My vision for the future is that we can have less of a negative connotation towards the human microbiome and “getting dirty”. Today in class we touched on so many valuable points regarding gut health microbiome and being introduced to playing in the soil or with animals at a young age. Additionally we also talked about faecal matter transplants and eating poo. However, when talking about these we kind of ended off saying that there is a lot of ambiguity in regards to rate of success and helping with depression, etc. While I do agree that maybe in these cases, a faecal matter transplant is a bit of a stretch to help combat these issues, there are some super interesting and valuable clinical applications of restructuring poor gut health with the aid of faecal matter transplants. For example, in the study I have linked below, researchers find that faecal matter transplants can significantly repair the extremely damaged guts of opioid users. I hope that as a society we can value these findings and not doubt, but rather persist
with research to further the application of faecal matter transplants and “eating poo” as these can be super valuable when applying to the bigger picture (for example those who suffer from the opioid crisis). #EatPoo #HumanMicrobiome #GutHealth #UnleashValues
Link to study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-76570-9
Hey Hunter! What an interesting post! I would be super interested in hearing how you heard about this novel research!
Fascinating study, great work Hunter!
This is such a cool study thank you so much for sharing!!!!
Hi Hunter, thank you for your creative idea. I totally agree that our immune system and all the biomes in the body is the best protection for us. So we should all embrace what naurally exdowing in our body instead of try to avoid the dirt, the animals all those wild lifes.
Hi Hunter! I really like this post. There is a great sentiment that we need to accept when it comes to de-prioritizing the idea of cleanliness that has been served to us. Not to say that cleaning yourself is bad or unnecessary in any way, but that we need to reassess it like everything else. Not panicking and allowing our children to embrace the diversity in their microbiomes can actually benefit their health growing up. Using alternatives to soaps is also another key behavior that we can change too!
Hi Hunter, I agree that more research should continue to be done. I know that there is a lot of skepticism on this topic but it has actually existed for many years now and is likely not going to go away, hopefully highlighting the benefits of this practice like with this study we can help show people that it is a needed procedure.
Nice post, and thanks for linking the study! We definitely need to persist with FMT research. Based on patients treated for C. diff infections, I think it’s safe to say that these treatments don’t have the immediate and severe side effects that medication can cause, so it'd be great if FMT could treat other issues.
I can imagine there are many clinical applications of fecal transplants that are super promising, thanks for bringing this up! Feels very applicable to what @Clare Price said in class as well. I did a little bit of research on the situations in which FMT can be performed and it seems like it's pretty limited right now? Though this isn't something we all need in our lives, it is certainly something that could be expanded to improve medical care!