It has been a while since I’ve used this space to educate you about the incredibleness of the microbiome and the looming bacterial takeover of the planet. But the mainstream media is fully on board with this, so there has been plenty out there for you to chew on.
Everyone is talking about the microbiome these days. If you’re not taking probiotics, you’re probably eating sauerkraut and swilling kombucha. I know I am. In fact, I have a huge vat of kombucha brewing on my kitchen counter at this very moment. Did you know the slimy opaque thing growing on top of your kombucha is called a SCOBY, which is an acronym for Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast? Since when does a little non-word like “of” get its very own letter in an acronym? But I digress.
I’m breaking the silence because once again, I have seen the future. And I want you to see it, too.
First, take this little quiz:
- Are you uber-healthy? As in, regular poops, no auto-immune disease, no hepatitis or other STDs, lean and fit, eat organic foods and abstain from alcohol, drugs and promiscuous sex? DO you eat KALE?
- Are you unemployed or looking for more income but don’t want to work too hard to get it?
- Are you still waiting to find your purpose in life?
- Do you want to help other people? Make the world a happier, healthier place?
- Are you good at self-promotion?
See, here’s the thing. In our western world of processed food and Monsanto and broad-spectrum antibiotics, more and more people are suffering from nasty conditions like Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome, colitis and antibiotic-resistant C. difficile infections. Their lives are ruined by the twin spectres of painful constipation and explosive diarrhea. Mainstream medicine can do very little to help them.
There is one thing that works, though, and it works pretty much 100% of the time: Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) a.k.a. a shit transfusion. But you know this because I wrote about it more than two years ago.
Just like I predicted, this is becoming a thing, despite the unpleasantness of enemas and nasogastric tubes. And now a team at the University of Calgary has come up with a delivery method for getting around all that: basically, they’ve come up with poop-in-a-pill. You just gulp them down and the magic is released directly into your colon.
Now don’t get all “ooh ick” on me, people. Those of you with dogs know that eating shit is part and parcel of life. My brother’s dog had a special thing for cat poop. Pandas, elephants, hippos and koalas are born with sterile digestive systems and so they have to eat their parents’ poop in order to survive.
In ancient China, sick people drank a yellow soup made with “fecal matter” and broth. In the Middle Ages, physicians tasted their patients’ stool to help make a diagnosis. Modern-day tribes do it; the Bedouins purportedly eat fresh camel feces as a treatment for infectious diarrhea. People with mental illness and dementia sometimes engage in coprophagia. (Hmmm. One wonders. Maybe they’re attempting to self-medicate?) So this is not new to humans, either. It seems to me a poo-pill sounds mighty palatable in comparison.
And these gastric illnesses are just the tip of the iceberg. Many other first-world ills are thought to be associated with a depleted microbiome: obesity, autism, Parkinson’s, schizophrenia, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, even depression. Turns out our obsession with cleanliness and the liberal administration of antibiotics to ourselves and the animals we eat has made us the opposite of safe. We waged the wrong war on the wrong enemy. Fixing this with something as simple as poop would be huge.
Back to the quiz. If you answered at least three of those questions in the affirmative, then there’s a good chance you could have a lucrative future selling, not bullshit, but real shit. This could be your big mo(ve)ment. If you’re not a suitable donor yourself, then you might still know someone who is. Here’s a list of criteria (scroll down to “donor determination”).
Sure, those people in Calgary are going to make a fortune from the patent on their method of packaging poop in pill form. And right now in the US, the FDA is trying with all its might to protect its pal Big Pharma by calling FMT an “Investigative New Drug” and banning stool banks and limiting the procedure to antibiotic-resistant C. diff infections. This means that patients are restricted to getting samples from people they know personally and either convincing their doctors to do the procedure for them or resorting to DIY enemas. Hardly the ideal scenario. Here’s a really good post on the website ThePowerofPoop.com that summarizes why physician-screened carefully chosen shit samples and treatment in a clinic are 100% better than getting your shit from Uncle Rupert. They also have a list of doctors in various countries around the world that might be willing to help patients obtain FMT treatment. This is one area in which the Aussies have their shit figured out.
But don’t let any of this deter you. I firmly believe that this is the future of medicine. Hippocrates said that all disease begins in the gut, and he was right. The first thing do in treating any disease is to get the gut back into balance. I also believe, as does the editor of thePowerofPoop.com, that healthy human shit is light-years better than a microbial cocktail whipped up in a lab or the 5 gazillion-billion strain probiotics you can currently buy in the store. Just like your morning constitutional, this is coming, people. It’s inevitable. Why not be part of it?
So here’s what you might do:
First, cut a sweet licensing deal with the Calgary group for the pill-method ASAP. It’s a university so it shouldn’t be too expensive. Next, source yourself some good pure product and figure out how to get it safely to your lab and certified by a competent authority. Then build a website and get the word out. Online sales will be important. If you want to go all out you could open a specialty boutique. A luxury shitstore.
If you’re smart, you’ll start your business while the feds are still hand-wringing and before the market gets saturated. (Until they eventually cave in, you could always peddle it elsewhere. Or lurk around hospitals making friends with C. diff patients.) Find your niche. What’s so great about your particular offering? Is it certified disease-free by a doctor with at least three different professional degrees? Do you have a novel idea for making it extra-palatable? Do you like to travel to primitive countries where the diseases of civilization have yet to gain a foothold? If so, you could be looking at a potential gold mine – pristine, pure, triple-A, 100% top-of the line shit.
As in any commercial venture, branding is key. Come up with a good one. Shit Happens. Or maybe Poopylicious.
In a lovely article in the Atlantic, gastroenterologist Robynne Chutkan paints an enticing picture:
Imagine a posh store displaying expensive samples that sell for more than $1,000 an ounce. The donor ate an unprocessed, non-GMO, plant-based diet, with no hormones or antibiotics, ever. The label says it’s from a rare and difficult-to-access source in the Himalayas. The samples are rigorously tested on site to assure purity and quality, and then flown back to the U.S. in a pressure-controlled, refrigerated jet.”
The luxury stool market (and I’m not talking furniture) is the future of first-world medicine. Haute cuisine, make way for “haute manure.” Wait a minute. Maybe the two could form a partnership, with a shared bathroom…
You heard about it here first.