Human shit trumps bullshit

Rabbits do it, dogs do it, carnivorous plants, insects do it, even butterflies do it, and now we know millions of people do it too:
Coprophagy is the consumption of feces, whether it is your own or others', sometimes out of habit, for necessity, or because you have a mental issue.
Coprophagia, although carries its risk, may not be as risky as, say, voting for an unfit person to be in charge of millions of people!

When dogs eat their own poo, they are craving something that is in their poo and is missing from their diet, often a dried food one, which may leave them without critical digestive enzymes.

When humans engage in coprophagia, unless therapeutic, there usually is an underlying mental issue, such as neurodegeneration, schyzophrenia, OCD, or fetishism (here).

But of course, there is the therapeutic poo ingestion (by colonoscopy) I've already told you about, which has been shown to help patients with c.difficile infections who suffer from persistent painful diarrheoa.
Clinical trials have also shown fecal microbiota transplantation - as we call it - is greatly helping people with ulcerative colitis, and is currently tested for a whole range of other disorders such as obesity (here), diabetes, autism, allergies, and eczema (here).

So although it might sound disgusting to ingest shit - by swallowing poo pills or up their bum - people either need it or truly feel that they need it.
Remember: if it's not proven to be therapeutic, you put yourself at risk because the bacteria you ingest have their own agenda... And they won't tell you what exactly!

See you next Monday for a less politically-inspired article,

Don't eat for 2, your pregnancy microbes do it for you!

When I started this blog last year, common belief was that as long as babies are in the womb, they are free of germs (early post on MBAI), but this is now shifting to the understanding that babies are being colonized prior to their birth. But how are they? And what does mum do about it?

 In that earlier MBAI post, I also wrote that a mum's microbiota changes during pregnancy to prepare for baby's birth and colonization. Today, I'm exploring this in more detail:

A 2012 study showed that the microbiota of a 1st trimester pregnant woman was different than the microbiota of a 3rd trimester pregnant woman and it had a profound impact on the woman's metabolism.

By transferring their respective human poo into germ-free bubble mice, they observed that the mice acquiring the poop from heavily-pregnant women became obese, insulin-resistant, and had a greater inflammatory response than lean mice that received poop from newly-pregnant women.
Extraordinary!
But why?
Those changes that include enhanced absorption of sugar and fat from food, and stimulation of the immune system are all in place to ensure a healthy fetal development.

Extracting more calories from food is a feature of bacterial strains that may live predominantly in overweight and obese people - read MBAI 'Is calorie counting over?'

The study also showed that this special pregnancy microbiota was not back to normal straight after birth as they tested it one month postpartum, which is interesting and makes me wonder if there are studies that show if it ever comes back to normal...(and that would explain a lot to a lot of mums...)

Did you put a lot of weight on during pregnancy?

See you next Monday,