted by jetsetsc at 12:59 PM on May 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


There is an article the current edition of German Spiegel Magazine. I haven't found an English version of it yet and, being in the current edition of the magazine, it would be paywalled anyways.

Here's a link to the paywalled article in German for anybody who does have a subscription and speaks the language. Some articles eventually get de-paywalled and some are eventually published in English on their international site. I have no idea if/when that might happen with this article.
I've searched for and linked some papers for the people mentioned and their research.

Disclaimer: I don't know enough to vouch for the quality of research and the trustworthiness of the people involved but it's certainly interesting if true. Generally speaking Spiegel Magazine seems usually pretty good about vetting their sources but they're certainly not flawless.

So, for what it's worth, here's some key points from the article:
  • Somalis who fled from civil war in the early 90s and settled in places like Canada, the UK, Sweden etc experienced increased diagnosis of autism among their children. According to the article they refer to it as the "Disease of the West" for lack of a dedicated term in their own language.
  • Canadian physician Derrick MacFabe, Toronto, has analyzed stool samples of autistic children of Somali refugess and immigrants and believes that the microbiome plays a role.
  • CalTech Microbiologist Sarkis Mazmanian also believes there to be a connection and has founded startup Axial Biotherapeutics to pursue that angle and to develop new forms of therapy. Here's a paper he was involved with that I found on cell.com: The Central Nervous System and the Gut Microbiome.
  • Autistic children appear to hav digestive problems at higher rates than non-autistic children including diarrhea, constipation, increased gas and more. They also tend to have abnormal gut floras compared to non-autistic children including larger populations of clostridia and suterella and less of the useful bacteria such as prevotella and bacteroides.
  • the link between gut flora and behavioral patterns might be connected the production of neurotransmitters but gut bacteria including dopamin, noradrenalin and serotonin. In addition gut bacteria process complex carbohydrates and convert them into short-chained fatty acids such as propionic acid that have an effect on the nervous system
  • MacFabe's theory is that the harmful gut bacteria produce a glut of these fatty acids which reach the brain and trigger a sensation of hunger for energy-dense food preferred by these bacteria
  • He injected rats with propionic acid and observed that the rats behavior changed towards hyperactivity, object fixation and nervous tics effectively triggering behaviors associated with autism. Found his paper on nih.gov: Short-chain fatty acid fermentation products of the gut microbiome: implications in autism spectrum disorders.
  • Researcher Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown (Arizona State University, Tempe) experimented on 18 autistic patients (referred to as "young" but no age range given) by wiping out their gut bacteria with antibiotics and clearing their guts with laxatives and then re-populating with gut bacteria from healthy individuals. After 8 weeks the donated populations had taken root resulting not only in improved digestion and regularity but also in an apparent reduction of behavioral patterns associated with the patients' autism. They want to test this method again in a more tightly controlled study. I found an article by her and her team on nih.gov: Gut bacteria in children with autism spectrum disorders: challenges and promise of studying how a complex community influeces a complex disease.
  • Interviews with Somali parents of autistic children who returned to Africa conducted by sociologist Claire Decoteau indicate that in some cases symptoms started fading upon return to Somalia. In one case a mother stated that her son completely recovered within a couple of months. Found her paper on repec.org: The "Western disease": Autism and Somali parents' embodied health movements.
Again, I'm in no position to evaluate the science and validity of this stuff but it seemed both interesting and closely related to the post.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 1:07 PM on May 9, 2017 [18 favorites]


Will it blend? Yeah, I guess it will.
posted by Termite at 3:22 PM on May 9, 2017


Kelly Ripa's poop?

Don't you think that in our increasingly Blade Runner-like future, there will be niche shops selling celebrity poop microbiome cultures, and all the scandal that eventually entails? Just think how much more worthy the poop of Harrison Ford or Snoop Dogg would be compared to, say, Sean Spicer's?

(Please note that I've left out a couple of paragraphs reflecting my unhealthy fascination with parasitology.)
posted by sneebler at 7:33 AM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


I mean, not to be creepy about it, but I would probably pay a lot of money for Kelly Ripa's poop now. Constant low-level hypomania and the metabolism of a ferret? Sign me the fuck up.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:56 AM on May 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Choose from our exclusive line of ultra-healthy VIP cultures!
  • Harrison Turd
  • Snoop Log
  • Trump Dump
  • Jonathan Frakes' No. 2
  • Deuce Bigalow by Rob Schneider
posted by Hairy Lobster at 12:18 PM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


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