Please help - anxiety/panic after FMT+yellow stool Outcomes

[Veronikakrov]

Hi, I'll try to shorten it a bit - I've had anxiety-depressive disorder, GAD, for over 12 years. I found that the Gaps/SCD diet stabilized my anxiety, when I ate more sugar and carbohydrates, my anxiety got worse. On the Gaps diet, I was able to stop taking antidepressants and was stable for several years. But I wasn't allowed to go off the diet. In 2019, I did FMT on the advice of a friend. It wasn't in a hospital, it was at home and I waited a year for a donor who had donated his microbiome to people before and helped them. She was a healthy, slim woman, with no mental problems. We did FMT with an enema and tablets and a while after FMT I started feeling mentally weird (I was looking forward to FMT because I thought it would be the final solution to my illness and I wouldn't have to be on a diet). But it had the VERY opposite effect on me and I immediately started having panic attacks, severe anxiety and got yellow stools. It was really bad for about two months, I went for another fmt because they told me that the bad bacteria were dying off and that's why I felt sick and needed another fmt. I went 3 times in total. The extreme anxiety and panic persisted, so I started eating a very strict diet and got antidepressants. After a few months, things calmed down a bit. A year later, I was stable and decided to try eating all the food. I started eating sugar etc. and the extreme anxiety was back again, like never before the fmt. I ate everything for a few more weeks and thought that when I went back on the diet it would calm down again. It only calmed down about 10%. That was in 2020 and since then I have suffered from extreme anxiety every day and I no longer have the strength. Antidepressants don't help, diet doesn't help, supplements don't help, exercise doesn't help, therapy doesn't help. I'm in contact with 3 people from around the world who had the exact same reaction after fmt (crazy anxiety/panic) and we all got yellow stools. WHAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED? I did microbiome tests and they showed some Enterococcus, Citrobacter and Streptococcus, but no antimicrobial interventions or probiotics will improve the anxiety. The yellow stool disappears after maxi doses of probiotics. It returns without probiotics. THANK YOU FOR ANY ADVICE, if anyone feels they can help me, please write. THANK YOU

 

[Michael Harrop]

You should format that properly with paragraphs to make it easier to read -- if you want people to read it and help.

I waited a year for a donor who had donated his microbiome to people before and helped them. She was a healthy, slim woman, with no mental problems.

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Some people get lucky and don't get worse from bad donors. There are also people who lie and astroturf to promote certain sources.

"A healthy, slim woman, with no mental problems" is not valid donor criteria.

I went for another fmt because they told me that the bad bacteria were dying off and that's why I felt sick and needed another fmt.

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Who is "they"? It sounds like "they" conned you. Did you pay for the FMT?

I'm in contact with 3 people from around the world who had the exact same reaction after fmt (crazy anxiety/panic) and we all got yellow stools.

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What were the characteristics of the donor's stool? Did all 3 of you use the same donor?

 

[indigo34]

@Veronikakrov have you heard of histamine intolerance? When my histamines were really out of whack after antimicrobials I had severe anxiety, panic and insomnia. I still have the condition but to a lesser extent than before. Switching to a low-carb, low-histamine diet helped along with taking DAO enzymes. Taking antihistamines too, especially for sleep issues. There is a reddit for it with useful information on identifying triggers, and a mix of good and bad scientific info. The best test to see if HI is the cause of your problems is a trial of a low histamine diet. Oh and SSRIs may make the condition worse so I recommend avoiding those if it turns out this is what's going on with you.

Edit: Yellow stool is a sign of fat malabsorption. I had this after antimicrobials and a bout of food poisoning. It took a long time to go away - maybe 6 months? - with a lot of focus on diet and avoiding absolutely all antibiotics and antimicrobials. I also supplemented with S. boulardii and butyrate. I am by no means "cured," extremely far from it, but I am much more functional, HI is better and fat malabsorption (I think) is gone. I am still seeking a high-quality FMT. But whatever your gut issue diet can absolutely help and have an effect with symptom management. It can just be very tricky to determine which diet is right for your situation - lots and lots of experimentation.

ALSO I strongly recommend against EVER eating sugar outside the context of a whole foods diet. It's one of the absolute worst things you can consume for gut health. If you are eating sugar regularly you are shooting yourself in the foot.

 

[SFBayFMT5]

It sounds like whoever you used was a poor match donor for you. The one donor I've tried who made me worse, it was a similar thing, it greatly flared my mental health issues (whereas good donors improve them--and my best donor, from OpenBiome, temporarily got my mental health the best it had been for over a decade). The only reliable way to reverse the effect is to try FMT again with another donor. If you had banked some of your own stool you could re-colonize with it, hopefully getting you back to pre-FMT functioning, but it seems like that isn't the case.

What I definitely would NOT do is do any more FMTs from this same donor.