My understanding is that as of now we know waaay too little about the gut microbiome to make this “direct search in microbiome composition” viable. For example, we basically have no clue about bacteriophages in the gut. Yet they probably play an important role in gut health, and in the efficacy of FMTs.
Also, even if we knew exactly what composition we wanted, we aren’t very good yet to “synthesize it”/grow it in the lab.
Sure, “the reason it doesn’t work better is because we need better donors” sounds like a nice excuse. But it is at least suggestive that this is indeed the case. The better the donor criteria, the better the study outcomes. If we extrapolate this to even higher criteria…
Btw. poor donors are not the only (avoidable!) reason FMTs often show poor results. See the post.
Nobody is saying that only athletes are super donors. They are not. But beign a top athlete is a good proxy for being “exceptionally healthy”, and there are some studies supporting the claim that athletes are good donors.
That person you are describing sounds like a potential super donor! Can I get in touch with him? Can he reach out to Human Microbes?
You are right, that wasn’t smart. You want “Type 3” stool on the Bristol scala. That’s dry, firm stool. I edited the post accordingly.
Well, if you have money, the best option IMHO is Human Microbes: https://www.humanmicrobes.org/recipients . They currently charge $1000/stool, and you likely need several ones for more complex gut issues. It’s probably the best value per buck you get commercially. You can get it cheaper from them (“them” really being just one person, Michael Harrop) if you “significantly contribute to the HM project, e.g. help them find super donors).
Another option is finding a super donor yourself. Someone who gives you multiple stools for free/cheaper. That’s what I’ve been trying to do. It’s very hard. My main motivation for this blog post is finding super donors for me personally.
Let me know if you want to somehow collaborate with gut issues, search for super donrs, etc.
Wow, that would be fantastic if you forwarded this article to those folks! Thank you :)
I’m confused. Human Microbes is already being done with hardly any money? Michael Harrop is basically a complete amateur, and he’s been doing it for a while now.
What do you mean with Human Microbiome. What project are you talking about?
Sure, the things you mention need FDA approval and are super expensive.
fightaging.org on “Towards the Use of Fecal Microbiota Transplantation to Rejuvenate the Gut Microbiome”: https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2022/07/towards-the-use-of-fecal-microbiota-transplantation-to-rejuvenate-the-gut-microbiome/
One trick helpful to me: Do this in your native language. Many aren’t native English speakers, but because so much they read about emotional growth and many of their “emotional growth conversations” are in English (bc most EA/LW meetups are in English, even e.g. here in Germany), it can be tempting to do Focusing in English as well. In my experience, this is a mistake.
No. First of all we don’t know which microbes and in which quantities we want. We have more or less no clue what constitutes a good microbiome. Bacteriophages also seem to play an important role that we know even less about. That’s the beauty of FMT—we don’t need to know!
Second, most microbes in the gut are anaerobic and thus cannot be grown easily. There is not a single anaerobic probiotic available at this point. That’s why probiotics don’t come even close to replacing something like FMT, which is done suh that bacteriophages and anaerobic microbes survive.
The problem of “growing artificial poop in the lab” for e.g. FMT pills, is similarly difficult/impossible at this point like growing ordinary “dirt”.
Re. your first question: Not really known, but you can make educated guesses after reading Human Microbes FMT wiki.
Second question: There is a pretty active FMT online community. E.g. there are several facebook groups. Ppl have been doing this privately for a while now.
Nice review! Deserves more karma than it currently has!
That’s true. However, it’s hard to know in advance how severe a trauma is.
I’ve started doing self-administered EMDR about 6 months ago, and I’ve been using it very regularly since then, maybe 4 times a week. About half of the time that I do it it feels like it does “something”, and maybe every 1 in 10 times it feels like a bigger breakthrough. I’ve noticed big changes in my behaviour and emotional life over the last 6 months. However, I’ve been combining a lot of therapeutic stuff, not just EMDR.
These are all excellent questions! Unfortunately, I don’t have definite answers. I’ve read somewhere that the idea is to tax the working memory as much as possible such that you can just barely hold an emotional felt sense at the same time as well.
I’d be very interested if someone does some more reading and research on this!
What I personally do: The more intensive the felt sense feels, the harder I focus on the EMDR “distractions”, and vice-versa.
Yes