7 ms·
Everyone's "poo-pooing" the article because the title doesn't mention mice, but, FWIW, stories of gut biota affecting humans behavior have been documented for a
by inanutshellus 7mo ago
Everyone's "poo-pooing" the article because the title doesn't mention mice, but, FWIW, stories of gut biota affecting humans behavior have been documented for a while.
Memory gain is noteworthy, which is the article's "wow" factor, but everyone's just knee-jerk smirking so ... here's a few random articles to gross you out about the wild world of trading microbiota and, for better or worse, changing your personality:
* "My butt made me crave candy."[1]
* "Gee, I'm not bipolar anymore thanks to my husband's butt juice infusion."[2]
Crazy, right?
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-behavioral-microbiome/202404/hacking-an-individuals-personality-through-their-gut-contents
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-28/faecal-microbiota-transplant-credited-with-curing-bipolar/105541522
- 5o1ecist 7mo ago[dead]
- hbcondo714 7mo agoI would recommend the site https://gutbrainaxistherapeutics.com https://gutbrainaxistherapeutics.com for learning more about Microbiota Transplant Therapy (MTT) and its opportunities, especially for Autism and Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome.
- y-curious 7mo agoI’ll dig in more but my first question when I see this: who are the donors exactly? Like who decides what the ideal gut microbiome is and that John Doe is the guy to provide his fecal matter to the masses?
- ratg13 7mo agoYou either need a lab to test donor samples first, or when this was more of a craze, a popular source of 'donations' for the DIY crowd was young children. If you're interested in digging into the people that were doing this, they had a website dedicated to everyone telling their stories of how they went about their own individual journeys. The website was called thepowerofpoop.com and looks like it's gone now, but is available on the wayback machine including individual articles and images. I would go back to at least 2022 .. I think they possibly got in legal trouble at some point and started taking things down.
- bregma 7mo agoMore importantly: are there places that will pay me to make regular donations?
- Aurornis 7mo agoI would not recommend that site as a good resource. Microbiome transplant therapy is a domain full of grifters right now who will push it to vulnerable populations desperate for hope, like parents of autistic children. The real research results are much less promising for difficult conditions.
- idiotsecant 7mo agoThere is zero evidence that poop transplants have any effect on autism, let's be clear here.
- hbcondo714 7mo agoNot true; their clinical trials[1] finds Improvements in GI symptoms, ASD symptoms, and the microbiome all persisted for at least 8 weeks after treatment ended, suggesting a long-term impact[2] More recently, a study finds The modulation of the gut microbiota using MTT in ASD has shown beneficial and long-term effects on GI symptoms and core symptoms of autism[3] [1] https://gutbrainaxistherapeutics.com/pipeline/#clinical-trial-results-autism https://gutbrainaxistherapeutics.com/pipeline/#clinical-tria... [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40168-016-0225-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40168-016-0225-7 [3] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19490976.2025.2499580%4010.1080/tfocoll.2026.0.issue-fecal-microbiota-transplantation https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19490976.2025.24...
- alpineman 7mo agoFecal transplants...people will do anything to avoid eating a balanced, largely/wholly plant-based diet with a wide variety of fruits and vegetables.
- MSFT_Edging 7mo agoI think the idea is that the biome is built up over time and you can't always just eat your way to certain bacteria growing in your gut. I think the fecal transplants help to essentially seed your gut with healthy bacteria, which makes adapting to the proper diet easier when your body isn't constantly fighting you.
- codethief 7mo agoIt's not that simple. The last couple years, a buddy of mine did exactly what you proposed: He had massive GI problems, so he started watching what he ate, and… his problems became much worse. Fast forward to a couple months ago, when he sees a doctor specializing in this stuff and she tells him to significantly reduce plant-based food for a while "because your gut biome isn't able to handle it right now. You should go eat a burger every now and then." So he's been following her advice and all of sudden he is without any GI issues whatsoever. My buddy got lucky (found the right doctor, could eat his way out of it) but if your gut biome is seriously out of whack, I can definitely see the appeal of an FMT to kickstart your recovery.
- 1shooner 7mo agoThis seems to be a recent anti-science meme to dismiss studies that use mouse models. I'm sure there is an interesting line of discussion about the strengths and limits of those models, but that's probably a complex, nuanced thread to pull, not something you blow off with a hand-waving internet comment.
- inanutshellus 7mo agoTo some degree the other posts are just pointing out the misleading "assumed protagonist" of the title (which doesn't mention mice) but I was surprised to see that the majority of posts boiled down to "eek! mice!"
- znpy 7mo agoI bet it started with people trying to 1-up other commenters via the usual “achtually…” and then proceeding with the “in mice” notice.
- MarkusQ 7mo agoIt's not anti-science, it's anti-science-journalism-hype. Science depends on accurately reporting facts, being clear about the limits of your findings, and seeking explanations that survive scrutiny. Science journalism has other priorities that are often in conflict with those of science.
- 1shooner 7mo agoIn this case, it was in the headline of the article. I don't know how much clearer one would expect it to be.
- asdff 7mo agoI wish I could filter the word mice or mouse out of hn comments because as you say every single one are low effort gotcha's that I will never get my time back from. It is like these armchair scientists don't understand that the actual scientists know the limits of the model system better than they do.
- jimkleiber 7mo agoThere was a South Park episode about this years ago where everyone was trying to get it from Tom Brady.
- SmirkingRevenge 7mo agoThe Spice Melange
- zinkem 7mo agoI believe this research is totally true-- I had a lot of memories come back after 1. I stopped drinking heavily and using other drugs, i.e. marijuana 2. managed my diet to avoid heartburn without medication 3. schedule my meals so it was easier to sleep at night (always eat something for breakfast when I wake up) I did not need any "poo infusion" or anything. I had a gal bladder removal that didn't fix the problems the doctors thought it would and got a lot smarter about the kinds and variety of food I eat. I believe alcohol in particular was really screwing up my gut biome and entire digestive system.
- y-curious 7mo agoWhat did you do for heartburn? Just looking for ideas. I noticed reducing gluten helped me personally a lot
- ekaryotic 7mo agonot the commenter but I bake my own soda bread and found that i was getting heartburn from the salt that was in the recipe. once i eliminated that i could eat as much as i wanted. I also cannot eat salt preserved potato chips on consecutive days.
- m463 7mo agoI kind of wonder if sometimes acid reflux happens more than we realize, but we just notice it when spicy food comes up.
- frankzinger 7mo agoPretty sure this is correct. You only notice it when it comes right out of the top. Other days it may be 25%, 50%, or 75% of the way up. And that's still bad for your oesophagus over the long term. My dad got cancer right at the bottom and one potential cause was chronic acid reflux (GERD leading to Barrett's eosophagus).
- colordrops 7mo ago
- eek2121 7mo agoNot only are there tons of papers, there are off-label treatments (some that have improved more than 80% of the folks I'm about to mention), and this isn't just about age related decline, but cognitive impairment in general. Long COVID, ME/CFS, TBIs, and other conditions are widely considered to have a similar origin. If you are interested in this stuff, I encourage you to look up all the scientific papers on this. It is fascinating stuff.
- slibhb 7mo agoIn my opinion, gut microbiome stuff is massively overhyped. Here's a study that tried fecal transplants to treat mental illness (and found no effect): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41785480/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41785480/ The pattern with this stuff is that, when a blinded study is carried out, there's usually no effect.
- andrewl 7mo agoReplying to slibhb, while the research involving mental illness is not conclusive, fecal transplants are a known and accepted treatment for persistent C. diff (Clostridioides difficile) infection. Just for the record.
- idiotsecant 7mo agoThis seems like it makes way, way more sense
- butILoveLife 7mo agoYou are probably right on the specifics, but serotonin is produced/located in the gut, and its an incredibly important neurotransmitter. One day people will figure out how to use these correctly.
- Aurornis 7mo ago> but serotonin is produced/located in the gut, and its an incredibly important neurotransmitter. Serotonin in the gut doesn’t go to your brain. It serves a different function in the gut. The brain synthesizes serotonin inside of the brain. It doesn’t come from your gut.
- ChimpWithHat 7mo agoThanks for following up with a correction. This is a myth that simply refuses to die. I cannot even count the number of times I’ve heard people repeating it.
- 7mo ago
- bitexploder 7mo agoMost of the serotonin we produce comes from our gut.
- Aurornis 7mo agoSerotonin produced in the gut doesn’t get into your brain. This factoid is repeated everywhere but it’s misleading without knowing that gut serotonin is a different pool than brain serotonin and they have different functions. The brain synthesizes its serotonin locally within the brain.
- bitexploder 7mo agoSerotonin from the gut affects vagal neurons. They carry that signal directly to the brain. That has a significant effect on up and down regulation of mood and arousal.
- harrall 7mo agoOkay that’s like my company that uses Salesforce that sends an invoice to another company that also uses Salesforce. The fact that we both use Salesforce does not matter. It’s internal and doesn’t mean anything outside the company. Both the brain and gut re-used the molecule for their own internal signaling. Evolutionarily it was cheaper to use an existing molecule. To the brain, the invoice is just “I’m full” or “I’m hangry.” It doesn’t care how much serotonin the gut had to produce internally to issue that “invoice.” The brain will produce its own serotonin from the signal of satiety but it won’t give you any more than you can from just feeling full.
- bitexploder 7mo agoIt is a powerful neuron hormone. The mechanisms are different. It is still important to recognize the rather dramatic influence this has on the brain. That was what this article was about. This pathway can easily lead to depression and significant broad down regulation in the brain. Serotonin inside of the brain works very specifically. The vagus nerve signal has a very broad impact and should not be hand waved. If your vasovagal system has dysregulation it can lead to all sorts of specific brain internal negative outcomes systemically. I think your model of how this works is not very accurate regarding how broadly connected the vagal signaling pathway is and how that impacts how your brain functions.
- harry8 7mo ago"Reversing memory loss in mice via gut-brain communication" And nobody is bothered by the story. And it gets less clicks. People get cranky when they have been suckered.
- biophysboy 7mo agoThere are a lot of HN users that think they are better at science because they know about p-hacking and the limitations of animal models.
- youknownothing 7mo ago"butt juice infusion" xD