Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Poop

Episode Date: March 24, 2016

Welp, here's an episode about poop. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, Tommy is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with the two in that's lost it out. We were shot through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines, the escalators, my cop, for the mouth. Wow! Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bowen's Emerald to Miss Guy to Medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McElroy. And I'm Sydney McElroy. Oh, Sid, I'm so excited. Where are you excited? It's Max Fun Drive.

It's the best time of year. Oh, that's a great reason to be here. We can all take stock while the podcast on the Max Fun Fun Network that we love so much. And kick in a few bucks to help them get made This is the sort of the tail end of the drive we're coming up on last few days but but it's just as important Exactly

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Quite literally, in our case, our family of shows. Yeah, we added still buffering this year to the maximum fun network. Because the show City does with her sister. Check it out if you have it. It's amazing. This week's episode is a show she does with her teenage sister and they compare being a teenager than it now. This week's episode is about music.

You should go listen to it. It's great. But. Thank you, honey. Maximumfun.org slash donate. We have gifts we're going to tell you about if you donate here in a little bit. But first, because it's the Maximum fun drive, sitting has something very special planned. Well, Justin, I thought this is why you were excited initially was the topic that I chose

for this week. Well, I thought the cafe before show was that I don't know the top, it's the head of time. Well, I guess that's true. Anyone bright the allusion. Oh, okay. Sorry. I was letting the allusion. Okay, sorry. I was letting you all behind.

Welcome. Behind the screen for a little sneak peek for this special episode. So I am not excited about this topic. Okay. But I felt like since it is Max Fund Drive and I think that they're probably as a contingent of our audience who enjoys,

you know how some people say they enjoy the finer things in life? Maybe they enjoy the grosser things in life? The yuckyer things. Exactly. The things that maybe gave you a little bit of that gag, like, I know I should enjoy it. So I thought I would stick with one of those topics. In the past, we've discussed P. So, you know, that's number one.

Why not? Why not go for number two? Yeah, it's a show about poopy. Let's talk about poop. And there, I am not. I didn't just come up with this. People want me to talk about poop. Several people have requested this.

Thank you. Nicholas, one in me to talk about poop. Yeah. Several people have requested this. Thank you. Nicholas, one in me to talk about poop, Mara, Sarah, and Alex, especially thank you, Alex, for sending me lots of information about poop. Yeah, cause I mean, what's it doing back there, you know? The, the, so let me just preface by saying, I'm pretty, I'm not squeamish about poop, but I was raised in a family where we never really talked about that.

We didn't actually acknowledge that any of us did it. It was kind of like, I didn't think my mom did for a long time. I mean, I kind of, but I mean, if you had asked me if you'd pushed me on it, I wouldn't have been able to swear to it when I was here. So this is a huge stretch for me to acknowledge that poop happens. I think it's so inspiring that you're overcoming adversity. I do it with my, like with my patients outside of that realm. I usually don't.

So here you go. So just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, let's talk about poop. All right, Sid, I'm ready. Now here's the weird thing. What's poop? You don't know what poop is? Oh, okay, got it, got it, got it.

It's the stuff that comes out of your butt. Dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, got it. So obviously it's a, it a waste that we expel. No, it's not dirt. It's the leftover stuff after we've digested food, as well as a lot of bacteria. And that's the important stuff that we're going to talk about a lot in this episode. Is there's a lot of bacteria in poop that actually can be kind of helpful in some ways. Because we're going to focus on not just poop, but this is

saw bones, how poop has been used as medicine. Great. I'm really excited about it. So we have been using poop as therapy for a really long time. Well, it's on hand, you know. It's easy to come by. Hopefully not for very long, but it is on hand. I hope you watch. Yeah, if you watch Chinese medical writings from the fourth century, mention ingesting fecal material. It's actually described as a solution of stool for the treatment of both diarrhea and food poisoning.

Hmm. Well, for diarrhea, you mean like other folks, just like, hey, this is what you're supposed to be doing. Not that other stuff, do this. Or your own poop season. No, not your own. Like if you are sick and you're having diarrhea, you shouldn't eat your own poop.

You should eat somebody else who's not sick and having diarrhea, eat their poop. Well, eat their solution of stool, which sounds a little more clinical, I suppose. But not, but also not. Not great. And a lot of people weren't thrilled about the idea of eating something, drinking something that was described in a text as solution of stool. So, later on, there was a physician, Lee, she's in, who gave it maybe a more pleasing name. that maybe a more pleasing name, yellow soup.

Okay, stop it, that's so worse. It's so much worse. Or perhaps you prefer golden juice. I do not matam, good day, good day podcast. Here's my replacement, Mark Marin, good day. Both yellow soup and golden juice were mentioned as possible treatments for a lot of different abdominal issues. Basically anything that would cause you to be, you know, to have abdominal pain or constipation or diarrhea or feverish or vomiting or anything like that. And these

euphemisms were used to kind of try to make it sound better. But the recipe, if you, if you will, the recipe for yellow soup or golden juice was just some water mixed with either fresh, dry or fermented, fermented. Nice. Poop. That's how you make mick culture. Actually. Don't say that. We're going to get in trouble with mick culture now.

Yeah. They're going to pull their sponsorship. They're liquid sponsorship. Don't say that we're gonna get in trouble with Mick ultra now. Yeah, but they're gonna pull their sponsorship their lucrative Sometimes it's specifically infant stool is necessary Firmmentation though was a key was a key process if you can permit. It's a fun conversation to have the new parent isn't that hey When you're done with that I thought you bit like just advising like and before you leave the hospital also you know what else they're good for Yeah, if you get diarrhea tell like before you leave the hospital. Also, you know what else they're good for.

Yeah. If you get diarrhea, tell you what you want to do. This is the pits. I'm hanging in there. I'm trying to hang in there. Woof. Okay. We've talked a little bit before because not just human poop.

These are examples of human feces being used as medicine. And we're going to talk more about that. But poop from all species has been advised for various medical things. Yeah, well, I limit yourself. Exactly. Like why only human poop? I mean, because then you've got to ask like a neighbor or somebody or somebody you're close to. So, you know, if it's coming from an animal, you can probably just collect it. So the ancient Egyptians, and I, we actually mentioned

this briefly when we talked about contraception. The ancient Egyptian medical text advised that if you don't want to get pregnant, you should create a suppository, a little teeny kind of like pellet of something that you would put inside your vagina out of crocodile dung, fermented dough, or crocodile dung with honey and salt, Peter. And you would turn that into like a little pellet and then stick that up inside your vagina. And it would prevent pregnancy. Yeah. I mean, on one level, no, but on the other level, kind of, I mean, yeah,

kind of like indirectly. Hey, Justin, yeah, everybody's into something. That's true. I don't want to get anyone's yum. Everybody's got to, everybody's got their thing. That's true. I don't want to yell anyone's yum. Everybody's got their thing. This is probably because crocodiles were associated with the god set who was also associated with miscarriage. So this is probably where this association came from. You know what? Strange is that doing this probably created a more alkaline environment inside the vagina and lowering the acidity may have made it slightly easier to conceive.

I mean, there is the physical blockage of the crocodile poop. Spiritual emotional blockage, like what? It's, you know, as long as we're talking science. Yeah. Which we are, right? Yeah, this is science, just like Bill Nye and Mr. Wizard.

Science. Like, Mildegas, Tyson, that. Yeah. Galen, some famous faces who advise different uses for poop, Galen advise feces both externally and internally. So you could rub it on yourself or you could take it in a pill or in food or as a drink, for basically balancing your humors.

And really, it's just being used in this case as like a noxious substance that would make you puke. Okay, great. So, yeah, that kind of makes sense. Sure. If you want something that's gonna make you puke, try to drink poop. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it works in jackass.

I guess that'd be okay. There were some ancient Hindu texts that advise cow dung for wound cleaning. And also, if you dry it out first, it makes a great facial scrub. Does it? I don't know. And dry dog poop was also used as a remedy for sore

throats for a while. Um, that's easy to have had. I see that in the park periodically. I've had some sore throats. I've had some bad sore throats. I've never had that bad of sore throats. I I'm fine. You know what? I'm going to get a looting and just like chill. There are times where I would almost prefer you do that to all of the bottles of chloroceptic spray that are littered around our house constantly.

You have a problem. I have a problem. Yeah, I get sore throats, that's the problem. All the time. Okay. Plenty got in on the act, of course. Of course. Plenty advised, if you have a cough,

your best bet is rabbit poop. What, no, why is that? I mean, because Plenty said so. Yeah, he doesn't eat logic. He's not gonna be bound by such arcane concepts. I don't know, I could make something up, but he just made something up too. So we'd both be making things up and what's the point really? Yeah, I know we're good enough of that.

You know, I read that, I don't know if this is true, but I read that Martin Luther used to eat a spoonful of his own poop every day. I mean, it's one way to stay humble. You know, you start your own branch of the village and you gotta keep that old head unsweld somehow and that would certainly do it. I don't know if that was just a way of doing it. Is that what humble pie is?

I've been curious about that. That's humble pie. Oh. Oh, really? I can't, I guess. That was gross. As a gross, Sydney, I'm so sorry, your delicate sensibilities were so scandalized.

Go back to talking about consuming all poops. Please, be my guest. Okay, so I think I left off with Martin Luther eating his own poop. Yeah, let me rewind the tape. Yeah, that's where you stop talking is when you were talking about Martin Luther eating his own poop. Yeah, let me rewind the tape. Yeah, that's where you stop talking is when you were talking about Martin Luther eating his own dookie. Go on.

I think he was just thanking God for all gifts. Even butt gifts? That's what you're talking about? Butt gifts. In the 1696, I'm just gonna start reading your notes to get past this concept. Okay, there is a book that I discovered in this research that I kind of wish I had.

It's called the salutary filth pharmacy. It was written by Christian Franz Polini in 1696 as a German physician. And it consisted of a bunch of different prescriptions. We could probably could do endless episodes just based on this book for just anything, whatever else, yeah, using bodily excretions essentially. So there were recipes that for different things that used urine, things that used earwax, things that used menstrual blood, and of course, there was a treatment for, again, dysentery, so for diarrhea, illness, using poop, he also wrote, which I don't

know if this should be like one of our themes. If we maybe this should be our next t-shirt, whoever disrespects feces disrespects his origin. Kind of doesn't understand how people are made, huh? He talked about he actually there were references before this phrase, which I think was my favorite, of us being formed by God's hands out of his feces. Hmm. A different take. Yeah, I'm going to stick with the whole...

Stork thing. I don't remember being taught that in Catechism myself. Me either. And I wasn't in catacism. But I'd lay even money that it was not part of the correct. But just remember that, Justin, does stop disrespecting feces. Okay, I'll try for the next hour of many minutes to not disrespect feces.

Okay. There was also a substance in the 1800s that was used to, so it was very popular at the time. We've talked about this to have a very pale face. You would want women, especially, would paint their faces with different compounds that were white to make their skin look extremely pale, because that was the fashion that was in.

We've talked about before, like, tuberculosis was popular for the same reason. Syrus was a substance that would do this, and it was made. We know using lead and vinegar, that's like a famous, like we know where people were putting this lead-based substance on their face, which is bad, you're absorbing lead, getting lead poisoning, but it was also actually stabilized

with horse dung, which isn't as popularized. So all these fine women were putting horse poop all over their faces and Letten Venaker To look beautiful Wow Stanners of beauty certainly have changed in the air say I want to hear more about I don't okay I'm I accept that I'm going to hear more about this but you are'm going to- Oh, you are. There's so much more to come.

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hopefully do it better and to expand the family of shows that we do. And if you are in a position to upgrade this year, that would be awesome as well. And then you're eligible for the gifts that we've already mentioned. So maximumfund.org for its last donate is the address. So all right, said let's hear about more poop. All right, so, the Bedouins, that we're going to talk about them because this was a group of people who knew that camel dung was useful for dysentery.

And, well, they claimed that eating warm fresh camel dung, warm fresh, get that in there, warm fresh camel dung, would be a good cure for dysentery. That's interesting. When you see something like this hang around, by the way, when you see something like that persists in a culture, now I know I've said before that just because humans keep doing something doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea, but when humans are doing something as seemingly strange and clearly yucky as eating camel poop, you got to step back and think, do they know something? Are they on to something? So the reason we're talking about the Bedouins is because the German soldiers in World War II

who were stationed in Northern Africa observed this and also observed that they didn't get dysentery at the same rate that the German soldiers were. Okay. So, they also began eating cameldong for dysentery. Kind of like if you saw Ricky jump off a bridge, you jump off a bridge too. According to records reports that it actually did work. To me. It was helpful. Yes, yes. It was a miracle cure. It was definitely helpful. They actually later would, the German scientists would go on to try to isolate the bacteria from the camel dung

that was actually making it helpful. To save you all the work of eating fresh, fresh hot camel dung. A eating fresh hot camel poop. They figured out what was the science behind it, why was it working? And we're gonna talk a lot about good bacteria was the science behind it, why was it working. And we're going to talk a lot about good bacteria at the end of this and why eating poop may have actually been helpful sometimes.

Not that I'm telling you to go eat poop, I'm just saying. Which is, yeah. But this leads into a really weird little side story that isn't purely medical, but I think is pretty fascinating. So the Germans soldiers saw this and began also partaking in Cameldung, so much so, and it worked for them so well that camel droppings became this kind of good luck charm for the German army. And so one thing they would do is if they would see camel droppings somewhere, they would try to steer their tanks to run over them. Kind of like a thing like a, you know how?

You try to hit a pop bottle in your car that you see on the highway. Yeah, that kind of thing. It's got to make a cool noise if I hit it. Yeah, or like you jump up as you go through a door frame to try to hit the top of the door or something like that. Ford, yeah. Yeah, some weird thing to do. And it had something to do with good luck. And so anyway, so the German tanks would try to run over the camel dung. Americans noticed that the Germans would do this. And so what did we, why would Americans do? Well, we started making landmines that were disguised

as camel dung. Oh, no. Yes. Well, that's the terrible ring camel thung. Oh, no. Yes. Get, Well, that's a terrible ring, whether it's simple joys. I think we could, I think we'll just get, we won't get into a conversation about the,

you know, the ethics of war. The ethics of war. War two, yeah. We'll just, we'll leave that off this table. I'm just talking about camel poop and landmines. Got it. So, when the Americans notice, they started making the landmines look like camel done. When the Germans cut onto that, they started avoiding fresh piles of camel dung because they might

be landmines. But running over, already run over piles of camel dung ones that had like tank tracks through them already, because then clearly those were okay. Yeah. So then the Americans started noticing that, and they started making landmines that looked like camel dunks that had already been run over by a tank. God, was nobody shooting anybody? Like, seriously, you guys are playing a lot of it. Weird game. Yeah.

Anyway. This sounds like trolling more than warfare today. So, the point is that people were eating camel poop, but there you go There's your little there's your little weird historical side story both Horse and cow manure have been used Not just throughout history, but more recent times to filter water Hmm, so in a sense of medicinal kind of use as a hygiene kind of use

Seems like a stretch, but okay, there's certain bacteria that can help remove impurities from the water especially like chemical kinds of impurities That kind of thing so are you telling me that's on point to yeah, there's actually there's science behind it I'm not saying you go to this like in in lieu of other options like they're probably better filters Yeah, but but in some places where there aren't better options that's been used. And before I talk about, I wanna get into current use because there is, hold on, there is current use.

It's still hot and fresh. Like camel though. But I wanna talk a little bit about some of the animal stuff because we don't do a lot of veterinary medicine largely because like you don't know Anything about it. I don't know anything about it. I don't know anything about it. I only know about humans but It's like a sun-namen level of understanding of the animal body, right? Like you have absolutely no idea

Like you think I have less than the average person there's about animals It's like you think they're all just gears and blood in there. No. Okay, so you would say you have about that. I figure they have organs and stuff. I just don't know. Then your first lesson is complete. So this whole concept of eating poop and using poop is medicine and kind of taking poop from one creature

and putting it in another creature to make it better. This is not that strange if you're a veterinarian. This is not that foreign of a concept. Because veterinarians, as we all know, are nasty. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. I'm saying they know about animals and I don't.

On a very basic level, this is partially why some will probably entirely why on a biological level, why some animals eat their mom's poop. Did you know that some animals do that? No, I'm absorbing these two concepts simultaneously. Some animals eat their mom's poop. All right, got that in there. Like hippos, koalas, pandas, elephants. The reason that they are driven, I mean, because obviously, it's not like they say like, hey, mom, what's that? Yeah. Can I try it? Oh, he'll learn. It's all right, Vicky. Let him try it once. It's because they're born with sterile guts, meaning that their GI

tract doesn't have any bacteria in it. And so eating their mom's poop populates their GI tract with good bacteria that they need to help wipe down... Is it probiotics? Probiotics? Yeah, it's like probiotics. All right. It's good bacteria going into your gut. So that's why animals do that.

So there's already kind of a basis for this in the animal kingdom. And then in 17th century Italy, this is how far back we see veterinarians putting this concept to use in animals, taking kind of the fecal material from one animal to give to another one to help cure it if it is ill. And where we see this done mainly, when I talk about fecal material in this sense, a little different, you know, animals that are ruminants that ruminate their food that like chew it up and it like swills around in their first stomach and like sheep and cows. Multi-chooling birds stomachs. They're ruminant animals. Yeah. Okay. You could take ruminant material from one animal, from one cow, let's say. And you can put it in another cow if they're sick to like help them get their gut flora right. Huh. That is called transfonation. And literally we have been doing some version of this since the 17th century.

Wow. Because it helps make them better. Like we're not doing weird experiments on cows and sheep like that. It helps make them better if they're sick or whatever. So, so this is not a new concept in the better and error world. It's a real concept. It is a real, oh yes. It's not fakey fake medicine.

No, no, this is real. This is real. And so if you take all this that I've informed you about, you take all this stuff that we used to do to humans, all these weird uses of poop as medicine throughout history, like with seemingly you would think, no, like why would you do that? Why would these people have ever done that? And then you observe this in the animal kingdom. Some smart people began to put this all together and think, maybe there's some real science here. To smart brave people.

Yes. Yeah, we're the iron-lad summing. Again, you've got to figure for this, for this to hang around, somebody knew, somebody suspected something, right? Right, yeah. So in 1910, a doctor started documenting that they were injecting a bacillus bacteria,

which a certain kind of bacillus that was found in poop, that was found in human feces in large numbers, into the rectum of some of his patients who had these chronic infections, these like chronic diarrheal illnesses, we're not getting better. So we started taking cultures of this bacteria, injecting it directly into the rectum, right, right, other butts.

And he noticed some success in stopping these infections and kind of what he thought was putting in there, something that they were lacking, something that humans who had healthy poop had lots of, he's theory was that these humans who had diarrhea did not have lots of it. So he was trying to give them back something they needed. And this was all based on like, I don't know, maybe this will work, maybe this is what they're missing, I don't know, kind of figuring things out. Okay. In 1958, we see the real breakthrough with this. So there's a team of surgeons in Colorado who were taking care of some very, very sick patients. Later, we would figure out that these patients

had something called C-Diff or Clostridium difficile colitis, which I'm going to talk to you quite a bit about. But at the time, all we knew is that these people were quite ill. They had diarrhea, severe abdominal pain. And when I say diarrhea, I don't just mean like their poop was running or they went to the bathroom a few extra times. I mean, having accidents on themselves, constant, watery, uncontrolled non-stop diarrhea. They had high fevers and they were quite, quite sick people. So what these doctors did was take poop from healthy people and give animals using this poop to the sick

people. So you know usually in an enemy you squirt like water Soapseddy water or something like that up somebody's butt in order to clean everything out and then flush it all back out, right? So it can be a way of like somebody has Constipation and they're impacted or whatever and you'll need to get the poop out of there Well instead of flushing it with water, they flushed it with poop. Okay. Yeah. And these people got better. Whoa. That wasn't like the sentence I expected. Did you say next? No. These patients got way better. And everybody realized that we were on to something. So let me tell you real quick a little bit about C-Diff.

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Sydney, tell me about C-Diff. While they're donating, whisk them away with your tails of C-Diff. That's right, the maximum fun drive, more pleasant than C-Diff. Can that be our new, can we ask Jesse if I can be our new tagline? I don't, is this gonna catch on?

I don't know, I don't know, that's gonna get a loan. Just ask him. Yeah, it's really short. Okay. So, claustroidium difficile is a bacteria that you have some of, probably in your colon, but you shouldn't have a lot of.

Okay. And this has to do with, I've talked about this a little bit on the show before. Bacteria are super important to our bodies. You know, I've been saying that we're more bacteria than human, and I got an email about that. That there have actually been new studies that maybe it's, maybe we're even, maybe we're equally bacterial in human.

So, there you go. Although, I really like that we're more bacteria than you. Yeah, I get it. Maybe I'm, maybe I like, I am just by one, like by one bacteria. Just slightly, yeah. Just slightly tilted towards bacteria. I think that's cool. Either way, the point is we have a lot of bacteria and we need it.

It's important. We have evolved with it. It does things for us. There are good bacteria inside you that you need to preserve and protect. So when that good bacteria maybe gets wiped out by, let's say, antibiotics, or just your balance gets thrown off. Like you were very ill. Or nowadays, it's just out there, unfortunately.

Steediff, clostridium dip, so it can take over. And when it starts growing like crazy in your colon, you get really, really sick. You get something that we call pseudomembrenous colitis, whereas it looks like there's another lining inside your colon that has been created by this nasty bug. And the symptoms you have are that you have, like I've talked about severe pain in your stomach and lots and lots of diarrhea and you're very, very sick. These people often almost all the time end up hospitalized.

It can lead to serious complications, one, called toxic mega colon, which is just as bad as you think. It sounds really bad. It is very bad. So I didn't mean to laugh, but I'm sure people actually have had toxic mega colon. I don't mean to laugh at you. It's just a baffling name. It is.

It's a very, it is very descriptive term that is exactly like it sounds. Your colon stops working and becomes really big and is also super infected and you require surgery. It's a big deal. And toxic mega colon is also my least favorite sci-fi original movie. So that's another thing about it. Although I am looking forward to when it takes on Sharkbaito. Yeah, but you see this too go at it. Although I am looking forward to when it takes on Sharkbait O. Yeah, I'll be see this to go at it.

There are only, and this is a trickier part about C-Diff. It is only susceptible to a couple of antibiotics. So, you know, there are a lot, people get a lot of different infections and I think we're kind of used to living in the antibiotic air and now we have since the 40s. So we assume there's probably a pill for that, right? Right. with CDIF, there's really only two. And if those, and sometimes those don't work, and then we're in a real pickle. We're in a bad situation because this is a bad infection and it needs to be treated

and sometimes the antibiotics aren't enough. And again, this used to only be seen, and like I said, patients who were either on an antibiotic before or who were in a hospital or maybe some sort of institution lived around other people who were sick, like in close quarters, that kind of situation, like maybe a nursing home or something like that, or the chronic leo. Now we're seeing it more and more common. I've known, not just people I've taken care of, I've known a lot of people who have had

C-DIF, so it's out there in the community. So we've done a lot of research to try to figure out what else can we do since antibiotics are not the silver bullet, so to speak, of this infection. And we've come up with an old new solution. I'm guessing poop. So, fecal transplants was a hot topic at some point. I feel like in the past few years I saw like a story about it. There are lots of stories about fecal transplants. That's the thing. You may have heard of this because this was once this became more well known and more popular. There were articles in lots of newspapers and science magazines because it was one of those things where We love this as like doctors and in the not just doctors Been in the science community when we stumble on something that everybody wants to hear about because we think what we do is

Fascinating most of the time people don't So when we talk about something like hey, we're gonna put somebody else's poop in you to make you better and everybody goes, what? We got all excited called the space show. So fecal microbiota Transplant or FMT or just fecal transplant if you prefer It can be used for especially resistant cases of C diff. We usually don't jump to this Usually we try the antibiotics first, and not all centers even do this. So I'm not even saying this is something necessarily available

to you locally. But we have a lot of good data that says that instead of trying to wipe out the bacteria CDIF with an antibiotic, like we normally do, If we put more good bacteria back in there that you've lost, right? Cause CDIF has wiped it all out, it's kind of taken over. If we can repopulate your colon with that good bacteria that you used to have, it'll battle back on its own

and fight back the CDIF and get rid of the CDIF and then your balance will be restored and you'll stop pooping so much. Awesome. So, let's say that you want to do this. I do. You may be wondering how. Yeah, I am.

Yeah. So first of all, we've got to find a donor. Okay. Me. I'll do it. You want to be a still donor? You twist them on. Okay.

So you can be a poop donor. A lot of the time we'll do this with somebody who's like close to you, like a friend or family member, especially somebody who lives in the same house, maybe has a similar diet or a similar... Well, if you're going to let them poop inside you, I think they should be pretty close to you. It doesn't have anything to do with genetics or anything though. It's not like tissue samples or things where we have to find like matches. It's just like who's poopy isn't going to keep you up at night. It's a psychological thing. Exactly. It's going to be feel comfortable asking for their poop.

It's not like a blood typing thing. Yeah. Usually it's somebody known to you, although it doesn't have to be as I'm going to talk about. We take about two to three hundred grams of your poop. We're going to put it in a blender. There's fancy equipment, I'm sure in labs, but let's just be honest, it's a blender. Big blender cost 150,000 dollars. Mix it with normal saline and then introduce it. Hopefully we can do it via an animal into the patient. Or if not, sometimes we have to do it via what we call a nasogastric tube or an NG tube. Nasogastric, now Justin, can you guess where this tube goes? From your nose to your stomach.

That's right. So if we activate it, we can... I hate it. We can put the poop soup through the nose and into the stomach. Can't, can't, can't, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Justin, don't you laugh this saves lives. I'm not laughing, Sinny. What about my demeanor, my composure, my whole, my whole way of being right now is in any way,

even in the same country, the same continent as laughter. It is not, this is despicable. No, I'm sure right now at home you're wondering, that sounds great. How can I make money off this? I can't. I had some tough college years. How can I be a... What I'm thinking is that, yeah, you talked about college years.

If you were willing to donate plasma... Look, just like that, you got enough money for maximum fun drive. Well, how much easier would it be to donate poop? Much. I bet poop. But nobody wants your dirty college student poopies anyway. You can get paid for this, donating poop, usually about 40 bucks a sample. Nice.

Every time? I'm going to be rich. Now, yeah, every time. Yeah, really. Stop it. No. No. You can only use certain donors for this, by the way.

So not just everybody's poop is acceptable. Everyone poops, but not everyone poops good enough for this by the way. So not just not just everybody's poop is accepted. Everyone poops but not everyone poops good enough for this. That's actually that's actually true. It's actually something like of the people who apply like 3% actually. It's very pretty just it's the fame high school of pooping like it's the juliard of pooping. I, everybody's good at something. Yeah, find your thing early and chase your bliss. That's what I say. These donors are very rigorously screened.

You have to go through stool tests to make sure you don't have seed if yourself or other sorts of bacterial infections, those kinds of things, parasitic infections. There are a lot of blood tests for kind of more the common bloodborne illnesses that you worry about. We check for those. Also like syphilis, syphilis is one of those. In addition to like a history and physical and to ask you about your diet and your usual pooping routine and what your poop's like and that kind of stuff, to make sure you're not sick. Yeah. They can only use certain of your poop. So even if you pass all that criteria and you are one of these like holy grail of poopers, you're one of the poop donors, you still,

some of your poops may not be acceptable. So let's say you had some like Chipotle and it's like stop it. Like really runny maybe. How dare you. Sorry, I don't mean in such a way. Let's say that not Chipotle aren't it. They've been doing some dirty things. They're trying it better, but they had like a rough time for a little bit. So they use something called the Bristol stool chart. There is a chart. Like Taco Bell's right there, Sydney. Obviously Taco Bell.

Sorry. That's you go after. Why didn't Chipotle add problems? Chipotle is trying to get it together, Sydney. Sorry. They don't get on the back. I'll still eat either way. I don't care. I'll eat them both. I get it together. I don't see them. They'll be on their back. I'll still eat either way. I don't care. I'll eat them both. I'm not picking.

I don't know. I don't care. So there's a chart. There's a chart of poop that you need to know about. You can look up a picture of this. It's called the Bristol Stool Chart. The Billboard Top 100 right now. At it. These kids today, where they're boom, boom, boom, boom. They're going to get those from one. Chart of poop. That's what I call it. One to seven. One being the hardest, like the little pellet,

poops, you know, when you're real constipated, seven being like real runny diarrhea. And so everything is in between. If your poop is a one or a two, it's too hard can't be used. If your poop is a six or a seven, two runny, you might be sick, still can't be used. Three to five is all we can use.

Again, Bristol Soul Chart, if you're interested, look it up. You can see a picture of the poops that are acceptable. Poops through your code. So, Dr. Bristol, what are you going to name your chart? Well, I'm going to name it after myself. I'm so proud of my chart of poopy hardness that I'm going to name it Bristol's very special poopy chart. Well, not, can I just say, I first learned about this. I still remember in my third year of medical school, when a gastroenterologist taught me about this chart, I thought it was a joke.

I really thought it was a joke. Well, Sidney, how did this man get to, a woman, but let's be honest, probably man, in this one. It may have been named for a place. I think it may have been named for the place, Bristol. I'm not even sure. Why do we even need to quantify this? This is not like poopy. It's either hard or not hard.

Like you don't need it. Oh no, there are seven layers of poop. Yeah, apparently. Apparently. Okay. I've indulged you long enough. Please, please, no more poop facts. So, let me just finish up with this

because this is really exciting. This really is, this is a big exciting area of medicine. I mean, to me, there are cases where, so once we take these perfect poops, these three Bristol 3-5s from the right donor, everything's good. Like I said, we can treat seed if with this and there's been a lot of success from this. It really has. This is evidence-based. I'm not just making this stuff up. There are also cases where it's been used successfully for other kinds of colitis things like ulcerative colitis Which is like an inflammatory bowel disease that you just have this would be huge if we could keep people in

remission we say longer in between flares that similar to Crohn's disease that people can have flares of same kind of idea ulcerative colitis is something very similar That's it's we haven't proven that as much yet. We have some case reports, but there's evidence that maybe we could look into this further. In some other countries are doing this a lot more, particularly Australia, they're doing a lot more of this, and so they've got more data. It's still being evaluated for this, so we're not sure. And the FDA's still trying to figure out how to regulate it. Because the question is, is this a drug, which is regulated a certain way through the FDA, or is this more like a tissue sample or a blood product?

How do you regulate poop? I need a special commission. Nobody's exactly sure. And so right now, it's still considered somewhat investigational and there are certain guidelines that you have to follow. There are donor banks. So while yes, you can get it from, you know, if you're having this done by a physician locally,

they may have one of your family members donate or a friend or somebody. There is a place in Boston called Open Bion, which is a poop donor bank. Awesome. Where they keep tons of freeze-dried poop, like perfectly preserved from the all these approved donors that we talked about. Great poops to their best stuff.

They ship it all over the world. I think like seven different countries so far, something like that, have gotten poop and like almost every state have gotten samples of poop from Boston that saves lives. And so sharks and inclusion, I'm looking for have gotten samples of poop from Boston that saves lives. And so sharks and conclusion, I'm looking for $100,000 for 20% of my poop mailing business. Thank you. Can I just say, you'll find online

and maybe even in your pharmacy, kits to like DIY this. And no, thank you. I wouldn't recommend it. It's just not, you know, it could go horribly wrong. You really, really. I wouldn't do it yourself. I would actually go talk to a doctor.

If your physician isn't familiar with it or if, you know, this is just not something done locally because it might not be, this isn't done everywhere. There are other doctors who can, you know, they can refer you to specialists who can do this other referral centers. Obviously, this isn't something we jump too quickly. It's still under investigation.

I'm not saying it's the answer to all our prayers. I'm just saying it's a really cool area of research right now. And we've known about it for hundreds and thousands of years. Thanks, poop. Thank you, poop. Sorry, I was giving you such a hard time. There you go. I'm not saying poop again for the rest of the year.

Yeah, that's going to do it. And that's going to do for us too. One more time, please, this is our last chance to hit you up with cash this year. And it would just mean the world to us if you'd go donate. Maximumfund.org forward slash donate. Right now, pledge just five bucks a month if you can and help us keep this network going. Thank you to the taxpayers for the use of their song Medicines as the intro and outro of our program. Thank you at home so much for listening to our show for supporting us just by downloading every week and

tweeting at us and emailing me and everything that we really appreciate it. And again, if you can, if you're in a position to donate to our show, to our network right now, maxwemfund.org, Ford slash donate, we super appreciate it. That's gonna do it. Still better than CDF. Still better than CDF, that's gonna do it for us folks. Until next Wednesday, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy.

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