5 ms·
Wouldn't an easier way to do this be to control diet? For one thing, it slows the process of change down which would ease any shock-related side-effects. Of cou
by spfzero 4y ago
Wouldn't an easier way to do this be to control diet? For one thing, it slows the process of change down which would ease any shock-related side-effects. Of course, it takes a lot of work from the patient to adhere, but if they are at the point that they are considering fecal transplant, they're probably ready.
This also gives the biome a chance to adapt to anything particular about the individual, if possible (certain pharmaceuticals may not be able to be worked around.)
Also, I would think if you did the transplant and never changed your diet, you'd often just go back to the old biome after a time, but I could be wrong about that.
- massaman_yams 4y agoDiet alone can't restore strains that don't exist in a patient's microbiome.
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoYou're probably correct that keeping the same diet could kill off the transplanted biome but a better diet can't necessarily improve the gut biome if desired microbes have gone extinct in that person. And there are likely cases where a person had the proper diet but some of their gut biome was destroyed by some other factor like a broad-spectrum antibiotic.
- zug_zug 4y agoOkay makes sense, but exactly how do these diverse bacteria get into our GI tract in the first place if we can't ingest them?
- nanomonkey 4y agoYour mother, and through introduction from your anus and what you eat (a limited amount of bacteria can pass through your stomach, or are harboring in structures that don't fully break down in your stomach before being passed along).
- manmal 4y agoMany GI diseases correlate with loss of microbial diversity. That diversity can’t be recovered with diet alone - lost strains are lost. Even most probiotics are rather short lived in the GI tract.