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Originally Posted by footfootfoot
I read about fecal transplants recently and although sketchy sounding, they make sense, especially after a boatload of antibiotics. From an evolutionary standpoint, and considering children and their propensity to put things into their mouths, it seems likely that we must have ingested at least some fecal matter (I'm sure a little goes a long way) in our lives, individually and as a species, and if that is the case then it makes sense that we evolved to need it or at least accommodate it in our guts.
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One of the weird but well-documented symptoms of autism is playing with one's own stools, and sometimes compulsively eating it. The medical term is
coprophagia. No one's ever studied it, but my personal theory is that this is an instinctive attempt to correct the gut flora, but we live in a society where the only stool they have access to is their own diaper, so it doesn't help them. I think it was Zen who mentioned once that mother kangaroos mix up a special goo of saliva and their own poo and feed it to their younguns before they leave the pouch, which is what establishes their first good colonies in their gut.
Quote:
Originally Posted by footfootfoot
Why the spontaneous vomiting in April? I must have missed another plot point when I ran out to get another beer.
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So, the diet that he's on is designed to completely starve out pathogenic bacteria. Several of these species have the ability to hibernate when food is scarce, that's known for sure, and
they say, anecdotally, that the hibernation cycles tend to go in three month intervals.
So the first two weeks you're on the diet, things are violently dying left and right, and you usually feel pretty ill, like a bad cold. Then the survivors go into hibernation, and you feel better. This is the point at which most people start having solid stools and minimal pain (for the first time in years, in most cases.) Then you have to just remain steady, until three months later the pathogens can't hold out anymore, and you have another round of die-off, usually involving a bit of vomiting or diarrhea with no other logical illness accompanying it. The guess is that some portion of the remaining pathogenic species are able to feed on the ones that died, so they're good to drop back into another 3-month hibernation.
This 3 month cycle is very predictable, according to people who are doing it. Minifob started in February, so he should have in theory had a round of die-off in May. BUT right at that time, his gym teacher taught the class how to make "healthy" smoothies that involved some sweeteners (i.e., bacteria food,) and he inexplicably grabbed one and gulped it even though he definitely knows better than to eat food he isn't supposed to have. (Some would claim this was an intense craving caused by the bacteria that was about to die.)
Then one day in July, he suddenly started vomiting for no reason. He's not generally a puker. No other illness, and he felt fine once it was done. Didn't think much of it until he randomly puked again in October, 3 months later. And he just did it a few days ago, in January. Potentially, we're on a cycle that got delayed by roughly two months with the accidental ingestion of that small amount of sugar. If so, he should puke again in April. And if he does,
that will presumably be the true one-year mark of being on this diet, and we should (again, anecdotally,) expect a big improvement as the 12-month die-off is said to be a big turning point for most people.
Then again, he's not most people. He's still only having solid stools about half the time. So I guess we'll see in April.
