Woman gave HERSELF poo transplants to treat IBS – then developed brother’s acne and boyfriend’s depression
A WOMAN gave herself DIY faecal transplants using her brother and boyfriend’s poop.
Though they eased her debilitating gut issues she suddenly had a new set of health issues to contend with, experiencing her brother’s acne and her boyfriend’s depression.
Daniell Koepke started experiencing irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) when she was at university, suffering from indigestion, stabbing pains from trapped gas and severe constipation.
She believed her gut symptoms were caused by her sugary diet, but five years of doctors visits did little to ease them.
With doctors at a loss to help, Daniell claimed she was given antibiotics “like candy”, going on six different courses of them a year.
Daniell was able to tolerate fewer and fewer foods without experiencing pain, losing weight as she cut more of them out of her diet.
Over time, she was only able to eat between 10 and 15 foods without gut discomfort.
“It’s really hard for me to remember what it was like to eat food before it became associated with anxiety and pain and discomfort,” she said.
Daniell took a cocktail of pills and supplements to compensate for her limited diet.
She knew she needed to repopulate her gut with healthy bacteria from plant foods, but found her symptoms flaring up whenever she tried to do so.
Feeling she “had no other options”, Daniell turned to DIY poop transplants, also known as faecal microbiota transplants (FMT).
These involve placing healthy poo from a donor to a patient’s gut, to help re-balance their gut microbiome and repopulate it with “good” bacteria.
An FMT starts with blending a healthy donor’s faeces with saline solution and inserting it into the recipient’s gastrointestinal tract, either through an enema, oral capsules, colonoscopy, or upper endoscopy.
Daniell spoke about her poop transplant journey for the Netflix documentary Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut.
“I think for most people it would be scary to a faecal transplant, especially when it’s DIY,” she said.
“I also think that most healthy people don’t know what it’s like to get to a place where you quality of life is so low, I felt like I had no other options.”
Experts speaking to the documentary warned against trying to do your own poop transplants at home.
“When you get an FMT, you get the good bacteria, but the bad bacteria could also come along for the ride,” John Cryan, a neuroscientist at University College Cork said.
Guilia Enders, a medical doctor who‘s written a book on the gut, told the documentary: “I would love it if this was the perfect solution. But all the gastroenterologists I know are extremely cautious.
“They could transplant the susceptibility to all sorts of diseases.”
Daniell initially made made faecal transplant pills from her brother’s poop.
She started to regain weight she’d lost was able to go to the bathroom naturally for the first time in three years.
What are faecal microbiota transplants (FMT)?
Faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is also called a stool or poo transplantation.
It’s a procedure that collects faeces from a healthy donor and introduces them into a patient’s gastrointestinal tract, usually performed by colonoscopy.
It can be used to treat:
- Diarrhoea caused by a type of bacteria called Clostridioides difficile (C diff)
- Symptoms caused by ulcerative colitis
FMT is thought to work by helping to rebalance the bacteria and other organisms (the microbiota) in your intestines.
A healthy digestive tract has thousands of bacteria, which are helpful to digestion or harmless in most cases.
But taking antibiotics for certain conditions can kill off many of the good bacteria in the colon, allowing bad bacteria, called C diff, to take over.
C diff can cause fever, diarrhoea and cramping.
Poop transplants are sometimes used to treat this condition, with studies showing that they’re more effective at preventing C diff reinfection compared to antibiotics.
What are the risks of FMT?
As FMT is made from a bodily fluid, there is a very small risk of harmful pathogens being transferred from the donor to the recipient.
This risk is minimised by getting donors to complete a screening questionnaire similar to those used at blood banks and for organ or tissue transplants.
Common side effects include:
- Reflux
- Tummy bloating
- A change in bowel habits (poo either become looser or harder to pass)
- A change in the smell of your poo
Occasionally patients will develop sickness or diarrhoea.
Poo donors are usually healthy volunteers. They must:
- Be tested for a wide range of bacterial and parasitic infections
- Be free of health problems
- Lead a healthy lifestyle
It’s not advised you try poo transplants at home, as your donor can’t undergo the same strict screening they would under healthcare settings.
Sources: Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Johns Hopkins Medicine
But she also noticed her acne was getting worse.
Her brother, whose poo she was transplanting into herself, had a history of hormonal acne.
Jack Gilbert, a microbial ecologist at UC San Diego, told Business Insider that it’s possible that the bacteria in poop can influence inflammation in the recipient’s body, by affecting their metabolism and activating their immune response.
This would cause shifts in their hormonal activity, which could promote the bacteria that can cause acne on the skin, he explained.
Daniell decided to switch donors and use her boyfriend’s number twos instead.
Though he had no physical health problems, he did suffer from depression.
Daniell’s acne cleared, but her mental health suffered.
“Over time, I realized my depression was worse than it’s ever been in my life,” she said.
Daniell believes that whatever microbes were playing a role in his depression were transplanted into her.
When she once again switched back to her brother’s poop transplants, the depression went away within a week, she said.
Dr Gilbert said people with depression are missing certain bacteria from their gut, according to his research.
“She may have had the ‘anti-depressant’ bacteria in her gut, but when she swapped her microbiome with his, her anti-depressant bacteria got wiped out,” he explained.
Dr Gilbert told the documentary: “With faecal microbiome transplants, there is really compelling evidence, but the science is still developing.
“We’re still working on if it actually has benefits for wider populations and if the benefit is long-lasting.”
It comes after a man who tried DIY poo transplants using his mum’s faeces to ease his debilitating Crohn’s disease started experiencing her menopause symptoms.