Thanks to Kristina at the Intestinal Gardener for this great link to a TEDMED YouTube Video.
Jonathan Eisen is an evolutionary biologist who eloquently tells the story of the friendly bacteria with which we share our body. He explains how we are more bug than human, how these bugs keep us healthy and how the scientific community has only belatedly in the last 15 years begun to acknowledge this reality, after 50 years of embracing routine anti-biotic subscription and caesarean births.
As someone who was caesarean delivered, prescribed anti-biotics for decades and ended up with chronic dysbiosis cured by a fecal transplant, I was transfixed.
This intriguing story of our Great Microbiome is a must-view for anyone struggling with dysbiosis in their gut and considering FMT.
Jonathan Eisen is an evolutionary biologist who eloquently tells the story of the friendly bacteria with which we share our body. He explains how we are more bug than human, how these bugs keep us healthy and how the scientific community has only belatedly in the last 15 years begun to acknowledge this reality, after 50 years of embracing routine anti-biotic subscription and caesarean births.
As someone who was caesarean delivered, prescribed anti-biotics for decades and ended up with chronic dysbiosis cured by a fecal transplant, I was transfixed.
This intriguing story of our Great Microbiome is a must-view for anyone struggling with dysbiosis in their gut and considering FMT.
2 comments:
The problem is they will characterize the microbiome from a functional standpoint in 10-20-30 years, and then some more to develop therapies, i have also followed with great interest this area of research and unfortunately at the moment there's just a big hype and little to no clinical application. They will come but when if you are suffering today?
FMT has it's risks 5% of people treated for Cdiff in a big study developed autoimmune disease, which confirms that they are gut derived but at the same time it raises some questions regarding safety. The detection and confirmation of bugs that control autoimmunity, mood and cancer pathways is a long way off unfortunately I'm afraid. We need a more ad-hoc way of doing research than these big studies that take forever....
I was unaware of this study but the risk of developing auto-immune disease doesn't surprise me given the role of the gut in the immune system, the prevalence of auto-immune conditions in people with gut problems and the fragile state of the guts of those who finally resort to FMT. Ultimately whether the 5% risk is worth taking depends on how sick a person is and how much more they can bear. But as always, is best to be informed.
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