In the future, it may become more common with refrigerators filled with human feces.
A group of researchers at Harvard Medical School claim that if you save on your stool now, it could save your life one day.
Researchers Shanlin Ke, Scott T. Weiss and Yang-Yu Liu write this in an opinion piece at Trends Molecular Medicine.
Donate to yourself
In the article, the researchers conclude that it is wise to collect stool samples from humans while they are at a young age and disease-free.
This can then potentially rejuvenate the human gut microbiome, using autologous FMT, as a person gets older or develops intestinal diseases.
FMT (Fecal microbiota transplantation) means a transmission of intestinal flora from a healthy person to someone who has a disease that disrupts the intestinal flora, according to Helse-Nord.
– MINUS 80 DEGREES: The image from the OpenBiome laboratory shows a bottle of feces that has been frozen down to -80 degrees Celsius. Photo: Steven Senne
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Such a transplant has been used before, but what is new now is that both the donor and the recipient are the same person.
The idea is to put your own, fresh stool in a bank in case you yourself need it in case of illness later in life. In other words, your young and healthy “I” can donate poop to the sick “you” later in life.
Can help against disease
The treatment involves injecting a fresh intestinal flora into the intestine when you have become ill with intestinal-related diseases.
Usually, the fresh intestinal flora has been transported through a tube to the intestine, but new and simpler methods are still being worked on, which are also more comfortable for the patient.
The three researchers behind the article in Trends Molecular Medicine, hope to be able to fight inflammatory bowel disease, obesity and unhealthy aging by freezing feces that are later used again by the same person.
More research is still needed in this area, but experts also hope that autologous FMT can help rebuild patients’ microbiota in the gut after chemotherapy and serious illnesses.
According to Large Norwegian encyclopedia microbiota is a collection of microorganisms that live on the inner and outer surfaces of humans, animals and plants.
Vital feces
NBC News writes that assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University, Christine Kee Liu, believes that a future with autologous FMT is possible as we already have storage practices for egg freezing and umbilical cord blood banking.
The research article states that an intestine is healthier when it has a diverse selection of microbiota.
Your own stools can be vital as previous studies show that people with less biodiversity in the gut are more likely to experience heart failure.
Older people who have a diverse microbiota in the gut are often healthier and live longer, writes NBC News.
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