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DIY Fecal Transplant...would you try it?

Alvin2

The good news is patients don't die the bad news..
Messages
2,995
;-) Sure but I guess the discussion is now (or recent history) not then, at one time they thought mummypowder was the best treatment for everything. Still it shows how times are changing.
They are but sometimes i think the more things change the more they stay the same, people are just as susceptible to snake oil today as they were 100 years ago, and people forget the lessons learned a generation ago and want to undo progress because they don't realize (or want to realize) how we achieved progress in the first place

No I wouldnt try it for something else than gut problems. The one I know that got the treatment had severe IBS and knowing how that was I would try it to.
I do think we know very little about the microbiota, it has possible connections to many diseases from Parkinsons to obesity, but i would want to know what i am signing up for and that requires more research which is going to take decades at the current rate :bang-head:
 

barbc56

Senior Member
Messages
3,657
What's mummy powder and how many mummies do you need for a standard dose?

Edit.

I thought it might be something like baby powder that your mummy dusts on your bum. But since daddys can also do this and that's not included in the brand name, I discarded that theory. Then I got to thinking maybe the powder was used before daddies changed diapers. That's when I became unequivocally confused.

That is until I did some goggle research. Ewww.

http://www.oddlyhistorical.com/2014/04/09/mummy-powder-gruesome-cure/

Is mummy poop even better? I'd bet my bottom dollar any leftover poop would definitely be powder by now!
 
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barbc56

Senior Member
Messages
3,657
Okay, now I'm really unequivocally confused!


IMG_0315.JPG
 

ChrisD

Senior Member
Messages
472
Location
East Sussex

Mel9

Senior Member
Messages
995
Location
NSW Australia
Instead of this risky procedure, you could try taking probiotics

Members of My family with severe gut problems found a product with Clostridium butyricum, Bacillus mesentericus and Streptococcus faecalis (Probotic 3, AOR) completely got rid of the symptoms. Took a few weeks, and may not work for everyone but try different probiotics and see.
 
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AdamS

Senior Member
Messages
339
Instead of this ridky procedure, you could try taking probiotics

The guy on Reddit tried the following:

Xifixan, VSL3, symbioflor, Cholestyramine and a bunch of other probiotics before he tried FMT.

I have personally tried a range of quite pricey probiotics like Dr Mercola Complete Probiotics, Garden of Life Raw Probiotics (34 Strains) and Solaray Multidophilus etc. Unfortunately they had no impact on me. Infact, one of them seemed to trigger flu like symptoms, leading to a mini relapse, although this could have just been coincidence.

I have also tried Sauerkraut which did settle my stomach a little but didn't improve energy. I'm glad to hear that your family has had some success with probiotics though, I guess we all respond differently.
 

AdamS

Senior Member
Messages
339
Frankly this is highly risky, it may not seem like it but you could end up with a lot of diseases or weird symptoms like obesity, auto immune reactions that could result in death, personality changes, and so forth.

From what i'm reading, the risks don't seem to be anywhere as extreme as you say:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3060180/#!po=37.5000

I won't be doing FMT anytime soon, like with all treatments I think it's wise to wait for solid evidence, gross factor aside, it does seem like an interesting field though:

 

Alvin2

The good news is patients don't die the bad news..
Messages
2,995
From what i'm reading, the risks don't seem to be anywhere as extreme as you say:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3060180/#!po=37.5000

I won't be doing FMT anytime soon, like with all treatments I think it's wise to wait for solid evidence, gross factor aside, it does seem like an interesting field though:

The various links posted on this thread capture some of the risks, notice how each one has some that are not mentioned in others. Hence no one source is comprehensive yet, and again research is at early stages. I'm not saying this can never be viable and it should be stopped immediately, i am saying its quite risky (one source uses donors that are fit, your says related donors) and this procedure needs a lot more research. And besides your own link says
“With these studies, you tend to report the positive and not the negatives. … There’s a rather long list of nasty infections that can be transmitted from bodily fluids.”
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Don't you sometimes get the impression we talk a load of shit on this forum! Have you seen the number of threads on fecal transplants:

Fecal transplant threads on Phoenix Rising:


Perhaps the most interesting thread is the one about the Borody study, which claimed a 70% success rate in putting 42 out of 60 ME/CFS patients into full remission with a fecal transplant.

When 12 of these 42 patients put into remission were contacted by the researchers some 15 to 20 years later, 7 of these 12 where found to be still in remission after 15 to 20 years; but 5 of the 12 had relapsed back into ME/CFS after around 1.5 to 3 years later.

But note that the Borody study implanted cultured gut bacteria (Bacteroidetes, Clostridia, and E. coli) into the colon, rather than a fecal microbiota transplant. So that's not quite the same as FMT.

And note that at Borody's own clinic, the Centre for Digestive Diseases in Australia, he does not appear offer bacteriotherapy or FMT treatment for ME/CFS. According to the website, he treats ulcerative colitis and IBS with FMT, but not ME/CFS. So his study claims to have found an amazing cure for ME/CFS with IBS, but he is not offering this treatment at his clinic.
 
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Cinders66

Senior Member
Messages
494
One of the 4 major recipients of the recent Norwegian funding allocation was a RCT of fecal transplants. I hope this will shed light so people aren't left dabbling in confusion. I personally would try it now as I'm severe but it's not really feasible without evidence to get people onside.
 

ljimbo423

Senior Member
Messages
4,705
Location
United States, New Hampshire
Perhaps the most interesting thread is the one about the Borody study, which claimed a 70% success rate in putting 42 out of 60 ME/CFS patients into full remission with a fecal transplant.

When 12 of these 42 patients put into remission were contacted by the researchers some 15 to 20 years later, 7 of these 12 where found to be still in remission after 15 to 20 years; but 5 of the 12 had relapsed back into ME/CFS after around 1.5 to 3 years later.

7 out of 12 is still almost a 60% success rate after 15-20 years! I wonder how many of the people that relapsed went back to living a "normal" life. Eating a high carb and/or high sugar diet, poor stress management, etc. I think once cfs has been well established, it is much easier for it to reoccur, even with a FMT.

So if one does go into remission, I think one needs to take extra special care of themselves to stay in remission.

It would be really fascinating I think, if we new what the lifestyles of both the people that stayed in remission and the ones that relapsed were after the FMT.

I am making good progress, but I am certain that would be gone in a matter of weeks without a good diet, keeping my stress as low as I can, which isn't easy ;) and many supplements.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Thanks for putting this list together, it must have taken a while!

I already had a list of fecal transplant forum threads from my earlier research into this subject.

I'd like to see the Borody study replicated. He seemed to achieve a 41% long term ME/CFS cure rate (since 70% x 7/12 = 41%) with fecal transplant. Though note that most of the ME/CFS patients he treated had gut issues such as IBS, so he was focused on this IBS subset (and the ones without gut issues did not response to the treatment).

That figure at first glance seems a little too good to be true, and I read that in Dr Kenny De Meirleir's own trials of fecal transplant for ME/CFS, he found that this treatment does help, but its benefits only last for around 10 weeks (after which he says the bad bacteria would return).

And note that at Borody's own clinic, the Centre for Digestive Diseases in Australia, he does not appear offer bacteriotherapy or FMT treatment for ME/CFS. According to the website, he treats ulcerative colitis and IBS with FMT, but not ME/CFS. So his study claims to have found an amazing cure for ME/CFS with IBS, but he is not offering this treatment at his clinic.


Superdonors

However, if you listen to this interesting radio interview with Dr Thomas J. Borody, he says his team identifies people who he calls fecal transplant "superdonors", whose microbiome has a track record of curing many patients.

So it seems that not all fecal transplant material is equal. And this may be why Borody had a higher success rate in treating ME/CFS, because he may have used superdonors to supply the fecal transplants.


The idea of fecal transplant superdonors makes intuitive sense, if you think about it. With a fecal transplant, you are hoping that the donor bacteria is going to be tough and resilient enough to battle with and fight off the bad bacteria that you have in your gut.

And presumably some fecal donors are going to possess bacteria species that are good fighters, and can really kick arse in the intestinal battlefield, and ultimately win over the bad bacteria. These are the super donors.


This article talks about superdoners, and the "donor effect", which seems to be vitally important in the treatment of chronic diseases like IBD:
The effectiveness of FMT for C. diff has generated interest in using FMT to treat IBD. Results from a recent FMT-for-IBD trial suggest an unexpected possibility: although any well-screened donor appears effective for treating C. diff, it appeared that only one of six donors used in this trial produced feces that effectively treated IBD.
Note: FMT = fecal microbiota transplant; C. diff = Clostridium difficile (a bacterium which causes a frequently fatal intestinal infection that often only fecal transplant can cure).

So here they found that only 1 in 6 fecal donors possess a microbiome that is tough and resilient enough to treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

I imagine for ME/CFS treatment, you might also only get a good long term result when you receive a fecal transplant from a superdoner: your average healthy, well-screened donor is fine for treating Clostridium difficile infection, but may not provide the right sort of fecal transplant microbiome to create a long term benefit in ME/CFS.


More information on fecal transplant superdoners in this article:
Superdonors

Dr. Bartlett's group is interested in investigating the idea of superdonors, a concept that originated with a 2015 study published in Gastroenterology evaluating FMT as a therapeutic intervention for patients with active ulcerative colitis. Of 70 patients in the study, nine who received FMT achieved remission. Seven of those patients received stool from a single donor, raising the possibility that fecal material from some donors may be more effective than stool from others.

In another study, published in 2016 in Science, UK researchers disputed the idea of a universal donor, arguing instead that compatibility between donor and recipient microbial strains was responsible for successful transplant outcomes.
 
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