2010-2011
2011-2012
2012
FROM FIT TO FAT and BACK AGAIN?!
If It's Good Enough for Rats It's Good Enough for Me!
Can FMTs Restore Lost Gut Flora & Reverse Metabolic Syndrome?
Why Am I Even Thinking of Doing This? BECAUSE 7 Years Ago...
=
SERIOUSLY unhealthy, fatigued, with Metabolic Syndrome, GERD, insomnia, obesity etc. Lyme does a lot of bad things but it doesn't give you diabetes or make you fat!
FIT ME
LYME DISEASE
One Year of Metabolism
Destroying Antibiotics
SO WHAT HAPPENED?
12 Months of Bombarding my Microbiome with Antibiotics....
Gave me a C.DIff INFECTION!
15,000 die yearly in U.S. from this
"hospital induced cholera"
NATURALLY my doctors wanted to give me MORE antibiotics which CAUSED the C.Diff in the first place...And just makes it WORSE.
THANKS ANYWAY BUT I THINK I'LL HAVE A FECAL TRANSPLANT INSTEAD!
HUH? YEP I remembered this NYT's article and decided to save my life because the antibiotics were literally killing me and major systems in my body.
Turns out FMTs have a 98% success cure rate for C.Diff infections which is PHENOMENAL by ANY medical Standard.
So Dr. Lawrence Brandt, head of Gastroenterology at Bronx Montefiore Medical Center performed one, with my husband as the donor and WHAMO I felt better that same day....
NO more living in the bathroom!
2012-2013
But THEN while I was researching FMTs my eye caught some articles about links between obesity and gut flora.
WHAT the heck does one have to do with the other??
APPARENTLY EVERYTHING!
Lean people have more diverse gut flora populations than obese people.
What about All those Cows?
I also remembered reading about the real reason the livestock industry fed their animals antibiotics:
They didn't know why, but it worked.
The American Gut Project had just launched.
SO I JOINED!
MY 2013 AGP RESULTS WERE NO SURPRISE
Compared to Michael Pollen and et al I had NO diversity in my gut flora. The most prolific microbes had survived the antibiotic carpet bombing and my symptoms lined up with those gut profiles that lacked diversity-obesity, metabolic syndrome et al. See over on the left column at the bottom where there are NO green blue or black bands?
NOT MUCH...for now...
ME ->
2013-2014
2014 - PRESENT
SO I STARTED RESEARCHING THE MICROBIOME
Why Do We Suddenly Know
So Much About Our Gut Flora? Remember the Hubble Telescope?
Prior to Hubble, viewing the Galaxy from earth was like trying to see the world from
under water - It was distorted by the atmosphere.
SUDDENLY THAT CHANGED
Hubble was launched ABOVE the
earth's atmosphere, where it now orbits with
a clear view of the UNIVERSE
changing our understanding of the COSMOS FOREVER...
Similar Technological Breakthroughs
In Microbiology Revealed a hidden Universe of Cosmic Proportions...
Gorgeous Visions of the "OuterVerse"
Thanks to Hubble Telescope
The MICROBIOME - a Previously Unchartered Inner Cosmos - is Revealed thanks to
Faster and Cheaper DNA Sequencing
Turns out we developed over eons around IT not the other way around changing the basic definition of what it means to be human and healthy, or NOT. Major systems in our bodies interact with the Microbiome based on a certain level of diversity. So where does that leave me with my depleted Microbiome?
MICROBE QUEST
CAN WESTERN GUTS EVEN BE CONSIDERED HEALTHY?
The biggest difference in healthy vs dysbiotic gut flora might be geographic and cultural. What if MOST Western guts, due to Dr. Martin Blaser's "Step Down Theory", have been stripped of their diversity over the past 200 years with the advent of industrialization and the race to unwild our inner microbiomes? According to Blaser, we are "generations into a hidden microbial extinction" due to antibiotics, C- sections,less breast feeding,
pollution and general obsession with sanitizers. We have inadvertently performed microbial lobotomies on our own bodies and unleashed an inner epidemic of the so called "Western Chronic Diseases" - obesity, diabetes, GERD, IBS UC, allergies, Parkinson's, MS, etc.
So in fact "Traditional" guts, those that reflect how our microbiomes might have looked when we first stepped out of the Savanna are becoming harder to find. Peoples still living the way our ancestors did are far and few between as modern medicine (antibiotics especially), food and lifestyles alter what might very well be the key to a healthier life - our ​"ancestral"microbiome according to Dr. Jeff Leach, Microbial Anthropologist and founder of the Human Food Project. Explore the missing links (thousands of them) with his ground breaking
research into our Ancestral Microbiome LEARN
CUTTING TO THE CHASE:
THUS my Ideal Donor would hail from a rural non-industrialized setting rich in bacteria our ancestors would have regularly been exposed to. Calling:
Africa, Asia, South America. Indigineous and Traditional Microbiomes welcome!
THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG
SO WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT GETTING HEALTHY MICROBES INTO MY SYSTEM?
PLENTY!
DUPLICATE SOME OF THE PROTOCOLS IN THESE STUDIES WITH A SUPER DONOR USING EXTENDED FMTS & TRACK THE RESULTS!
By Contrast most human studies are being done with one FMT or with poop pills.
PS. We are WAY beyond yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut and dubious probiotics-I need anaerobes not available via those delivery systems!
We don't know what we don't know but we know the Microbiome is as important as just having just discovered the function
of the brain and beyond!
Optimistic DIY stories with no gut analysis or medical tracking. I don't endorse recommendations by some FMT websites and gastroenterologists to
take antibiotics prior to the infusions - despite studies demonstrating against their use.
Like climate change it's not "debatable".
The complex relationship of one "Silver Bullet" bug pill vs communities of microbes will take years to tease out and deliver therapies tailored to dysbiotic patients in pill form.
The BOTTOM LINE
I am hoping to UNDO 18 years plus
ONE MEGA year of Antibiotics
Studies show it takes gut flora 3-12 months to recover from ONE course of antibiotics and just TWO courses to permanently damage your microbiome. This implies
millions are now dysbiotic to varying degrees. How do we reverse this massive "microbial lobotomy?"
I will need at LEAST 3 months of SUPER DONOR FMTs 3-5x weekly
Research being done on WESTERN vs TRADITIONAL GUT FLORA suggests that many trial donors may not even be healthy enough to be considered "Super Donors" which might be affecting the many human trials currently underway. My screening criteria are for positive attributes as well as for eliminating pathogens with extra credit for someone from the non-industrialized world who grew up on a farm!
Then 12-15 months of blood work and Gut DNA tracking
on monthly basis
I am speculating that it will take my micro biome
12-15 months to adjust to new microbes and hopefully show
Health Marker Improvements.
STAY TUNED!
