Looking for advice on autologous FMT Procedure

[Sarah]

Hello. I'll spare you the details, but after 22 years of avoiding absolutely all medication and enjoying very very good health, I've had to take a round of abx due to a dog bite.

I was absolutely gutted to have to consent to abx. I fully recognize the importance of the microbiome in maintaining my good health and am devastated that I've had to use such a drastic measure prophylactically. Take note that I started shortly after the bite and never experienced any noticeable infection.

A couple hours after my first antibiotic pill, it occurred to me that I might be able to try FMT with my own stool after the abx were finished. Luckily, the urge struck very soon after and I was able to collect a stool sample 3.5 hours after taking the first pill. I'm guessing that the effect of the abx on this stool was minimal.

Having looked into it after the fact, I've determined that I ought to have put it in a ziploc bag and squeezed out all the air. Unfortunately, I collected it in a jam jar and stuck it straight in the freezer. Live and learn, but hopefully it's still pretty good.

I'm almost done with the abx and hope to give this is a try ASAP. My plan was to defrost, cut into capsule-sized chunks, put those in the capsules and take them. I'm looking for confirmation that I'm on the right track, as well as dosage tips. It's totally unclear to me how many pills to take, how often, and for how long. Also, I've just realized that I bought regular vegan capsules, not enteric coated ones. Do I need enteric coated?

Thank you for any and all advice or tips.

 

[Michael Harrop]

Procedure details are covered in the wiki. https://humanmicrobiome.info/fmt/

There's also a FAQ here: https://www.humanmicrobes.org/ordering-faq

You can also look through what other people have done:

• There are sections on this subforum for people's reports, including mine: https://forum.humanmicrobiome.info/threads/my-detailed-experiences-lessons-from-13-different-fmt-donors-jun-2018.53/
• There's a spreadsheet here: https://www.humanmicrobes.org/orders

 

[SFBayFMT5]

Hello. I'll spare you the details, but after 22 years of avoiding absolutely all medication and enjoying very very good health, I've had to take a round of abx due to a dog bite.

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Makes perfect sense, this is one of those times when the cost of NOT taking abx is worse than the potential damage to the microbiome. You wouldn't have wanted to wait until you had a life-threatening infection to start taking them.

I was absolutely gutted to have to consent to abx. I fully recognize the importance of the microbiome in maintaining my good health and am devastated that I've had to use such a drastic measure prophylactically. Take note that I started shortly after the bite and never experienced any noticeable infection.

A couple hours after my first antibiotic pill, it occurred to me that I might be able to try FMT with my own stool after the abx were finished. Luckily, the urge struck very soon after and I was able to collect a stool sample 3.5 hours after taking the first pill. I'm guessing that the effect of the abx on this stool was minimal.

Click to shrink...

I hope for you that this is the case. It's not impossible that the antibiotic already got in there, although the fact that you were collecting stool helps your chances considerably here (vs. some other body fluid). That's because this stool formed long before you took the first pill and the concentration of antibiotic will have been highest in the stomach and small intestine, because that's where it is after the pill dissolves but before it's absorbed. The only way any of it would get all the way into the stool within <4 hours is by absorption and re-secretion if it's an antibiotic with significant excretion through the GI tract.

If you were unlucky to get an appreciable amount of antibiotic in that stool, this could be a problem, not because it already would have changed the makeup of the flora dramatically in those 3.5 hours but because the sample would have the drug still in there during thawing (there's nowhere for it to go). But as I said this is unlikely for most drugs that are excreted largely through the urine.

Having looked into it after the fact, I've determined that I ought to have put it in a ziploc bag and squeezed out all the air. Unfortunately, I collected it in a jam jar and stuck it straight in the freezer. Live and learn, but hopefully it's still pretty good.

Click to shrink...

Most sources will tell you to add a protectant like glycerol. It's obviously too late to do that now. Some people have had good results without, others (like me) seem to have noticed an improvement with vs. without.

I'm almost done with the abx and hope to give this is a try ASAP. My plan was to defrost, cut into capsule-sized chunks, put those in the capsules and take them. I'm looking for confirmation that I'm on the right track, as well as dosage tips. It's totally unclear to me how many pills to take, how often, and for how long. Also, I've just realized that I bought regular vegan capsules, not enteric coated ones. Do I need enteric coated?

Click to shrink...

Enteric coated is obviously better for protecting the bacteria from stomach acid as long as you're not worried about the additives in the capsules (the vast majority of enteric-coated capsules have a plastic-like layer). Human Microbes used double encapsulation in regular vegan capsules (one small capsule inside one large capsule).

Also you're aware that enema is an option as well, correct? Some people find one route more effective than the other, though you would need to experiment to figure out whether this is true for you personally. Enema takes generally more total volume than capsules though, which could be relevant depending on how much stool you have to work with--though as long as you had a decently full BM when you collected then this shouldn't be an issue. Most commercial suppliers sell capsules in sets (i.e. bags, bottles, etc.) of 24-30, some people need more than one set but others get no additional benefit after the first set. The suppliers differ in how much of this is stool vs. saline.

 

[Sarah]

Thank you so much. I hadn't found the section about aFMT on my own, but this sentence exactly describes my case.

"A reasonable situation to use aFMT would be if you are in great health, have good type 2-4 bowel movements, and you are prescribed prophylactic antibiotics for something. You could then freeze your stool, take the med, and do aFMT afterward."

Elsewhere in the wiki I found reference to enteric coating not seeming essential, so my questions are answered. Thank you so much.

I intend to have my homebirthed, 5-year breastfed, lifelong-unmedicated and unvaccinated teenagers fill in the donor form. Finally, a way to potentially quantify the benefit of my values when it came to raising them.

 

[Sarah]

Makes perfect sense, this is one of those times when the cost of NOT taking abx is worse than the potential damage to the microbiome.

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Thank you, I'm only just seeing your reply. The antibiotic was amoxycillin plus clavulanic acid. Given that I avoid them like the plague, I'm not up on my antibiotics and don't know if this is one that's likely to have made it into my poop.

I think I will buy some enteric capsules and hedge my bets by using both. I assume they're also a bit sturdier and stand up better to the contents while you're assembling them.

Thanks so much for your reply.