Unfortunately, they will never accept our poo
, so we have to say goodby to the poo-donor career option.
It's not all bad news. While your own poo is not suitable for others to use, it can still be highly beneficial to yourself when "recycled" as FMT using your own stool (autologous FMT).
Clinical trials into FMT for IBS and IBD are more getting into using some of the patients as the 'comparative placebo control treatment' to the donor FMT group in doing autologous FMT (a-FMT) and interestingly, there is always a percent of this a-FMT group that also achieve the end point goals of the respective studies. In some cases, that is as high as almost one third of the a-FMT controls.
Stool samples are collected from these 'a-FMT control' patients at time of the clinical trial, so presumably when the patient is sick and their stool composition would usually be considered to be far from ideal.
The research still doesn't know exactly what aspects of FMT confers the most health benefit and it's certainly not just coming from the transfer of 'beneficial' bacteria in the cases where a-FMT also achieves remission.
Benefit could also be down to the viral lode (natural phages), the fungal composition of the stool, or even the bile acids pool that gets eliminated via the stool, when these elements are transferred back to the start of the large bowel or into the small bowel. Maybe it also has a lot to do with colonoscopy prep clean out itself that most studies utilise before administering FMT treatments.
Regardless of whatever elements are involved in it all, the only way you could put a-FMT to the test on a d.i.y basis would be to make your own 'poop pills'.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7308243/
Autologous fecal microbiota transplantation for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (2020)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6602784/
The Effect of Allogenic Versus Autologous Fecal Microbiota Transfer on Symptoms, Visceral Perception and Fecal and Mucosal Microbiota in Irritable Bowel Syndrome: A Randomized Controlled Study (2019)
[ Conclusions: This study showed that a single FMT by colonoscopy may have beneficial effects in IBS; however, the allogenic fecal material was not superior to the autologous fecal material. This suggests that bowel cleansing prior to the colonoscopy and/or processing of the fecal material as part of the FMT routine contribute to symptoms and gut microbiota composition changes in IBS. ]
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29100842/
Faecal microbiota transplantation versus placebo for moderate-to-severe irritable bowel syndrome: a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, single-centre trial
[ Three participants did not undergo FMT and four were excluded after diagnosis of microscopic colitis, leaving 83 for final modified intention-to-treat analysis (55 in the active treatment group and 28 in the placebo group). 36 (65%) of 55 participants receiving active treatment versus 12 (43%) of 28 receiving the placebo (participants' own faeces served as placebo ) showed response at 3 months ]
