Hmmisme said...
That’s awesome, thanks for the info. I see most are available on Amazon.
Side thought — If the reactive O2 theory is a plausible cause of UC, would fecal transplants have any effect on UC?
UC generally shows very poor response to FMT. I speak from experience on that one. I partook in a clinical trial with an infectious disease specialist running it. I received 8 FMTs over 6 weeks, and I flared so badly that I almost died (lost 80lbs in a month). I developed a perianal abscess that had to be surgically drained and took months to heal. It was my worst flare ever. I cringe to think about
it. Interestingly though, a year later when I was in remission and tested my microbiome, my diversity was WAY higher than it was on any other test prior. So the FMT worked to raise diversity, but it didn't stop my UC whatsoever!
UC is caused by oxidative stress in the colon that comes from *within* the cell. So that's always happening in UC patients, no matter what else is going on. UC pathophysiology takes place in 2 stages: 1) Hydrogen peroxide from WITHIN the cell leaks out and corrodes the gut wall. 2) Gut bacteria infect the colon wall and trigger an inflammatory immune response.
So, dysbiosis makes #2 worse because the bacteria that tend to overgrow are ones more prone to invading the gut wall and causing irritation/inflammation. On the flip side though, those same bacteria are the only ones that thrive during a flare, so they will naturally appear the most abundant during that time anyway. It's like the chicken and the egg! E. coli and LPS species especially thrive on the blood of UC ulcers, and animal protein in general. Lactobacillus for example die off like crazy around ulcers because the mucosa isn't stable enough for them to colonize.
If you've taken lots of antibiotics over the years and you have important species that are totally extinct, then no diet will ever replace them. In those situations, dysbiosis is hard to fix because you can't just eat the right foods to make good bacteria populations grow larger -- they are completely gone. In those cases, if you get proper FMT, then you can reintroduce those extinct species and you can begin the process of repairing dysbiosis through diet, etc.
But if those species remain extinct, then more resilient species like e. coli and c. diff can take over, and those can cause oxidative damage to the bowel. LPS producers like bacteroidetes also tend to takeover when diversity is low. When they die naturally, their protein coat releases LPS which damages the colon wall which = oxidative damage. This is why so many UCers believe that UC is an infection. They're right, it is! But it's an auto-infection, not a parasitic infection. It's your own gut bacteria overgrowing and invading a colon wall that was weakened by hydrogen peroxide being released from within the cellular environment.
Most UC patients don't have *extinct* species, they just have such bad dysbiosis that the good bacteria have very, very small numbers. But as long as even one bacterium of a specie is still alive, it can repopulate in the presence of proper diet and the absence of inflammation.
So my advice would be... unless you have something like a c. diff infection, which FMT shows a 99% cure rate for, you should wait until your UC is in remission (or close to it) to consider FMT. If you get your gut biome tested in the middle of a flare, it will show major dysbiosis because only certain species thrive on an inflamed mucosa. Our gut balance is the WORST while flaring! So the reading won't be accurate. The vast majority of UC patients in the FMT focus groups I've been in who got FMT during a flare had results that fell into 3 common categories: 1) They got worse immediately (the majority); 2) They had very marginal improvements that took a long time and tons of FMT sessions (more than 10, spanning months); 3) It did nothing whatsoever. Only a minority that did NOT have a c. diff infection... I would wager 5%... got better from FMT.
The general advice in the FMT communities for people like us is to wait for remission or very close to it before attempting FMT. In hindsight with my FMT, this is logical. You are flooding an inflamed bowel with foreign feces that might have bacterial species that your body isn't familiar with, in addition to the ones it *is* familiar with it. It might incorporate the familiar ones instantly but have a harsh immune response to the foreign ones. I think that's what happened to me! Those foreign ones might've done great in the donor's gut, but not in mine! My inflammation exploded and almost killed me. The almost-dying factor from FMT is not common though and I think was relatively unique to my case because my immune system is just so bloody aggressive to invasion.
Post Edited (VanJordan) : 4/4/2022 1:31:17 AM (GMT-6)