The doctors visits were expensive and ineffective, he says, and over time, Zayner grew suspicious of physicians
In 2013, he earned a PhD in Biophysics from the University of Chicago and subsequently served as a postdoc researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center for two years.
in January 2016, Zayner left Ames and turned his attention to two of his own projects: an Indiegogo campaign aimed at providing people with CRISPR kits to alter bacterial DNA, and The ODIN, a business he started in grad school that sells scientific kits and instruments to people who’d like to do experiments at home. Today, The ODIN has four employees who work out of Zayner’s garage. Sustained by orders from schools and hobbyists, The ODIN is doing well, Zayner says: he expects the company’s revenue to reach somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 this year.
Zayner generally has to defecate two to three times before starting his workday, and also after every meal. He claims to have ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome, but he’s a bit hazy on the details of his diagnoses. When pressed, he admits that he doesn't remember what his physician told him in college — he could have IBS or inflammatory bowel disease. And a search through his medical records is inconclusive
his physical distress — and his frustration with the medical treatment he received — was very real
And his decision to take antibiotics to kill his own bacteria before the transplant was risky, said OpenBiome’s Osman. Some people carry C. diff without any symptoms; if Zayner was one those people, disrupting the balance in his gut could enable C. diff to flourish — and the consequences of that could be life-threatening.
His experimental protocol was self-designed. There were five main steps
Then Zayner would try to rid himself of the bacteria on his body by cleaning his skin with powdered tetracycline, an antibiotic he would also dissolve and use to clean his nostrils and mouth. "Rubbing your skin with tetracycline powder is not going to sterilize it," Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist at Stanford University, told me. "There is no way to sterilize your skin. Any attempt at complete sterilization of a person’s skin will most likely kill a person first before they are sterile."
As he applied the antibiotic with a kitchen sponge, his pale white skin turned an angry red; he was scrubbing hard. After, he filled a Neti Pot with the same antibiotic liquid and flushed out his nasal passages over the sink
Over the course of his experiment, Zayner would only take a third of the poop pills that someone undergoing a standard FMT procedure would, stretched over a longer period of time. When I confronted Zayner about my observations, he was either dismissive, or unaware of a standard FMT protocol.
"You start thinking about like ‘Wow, why do animals eat their own poop or eat other animals’ poop?’ And like, what really are we so scared about with feces?" he’d told me the day before, rationalizing the experiment.
Over the next three days, he’d repeat this process, ingesting a total of eight poop pills. At one point he inadvertently tasted some of Michael’s shit, which had gotten on the outside of certain capsules. He describes it tasting "a little bitter."
Zayner applied the donor skin bacteria
For the next 60 hours, Zayner hid out in the hotel room, leaving only to buy snacks in the hotel commissary or eat in the hotel restaurant. He didn’t shower, and spent most of his time on his computer or phone. He watched daytime TV and movies — Back to the Future, Furious 7, anything really. His girlfriend Melissa visited him daily, but avoided touching him, and didn’t spend the night. Every few hours, Zayner repeated his protocol: take another pill, reapply Michael’s bacteria, and take samples of his own skin.
On day two, Zayner told me he was feeling great. "I’m so excited and happy," he said, sitting on the hotel bed. "I really feel like I shed something." He admitted it may have been a placebo effect, but his bowel movements had become less frequent, he said, and he felt rejuvenated.
By the morning of day three, Zayner was relaxed. Taking time off from running The ODIN had done him some good, he said, and his stomach was cooperating — he went almost 24 hours without having to use the bathroom. "Yesterday was a really awesome day so I was like ‘Oh, my gosh. It feels really good,’ but then today feels even better than yesterday," he said.
But when he came home the next day, Zayner’s resolve to follow through with the transfer weakened. He had originally intended to keep taking the pills at home for a few more days. But after three days, he was too disgusted. He felt sick just thinking about them.
Zayner is unique, but as far as his pain goes, he isn’t alone. Gastrointestinal diseases affect between 60 and 70 million Americans each year, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Zayner’s just the latest addition to a movement of individuals who — for better or worse — have taken their digestive health into their own hands. "I hear from a shocking number of people who are doing things like this," says Catherine Duff, founder of The Fecal Transplant Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to help FMT patients and raise awareness of the procedure. "Mostly for gastrointestinal things, but also for almost anything you can think of."
The skin microbiome transfer results were less impressive. During Zayner’s stay at the hotel, the bacterial composition of the skin on his arms morphed to resemble Michael’s. But that didn’t last long: once he was back home, the arm samples began to resemble samples taken from his girlfriend and his cat. The results for his mouth and nose were all over the place, making it hard to reach any conclusions.
more than two months after the transplant, he was still feeling a lot better — and defecating a lot less. "Probably 95 percent to 99 percent of the time, it’s only once in the morning,"
He said he’s lost about 10 pounds which was both good news and a bit concerning.
Michael, Zayner’s friend-turned-stool-donor, has a serious sweet tooth: he can consume an entire a box of Oreos in one sitting. Before the transplant, Zayner was never one for cookies. "Now I crave them," he said. The previous evening, he ate three Oreos before bed. It wasn’t scientific proof, really, but for Zayner it was meaningful.
