My success with FL-RS-1997 from Human Microbes for treating insomnia depression and constipation Human Microbes 

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Fmt2024

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Feb 11, 2024
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As some of you know, humanmicrobes is currently being investigated by the FDA. Unfortunately many people have a poor impression of them. I am writing to give my honest experience with three of their donors.

I originally pursued FMT because I suffered from debilitating insomnia, constipation, histamine intolerance (itchiness after every meal), chronic fatigue, severe depression, and more. These symptoms primarily started after antibiotic use and a potato starch supplement I took.

Prior to humanmicrobes, I tried stool from a relative, steve baskin (a former member of this group), and microbioma. FMTs from my relative and steve baskin gave me temporary benefits but they did not last long.

After daily top down FMTs from microbioma, I began rapidly gaining weight. I was never someone who struggled with weight. I quickly ballooned up to 190lbs (at 5’11”) within several weeks, after hovering between 145-160lbs my entire life. It was uncontrollable despite monitoring my caloric intake, eating a strict whole food plant based diet, and doing the little exercise I could.

I was months from starting residency and I was in the worst health of my life and strongly considered giving up on my medical career. I began desperately seeking alternatives until humanmicrobes began offering stool. I started off with their UT1998 donor. With this donor, my insomnia improved, my mood was excellent, I was strangely much more social/outgoing, I was regular, but I still had bad histamine intolerance. Unfortunately, my symptom’s returned after 3 weeks. Shortly after, FL1997 became available. I bought 5 frozen stops without antifreeze. I ingested about 10-15 triple encapsulated pills everyday for about 30 days. Diet was a low histamine while food plant based diet. I was taking Acadia fiber through the FMT and stopped about a week after. With this donor, I went from sleeping 2-3 hours with supplements to 6.5-7 hours on my own. My stool went from type 6/7 with alot of undigested food to type 4/5 with no undigested food. My depression went away, I became regular, my histamine intolerance improved, and my weight went back to normal. Overall i went from a 2 to about a 6.

About a year later I tried their IA2010 donor. It helped in some ways temporarily but the effects wore off and my sleep got mildy worse (im sleeping about 6 hours a night now).

I am eternally grateful for the impact humanmicrobes had on my life and hope they may continue to impact other peoples lives.

Theres is a lot of hate towards them that I would like to address. I saw one customer complaining about a customer service dispute on reddit which became a huge issue. My personal experience with their customer service has been excellent. After purchasing from the IA2010 donor, there was an issue (it was my fault and I don’t think I should go into detail) that caused me lose my entire purchase. I was able to get a full replacement for 1/5th the price. I am extremely grateful for this.

For those of you who don’t know, the owner of humanmicrobes, Michael, created a wiki that has invaluable information relating to FMT. I, and many others, have saved so much time and headache learning from it.

They also don’t get enough credit about their transparency. They provide so much information about their donors and even recipient results. We know nothing about the donors at microbioma, taymount, etc.

There are suspicious accounts spreading hate about humanmicrobes and this is getting out of hand. This kind of drama is distracting us from our ultimate goal, regaining our health. Now that the FDA is involved we are at risk of losing our most promising source of FMT.

This post is not meant to praise humanmicrobes or bash any other company but to give my own personal experience with a company that is receiving a tremendous amount of hate.
 
FMT Clinics
  1. I included all required info
Overview
Health started declining started after I took a two week course of Flagyl for tooth pain 10 years ago. My health declined more in a step wise fashion after taking other antibiotics. About two years ago I was in my worst state of health. I did FMT from FL-RS-1997 and my health went from a 2 to a 6. Things were going well for the following 4-5 months until I took amoxicillin (considered a more narrow spectrum antibiotic) for strep throat which took my health back down to a 4. I then tried FMT from IA- SMJ-2010 and this brought it up to about a 4.5 overall. Afterwards, I decided to try FL-RS-1997 again to bring myself back up to atleast a 6 but this time I wanted to try other things to help increase engraftment.

FMT process
I fasted for 72 hours and did a bowel prep before my first FMT.

First, I put the frozen stool in a piping bag and submerged the piping bag + stool into a cup of lukewarm water and waited until stool was thawed. I then used the piping bag to make 20-30 triple encapsulated pills using 0, 00, and 000 HPMC capsules. I waited two hours then ate my first meal. I fasted 16-20 hours before repeating this process. I did this daily for 30 days consecutively.

I did enemas about 2 days a week using a large syringe on amazon. Wont get into the details unless someone is interested.

Results
Overall, they were similar to my results after my first trial with FL-RS -1997 but slightly better. These are comparisons between pre and 2 months post 2nd trial of FL-RS-1997:

Insomnia
Was getting about 5-5.5 hours of nightly prior. This improved to about 7 hours nightly. Huge difference.

Fatigue
Prior, I was basically waking up not well rested, fatigued throughout the day, and extremely exhausted by the end of the day. I work a stressful job that thankfully doesn’t involve much moving around though. There were a few times I fell asleep while driving (even got into a car accident and hit a few cones). Not much has changed here except I can stay awake better while driving which I attribute to better sleep.

Constipation/stool characteristics
Went from having a small bowel movement daily with straining and lot of time spent on the toilet to 1-2 daily normal sized ones daily as long as I follow a low histamine diet. My stool type ranges from type 4 to 6 depending on the histamine in my diet. Closer to a 4 if I stick to low histamine.

Depression
This is where I have made the most progress. Prior to my first trial of FMT, I had suicidal ideation from the minute I woke up to the minute I went to sleep everyday.

Before the 2nd trial, I was consistently in a slightly below average mood but definitely not suicidal. If I had to give it a number, id say a 4/10. Now, Id say my mood is at a 6/10.

I am super thankful for this. I honestly dont think id be here anymore, because of my depression, if it weren’t for FMT.

Histamine intolerance
This is becoming more and more medically recognized. After eating high histamine foods, I get diffuse itching which (drives me insane), constipation, brain fog, irritability, skin problems.

I currently have to eat a strict low histamine diet to keep my symptoms low/away but my diet can be less strict than before. Unfortunately, its nearly impossible to be consistent so I do have to deal with these symptoms more often than I would like. So 1. It makes me feel awful and 2. It restricts my diet immensely. This is currently my main battle right now.

Negatives
- Only one I noticed was BO. After sweating, my feet and armpits smell slightly worse than before.

Additional points
- I tried to avoid ingesting anything things that would hurt my microbiome and affect the engraftment. I used a clean toothpaste and tried to rinse all of/spit it out after using it. I thoroughly washed all of my fruits and vegetables and tried to eat as much organic as possible.

- I ate OMAD for one month prior to this which may have altered my microbiome.

- High fiber diet. My own personal theory is that if you eat bad during and after this process the bad bacteria are more likely to stick around and vice versa. Don’t know if there is any evidence for this around. I follow a plant based diet so I usually eat pretty clean anyway. I tried adding way more fruits and vegetables.

- I did not used any supplements as opposed to the previous time when i used acacia fiber, a soluble fiber supplement. I think this is something i might change for next time because it helps with my sleep.

- My sleep was terrible throughout this process (I was working night shift that month). i think that could have affected the engraftment process negatively. Another theory of mine is that poor sleep increases cortisol levels, inflammation, etc. and lead to poorer engraftment.

- A few days after finishing my final FMT, I caught covid and got really sick. I think it’s possible this could have interfered with engraftment

Conclusion
This is definitely the best donor I have used so far. Ive used UT-AW-1998, IA-SMJ-2010, my cousin, microbioma and none really come close. I feel like I was given a second chance at life. I am incredibly thankful for Michael and all the hard work he has put into HM. This is truly the best quality stool. In addition, the wiki Michael has made is the most comprehensive resource related to FMT available and it has saved me so much time and headache. To everyone reading, please check it out and try to learn as much as you can before considering FMT. Overall, I think this has quite literally saved my life. I highly recommend HM to anyone considering FMT!
 
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