New Year’s Make-Overs the Fun Way: Fecal Transplants

New Year, New You, amirite? You’re hitting the gym. Cutting carbs. Not skipping leg day. Maybe you’re even locking down that coveted consulting internship.

Or, if you’re like me, maybe just you’re keeping a Chia Pet alive.

Whatever, you’re making personal progress. But when it really comes down to it, aren’t we all still just little shits? Even for the best of us, tackling our faults is a drag, but maybe we’re all just fiddling with the wrong parts of us.

See, currently there are 100 trillion cells of bacteria making a habitat of your bodily temple. They’re camping out on your skin, backstroking through your gut, and getting real friendly in your naughty bits. This microbiome, or germ ecosystem, does everything from helping you (sorta) digest Chipotle to dropkick parasites and diseases[1].

So if changing your lazy shit human cells is out of the question, maybe there’s something to these little freeloaders. Maybe by mulching that inner garden with some better shit, or what science calls a “fecal suppository”, you could transplant yourself into better health. And yes I needed that long of an introduction to make you somewhat, maybe, okay poop transplants[2].

Basically, the idea is that if your microbiome ain’t up to par, because, say, you just nuked it with a round of antibiotics for that infection[3], you can trade it in for someone else’s with a little of their ripe, cultured stomach-discards stuck up your ass.

I kid you not, this shit is true. Currently, it’s being used to treat an antibiotic resistant infection known as C. difficile that has a nasty habit of springing up in elderly hospital patients after they've just been treated with antibiotics for some other infection. To quote the New York Times: “the procedure is safe and effective, with 83 percent of patients experiencing immediate improvement as their internal ecosystems were restored.”

Hold up, though. That’s all well and good for Grandma, but how does other peoples poop make me a better person? Well, turns out, if you took down a few too many Twinkies in your day, your gut grove is a bit different then the one in, say, a salad type. Basically, all the little germs that help you digest are hell-bent on keeping you tasty sized, even when you change your eating habits. But according to science, if you mooch off the green thumb of your lean neighbor, you could lose weight without changing a thing. Just wipe out your less than stellar bacteria, and raise a crop of skinny-mini digesters. Then sit back, and feel free to say you’ve just been beasting your New Years resolution of going to the gym. No one has to know it’s actually someone else’s poop that finally did the trick.

Just be warned, this procedure is totally unregulated and not covered by any insurance at the moment. But, hey, all the good drugs are.

[1] Consider yourself learned

[2] I’m avoiding conjuring images of Human Centipede at all costs.

[3] You knew it wasn’t just an itch.

Special thanks to my high school bio teacher for the idea.