Bipolar Disorder and Fecal Transplantation: A Miraculous Recovery

Welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. This is your host, Lindsey Parsons, and today I'm talking with Jane Sullivan, who alleviated all of her symptoms of bipolar one disorder over the course of about 6 months, thanks to 10 biweekly fecal transplants from her husband. Jane is an environmental educator and author living in New South Wales, Australia with her husband. But before we get to the show, I wanted to mention that if you're struggling with bloating, diarrhea, constipation, reflux, nausea, or you have an actual diagnosis like IBS, colitis, or Crohn's, or you have an autoimmune disease or other symptom of gut dysfunction like anxiety, depression, brain fog, skin rashes, yeast infections, joint pain, fatigue, headaches, or migraines, I can help you. Most of these issues start in the gut. Gut. We can talk through the different laboratory testing options and based on your budget, choose the best one or ones for you together. And then I can educate you on how to get back into great health. So if you wanna share what you've been going through with me and hear about how gut health coaching can help, you can set up a free 30-minute breakthrough session by going to the link in the show notes or by going to highdeserthealthcoaching.com. I hope to hear from you. And if you haven't yet followed or subscribed to the show, be sure to do so, so you don't miss out on an episode. Now onto the show.

Welcome so much to the podcast, Jane, I'm so happy to have you on.

Thank you, Lindsey Parsons. I'm really happy to be invited on. Good to be here.

Yeah, well, thanks for raising your hand to share your story.

Well, I think it's a pretty interesting and compelling story, so I have no problem sharing it.

Yeah, well, we've had various people on the show who have talked about their FMT experience, but none with bipolar disorder, so I'm really excited to hear about how this all came about for you. So why don't we start with kind of just your basic history of, of when you were diagnosed or when you first had symptoms and how long that went on before FMT became an option.

Bipolar disorder is a very difficult illness to be diagnosed with. It usually takes quite a long time for people to actually be diagnosed with bipolar. So I, I would say that I had experienced serious mental illness for 13 years before I was even diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Mm-hmm.

So growing up, I had quite a lot of adverse childhood experiences. You know, I had a very stressful childhood. My mother was physically and mentally ill, and that really affected her parenting ability, and that caused, you know, significant trauma in my childhood. And then a lot of bullying. So it wasn't a happy childhood, but I was functional up until my mid-teens when I was unfortunately groomed and molested by my uncle, and this trauma of that put me into a health spiral where very shortly afterwards I developed chronic tonsillitis, chronic tonsillitis. And then that put me on a basically this journey of taking multiple courses of antibiotics over a 2-year period. So in Australia we have free healthcare, which is fantastic, but if you need surgery you get put on a waiting list. So I needed to get my tonsils out, but I kept getting pushed down on waiting list. And so it was seriously like every 6 weeks or so I was given another course of antibiotics because the tonsillitis would flare up. And it was only until I got glandular fever and was hospitalized that they're like, wow, we've got to get these babies out, with regards to my tonsils. So in that period of time, from like 16, I believe, to— well, I was almost 18. I had to think how many courses of antibiotics I took, but it was probably about 12. And shortly after the abuse is when I fell apart and became basically non-functional. And I always put it down to the trauma, like the trauma for sure was the trigger, I think, for serious mental illness. But knowing what I know about the gut microbiome and then the success later with FMT resolving my symptoms, I really think that the trauma probably was the stress that affected my immune system and made me ill. And then the multiple courses of antibiotics must have just knocked out, just shifted my gut microbiome into a state of dysbiosis and knocked out some keystone species that were really important for mental health. Yeah. So from the age of 16 onwards, I basically dropped out of school. I couldn't work, I couldn't study. Life from the age of 16 onwards was a living hell, basically, of just trying to not die. Because I became suicidal. I became disabled by serious mental illness. And then I wasn't diagnosed with bipolar disorder until I believe I was 29. And this was after a few manic episodes where I became hospitalized. And yeah, so 2011, I believe I was diagnosed. My psychiatrist was an excellent psychiatrist who tried to— we experimented with a whole lot of different drugs to try and find something that worked. And eventually we found 3 drugs that kind of stabilized me to the point where I wasn't suicidal 24 hours a day, but still I had no quality of life and I was extremely disabled and I needed to be taken care of by my family, my partner, and basically government assistance.

Now before you continue, let me just start by saying I'm so sorry for everything that you went through.

Well, I mean, trauma happens to a lot of people. It's actually not an uncommon story.

Yeah, yeah. And I'm wondering, you mentioned your partner and such, so you describe being completely disabled and all that, but obviously life to some extent was going on in the midst of all that. What kinds of things were you still able to do in the midst of all of this mental illness?

There were times where I was able to work in my early 20s. I worked in call centers doing kind of like insurance kind of call center work or medical assistance, actually. So there were times where I was functional enough to work, but the longest I was ever able to hold down a job was like 12 months, and then I would relapse into like serious depression. So, you know, it was various level of functionality. So just because I could work at times doesn't mean that life was enjoyable or easy, or it was a really big challenge. It was psychologically challenging to work, especially etc. So there were brief times where I was more functional than others, and in my late 20s I was functional enough to travel to Canada and live in Canada for a year or so. And while I was in Canada, another kind of, I think, trigger that put me— maybe like amped up the bipolar or really set it going— was I took drugs at a party. I took a lot of drugs, started with magic mushrooms, and then when I lost my mind, I took everything that was there. And when the party ended, it didn't end for me, and I ended up in a psychiatric institution in Canada, which is very frightening for my parents to get a call at 5 AM, you know, saying your daughter is a— has lost her mind. And that drug experience set something off in my brain, oh my God, or whatever. And from that point on, I rapidly cycled between suicidal severe depression and severe mania psychosis, where I would lose touch with reality and to have the experience of leaving my body and traveling intergalactically with my alien friends.

Wow.

So before the drug experience, I was severely mentally ill but had periods of kind of functionality where I could work at times. But after the drug experience, it was rapid cycling, and it was basically almost completely non-functional. And I spent 2 years in and out of a hospital.

But magically, in that time, I somehow met my husband Yeah, so you met him in Canada?

No, after I had this process of being in and out of hospital, I needed some actual kind of rehabilitation. I think what people don't understand about especially the public psychiatric health system is it's, it's emergency care. You go into hospital if you're a danger to yourself or a danger to others, and then you get well enough to a point where you're no longer a danger to yourself or to others, and you're kind of sent back in the community. That doesn't mean that you're well or rehabilitated.

Right.

And so I actually had an opportunity to live and work on an organic farm, like a market garden, because I thought— a job that I did do previous to that was I was like a landscape gardener, and being outdoors and being in nature had a noticeable impact on my mental health. So I figured, you know, I took myself to this farm and I had a routine and it was outside all the time and I had my hands in the soil, and that was kind of helpful in trying to stabilize myself and trying to work out how I can possibly live and survive with this illness. Because in those 2 years, I tried to commit suicide multiple times. And if you end your life on your first attempt, you don't see the damage that it causes to your loved ones. But if you fail in your attempts, you are confronted with the trauma that your suicide attempts cause to your family. And basically, I saw the damage that I was doing and decided that no, I can't kill myself, which kind of made me feel really trapped in this life, in this body, in this incredible suffering. So yeah, living on this farm, I was trying to work out, okay, I can't kill myself, so I know I'm stuck with this illness. Medication isn't really helping me. How am I going to live and survive and function and be in the world? And on that farm, I, I say I found this magic frog in my raincoat that was a very beautiful frog, and I didn't know how to identify it, and I wanted to know about it. And I remember that my sister had this friend Alex who was a zoologist who knew about frogs. So I sent him a photo of the frog and we chatted and we connected, and 7 years later we're married. So, wow.

So that's amazing that in the midst of all that you still managed to meet your partner and your future husband.

Yes, that's pretty incredible in itself, I think. Yeah, yeah, it was a period where I was kind of okay, kind of well, and So I moved to the middle of nowhere in rural Australia to live with my husband— well, my partner— and I've been out here 7 years. And before the whole poo transplant, gut microbiome stuff, just moving to the bush and spending an inordinate amount of time in nature was very healing and very helpful and reduced my stress. And yeah, it was helpful, but I was not functional and I didn't have much of a quality of life. And he was really my carer. Yeah.

Okay, so how many different medications did you try before you settled on the few that kind of stabilized you but with no quality of life?

At least 15.

Okay.

Yeah.

And do you, having gone through that experience, have any general feelings about the mental health institution and the, the way we treat it in the Western world?

I have a lot of feelings about it. Medications absolutely saved my life. I am not against medications. They currently are the best we have to offer. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, they're not good enough. There are vast amounts of people that have bipolar disorder who have success with medication reducing their symptoms to the point, or eliminating their symptoms to the point, they can live full, fulfilling lives with careers and families. I just happen to not be one of those people, unfortunately. So there are many people that have bipolar disorder who, even on medication, have a very limited life. And psychiatric care— I'm exceptionally grateful that I live in a country where I had access to free psychiatric care which absolutely saved my life, but it is not rehabilitation. It saved my life. It didn't give me stability. It's pretty great, but it's not good enough. I feel, and it's not a solution.

Okay.

It's not the be-all and end-all.

Yeah. So how did you hear about fecal transplants and how long did you sit with that information before you moved on it?

Yes. Well, It was my wonderful husband. I think it is because he is an ecologist. And so he thinks, you know, he has an understanding of ecosystems and the human body. The gut microbiome is an ecosystem. And because he reads a lot of journals, he doesn't even remember where he came across it, but he read an article in 2016. Actually, the first time he put the idea of a fecal transplant to me was he read an article about how obesity has shown to be transferable. The fecal matter of an obese person was put into a germ-free mouse, and then they rapidly put on weight, and vice versa. And an unfortunate side effect of one of the medications that I was on, an antipsychotic, was rapid weight gain. So before being on this medication, I was— I don't speak American, so I don't know pounds, but I was 60 kilograms. And then within 6 weeks, I put on 25 kilograms. Yes.

Wow. That's like 50+ pounds.

In 6 weeks.

That's a lot of weight to gain quickly. Yes.

I know.

So it was like, oh great, thank you. I'm insane and obese. Thanks for that. So Alex put forward the idea of, hey, I'm a tall, wiry, slender guy. Maybe this could help you with your weight loss. And I poo-pooed the idea because I'm not doing that to lose weight. That's a crazy idea. So that's when he first kind of put the idea of fecal transplants to me. And then a few months later, he happened upon another study, and he can't find this study. He's been looking for it, but it was a mouse study or a rat study that showed that germ-free mice were given a poo transplant from a mentally ill person, and they started to exhibit mental illness symptoms, and vice versa. And that really, that really, really intrigued him, and he thought, okay, well, I know this is a preclinical mouse study, but, you know, we test all our pharmaceuticals on mice. We share a common ancestor, etc. We're mammals. So it didn't seem that far-fetched that this could possibly help me. And I was also at the stage where he lived with me. He'd seen the suffering that I, that I had, and it was daily and incessant. And I guess, you know, I don't know if it's because he's a man and he wants to help and wants to fix me, but, you know, he put forward this idea that like maybe this could help me. Maybe this is a gut issue. And so I sat with the idea for 6 months, Lindsey, because I was like, what? You want to do what? That's disgusting. And up until that point, I'd never even heard— no one had even mentioned the gut microbiome or its potential link to mental illness. It was just such a foreign concept to me. And then what made me finally decide to truly think about it was my grandmother turned 88, I believe, and she's in perfect health, which is amazing. She's now in her 90s, but it also horrified me because it's like, oh my gosh, I have actually good genes. I could live for another 50 years. I can't do another 50 years of this. I've already done 18 years of this and I can't— I won't survive it. It was out of desperation, and it was kind of like if this didn't work, we were going to have the discussion of how do I end my life without him going to jail. The level of suffering that I was experiencing was unsustainable.

Did you look into doing it at a clinic? Because I know a lot of people go to Australia to get their fecal transplants.

Well, at the time we weren't— I guess we weren't educated enough. We didn't realize that there were clinics in Australia that offered FMT, but I doubt that I would have been accepted into one of those clinics anyway. There is a person that I'm in contact with, a friend who has been accepted into— actually started FMT. Yesterday, oh, he has full bipolar, but he got into the clinic because he also has gut issues.

And your gut was good? You didn't feel like you had gut issues?

I didn't have gut issues. I didn't have any IBS symptoms or anything like that. This was 2016. We felt there was no option to do it except DIY, but I was hesitant to even try it without speaking to my psychiatrist first. And I'm very grateful and very lucky that my psychiatrist is a pretty cutting-edge guy who seems to stay up to date with the latest research. And I live so far away from him that we had a telehealth appointment. I just called him up and I said, sussing him out, I was very hesitant to mention that we were thinking about doing this, but I said, Dr. Henry, what do you think about fecal transplants and bipolar? And he goes, oh, Jane, it's the medicine of the future. In 20 years I'll be out of a job. In 20 years they'll be able to analyze your gut microbiome and see what species you have missing and give you a tailored probiotic and all your symptoms will go away. Why do you ask? I was like, wow, okay. And I said, well, we're thinking about trying fecal transplant for my bipolar symptoms. And there was a bit of a pause. And then he was like, well, I'll be very interested to see how that turns out. Tell me how that goes. Which was kind of like a thumbs up from him. But then he followed it with, you know, Jane, the research is showing that there is a clear link between the gut and the brain, but it's all preclinical. There hasn't been human trials.

So that's what he has to say.

That's what he has to say. Yeah, that was kind of like— gave me the confidence to go for it.

Yeah.

And so I'm lucky that I had an understanding psychiatrist.

Indeed.

This is like out there information.

Yeah.

Most people, even for most psychiatrists.

Yeah.

And I was also exceptionally lucky that my husband was a perfect and safe donor and one of these like unicorn people that have like never had an illness and no history of mental illness, no history of gut issues, like nothing.

No allergies.

No allergies.

Wow. Yeah, that is a unicorn. Yeah.

And was born vaginally, breastfed, grew up around pets, has like been crapped on by a million different types of Australian animal, living in the bush, eating, you know, with Indigenous people. And anyway, just a really healthy guy. Hasn't really experienced stress in his life.

Yeah. Wow.

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Had you tried any probiotics or any kind of supplements to try and help with your mental health at all along the way?

I had. I had discovered the work of the Walsh Institute with regards to like nutrient therapy. And I, I saw like a special GP who had been trained in like looking at nutrients, like kind of looking at your vitamin, minerals, etc., to see if there's like an imbalance. And I got all these tests, and then I was given like a tailored kind of supplement, and it didn't really help. I didn't try probiotics because I think it was like— I mean, probiotics aren't really regulated, especially at the time too. It was kind of like there wasn't a huge amount of evidence that probiotics could be effective, I guess. I don't know, but we kind of figured, well, FMT is like the ultimate probiotic, right?

Right. So you kind of jumped straight from that. I'm curious, when you were tested, did they test your amino acids?

I think they did.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, so let's get to the FMT. So you finally decided you're going to do it. Did you have your husband tested for anything before you did it, or did you just jump in?

Well, I hesitantly say that we jumped in, and Anyone listening, don't do that. That is extremely dangerous. We're kind of uneducated at the time, Lindsey Parsons. Yeah, we didn't get him tested. He has since been tested because he's been a donor to other people. We found an FMT clinic in Australia and went to their website, and it had like the donor questionnaire, donor history, etc., and like the exclusion criteria. We knew his history enough that we thought he was safe. Luckily he was, but he could have you know, had some kind of parasite or something, right?

Right.

We were reckless and we were lucky, right? Um, but yeah, that's dangerous. And we've kind of figured that the fact that he's never experienced any kind of mental health problem would just suggest that he had the right microbes that I am missing, potentially. That was just theory. We started FMT in November 2016, and really I was highly skeptical about it. There was no precedent for doing it for bipolar. I, you know, joined all these FMT forums and was asking, has anyone tried this, like, specifically for mental illness? And I couldn't find anyone. We didn't know how often to do it, so basically we just did one, one FMT via just Fleet enema, actually, every couple of weeks, maybe every 2 weeks. And at that time, I was severely depressed, like, severely depressed barely able to get out of bed, barely able to even like look after my basic hygiene level of depression. So I didn't experience any improvement at all for 3 months. And it's actually— I don't even know where we kept going. We just— I just kept trying, I guess. And after about the 6th FMT, in about the 3-month mark, some— something started happening within. It was like something started to change. And I remember that my depression just started to subside. It was like this bell curve of like the depression started to get less and less and less and less and less and less. And it was like, okay, this is actually working, let's do more. And there was a specific day, Lindsey, that was an incredible day where I woke up and I had this strange feeling that I've never felt before of an adult. It was like, is this— do I feel good? Is this what what feeling good feels like. It was confusing because I had never felt good before. I had various levels of depression, you know, some were worse than others. I never was not depressed really since the age of 16. It was just various levels of the spectrum of depression. The only time I felt good was when I was hyper manic and starting to become hyper manic, and feeling good would soon turn into, you know, I'm the savior of the world. I'm here to save humanity, and then I would start to see aliens, etc. So this good feeling, it just felt stable. So there was a day where it was like I stopped being depressed and I started feeling good, and that good feeling just continued day after day, and it was like this exponential increase in this feeling good. And of course I started to be a bit worried. When am I going to start seeing aliens? When am I going to feel ecstatic. When am I going to be hypomanic? It just didn't happen. And I just started feeling better and better and better. And about maybe the 6-month mark— I really should have gone through all my notes— about the 6-month mark and about 10 FMTs in, all my symptoms were gone. I was no longer depressed. I felt amazing. And then like I started to even have motivation, and I started to have confidence and like, you know, feel joy for no reason and feel happy to be alive, which was had never happened in my adult life. So that was really incredible. So I felt amazing. Didn't have mania, wasn't depressed. I was like, wow, this is what it feels to be a normal human being.

Amazing.

No longer mentally ill. And I thought the test would be to see if it had actually truly worked was I decided that I wanted to try going off my medications, which is always a dangerous time. And if anyone who has bipolar 1 disorder, which is what I have— there are people with bipolar 2 disorder, which is still a severe illness but less extreme than bipolar 1. People with bipolar 2, some people can function and stay well without medication, but bipolar 1, you are medicated for life, basically. And so, you know, I had tried to go off my medication many times and always ended up in a psychiatric institution going off of meds because it's just extremely dangerous. So my psychiatrist hesitantly agreed for me to be weaned off my 3 medications. So it was lithium— lithium was to stop me being depressed, lamotrigine, I believe, was to stop me being manic, and then Seroquel was to help me sleep and to stop me, you know, if I started to be manic. And it took a few months to wean me off the medication, but still, it was too quickly. He took me off too quickly, and I did have my last manic episode in September, I believe, 2017, and it was quite severe. But that was the last time I've been manic. But interestingly enough, Lindsey Parsons, so I was extremely manic in the middle of the bush in Australia, 3 hours from a hospital. My husband— dangerous for me to go get into a car. I couldn't get to hospital. He was unwilling to call an ambulance because they would have called the police. A manic woman. And I, I was actually violent. I'd never been violent before in mania, but I was violent. So I don't really know what was going on there. There were other circumstances around that time, but my husband was actually really worried that if he called an ambulance, they'd send the police, and then I might be violent, and then I would be shot. Because it happens. It actually happened around that time that a woman in Melbourne had a manic episode, was on the street She had a knife in her hand. She wasn't attacking anyone, but the police showed up and within a few minutes she had been shot dead. Well, that is actually a reality, right? The thing is, he was stuck in the bush with this very mentally ill woman who didn't sleep, and antipsychotics weren't bringing me down. But then he remembered reading this case study of a woman who had GI surgery with bipolar, and that the GI surgery triggered mania, and they couldn't give her antipsychotics, so they tried giving her activated charcoal. There's evidence that neuroinflammation, and that maybe the activated charcoal would soak up these inflammatory cytokines in the gut that somehow cross the blood-brain barrier and cause neuroinflammation. And it worked. So Alex gave me activated charcoal and I came down within 3 days.

Wow.

And how long would a manic episode typically last?

I wouldn't come down for 15 days at least. So That was that long-winded story. It was incredible to see, you know, my psychiatrist was guiding him to give me like high doses of antipsychotic, which wasn't working. It takes a long time for that to work. But yeah, activated charcoal brought me down within— to a safe state. Like, I was still manic, but I was not dangerous. I wasn't dangerously manic. And it was, I think, 2 or 3 days. And since then, there have been other people who have had success with activated charcoal as well for mania, which I think is really interesting.

So did he put you back on the medication then at that time? And then did you then have to go back again and wean off?

No, I didn't go back on medications once I came down from the mania. I mean, I was on Seroquel, I guess, so I was on medication. I was on antipsychotics. When I came down from the mania, I didn't go back on lithium or anything, or lamotrigine. And then eventually over time I was able to— came off Seroquel. Yeah, Seroquel, which is an antipsychotic. I was still experiencing insomnia. So yeah, FMT definitely resolved my bipolar symptoms in the sense that I no longer had depression. After that last manic episode coming off my medication, I haven't experienced mania.

Mm-hmm.

So I've basically been well for the last 4 years and in remission. And I say the word cure, but that's a very controversial term. So I'm trying not to say that because I think it ruffles people. Yeah, when I said that, I think I was getting overconfident that like maybe I'm never ever going to get ill again. And then in 2020, I picked up 3 viruses. None of them were COVID, but my husband and I were doing some conservation work in the tropics, and I got bitten by a mosquito that had this virus called Ross River— Ross River fever— and I became very ill and like with incredible fatigue that actually I had post-viral fatigue for 6 months. But at the beginning, I actually experienced mild depression and I hadn't done poo transplants for a couple of years. We thought, okay, well, it worked before, let's try it again. So we did one fecal transplant and within 2 days the depression had lifted. So I think potentially I might have always have a, a weakness there. Even if I remain well, I know that I will have to continue to look after myself properly.

Okay. Important question. Have you stored some of your husband's poo in the freezer in case he gets sick and has to take antibiotics and he no longer becomes a source?

Maybe we should do that.

But like, yes.

How long can you store poo in the freezer?

Well, you know, maybe you refreshen it up every 6 months. But I mean, if he has to go on antibiotics and ruin his perfect microbiome, yeah, then you could lose your source.

Well, does he have a perfect microbiome? I don't know if there's anything particularly magical about his microbiome.

Well, I can tell you there are a lot of people out there struggling to find a good donor. So the fact that he had a good enough microbiome—

Oh, I do know that.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's probably a good idea. I was thinking that. Thank you, Lindsey Parsons. We'll do that.

Yeah. Yeah. So how frequently, at the most frequent, were you doing the transplants?

It was every couple of weeks. We didn't know what we were doing. There was no precedent.

Okay, so maybe if had you done it much faster, you might have seen resolution a lot quicker.

Well, maybe. That was our theory when my two older sisters who have bipolar 2 disorder decided to give it a go.

And so tell me about that. Right.

It was kind of frustrating because I had had this like almost— it was, it was like miraculous, Lindsey. My transformation was miraculous, and my psychiatrist even said if he hadn't witnessed it himself, he probably wouldn't have believed it. It's an incurable illness. You don't recover. There's no way. Anyway, it's unprecedented that I can be— have been in remission for as long as I had, especially not being on medication. It just doesn't happen, which is why I continue to say that I've cured it. But anyway, so 2017, I was well, and my sisters saw this, and I was like, hey guys, you've got bipolar disorder, you really struggle, how about you give it a go? But there's a psychological wall you have to get over to consider taking someone else's feces into your bowel. Yes.

I spent 3 years dabbling in the idea before I finally took the plunge.

All right. Oh, you've taken the plunge.

Oh yeah.

Wow. Yeah. So, I mean, and I don't think I was a very good communicator because I think my sisters, I mean, my oldest sister, Dionne, She thought, she was like, "Oh, so you don't have to do it forever. It's not like, you know, I take medication, you take poo every day." And I'm like, "No, I'm not, I don't do this recreationally. Why would I continue doing it when all my symptoms have gone?" I'm just a terrible communicator, I think, Lindsey, because I didn't make it clear. I was like, "No, we only did 10. It took 10." She's like, "Oh, okay.

All right.

Well, maybe I'll consider it." So she thought it was like an everyday thing. So February 2019, my two older sisters, you know, Dione, the oldest, she was the one who was like, alright, I'm gonna go do it, you should try it too, Catherine. So Dione was a high-functioning person with bipolar disorder in the sense that she worked full-time and she has two children that she took care of, etc. Like, she was functioning, but she didn't have any joy. She experienced something that I find hard to pronounce, anhedonia, which is like nothing. It was just this bland— she was doing the things because she had to do the things to pay the bills and look after the kids, basically. So it was kind of like dragging herself through life, which isn't fun. And then my other sister Catherine, she was quite disabled by bipolar disorder. She, she was in her 40s and had to move home with my parents, and she rapidly cycled. Like, I think her hormones are involved because around her period she would become hypermanic and that's when she would live and she would plan and she would spend money and do all these things and then within a week she'd go down into this like depression and severe anxiety, like crippling anxiety to the point where it was like her executive function had been so affected by anxiety that she couldn't like put her thoughts together to even make a sandwich. The lunch kind of thing, like crippling anxiety, couldn't leave the house. And that was her life month after month. So that was really unbearable for her. So February '19, they're like, yes, let's do FMT. We live 7 hours from where my family lives, so it was kind of like, uh, luckily Alex does contract work, so there are times where he isn't working. And we drove the 7 hours, and I think we spent a weekend there, and they did 3 in a row because we're like, all right, I did one every 2 weeks. What if we do it more frequently? Maybe there'll be faster results. I can't remember how many they did, but Dion did 1 or 2 every time we would visit every couple of weeks. And then my sister Catherine actually came and stayed with us for a week and we did one every day. And I think that they improved more rapidly than I did, but it wasn't like a magic, oh my God, I'm cured. It was still a process. It took months. It was definitely just like a lessening of their symptoms and a noticing of, oh, I'm not depressed anymore. Oh, that thing that normally made me anxious doesn't make me anxious anymore. Like, FMT absolutely resolved my sister's anxiety, and, you know, Dionne started feeling and had— and experiencing a broad spectrum of emotions. And yeah, they're both doing really well, and I'm so grateful that we started FMT for them in 2019 because by the time the pandemic hit, they were mentally quite well and their stress tolerance was quite good as well. This is a stressful time, even though we live in a country that has very little COVID, right? It was stressful, and so they were well enough to be— oh, I hate to think about if they weren't well and having to deal with the pandemic. So I really feel for people who have mental health issues and have had to deal with the stress of the last year.

Yeah, and so for your sisters, I assume they used your husband as a donor, obviously, right?

Yes, they did.

And did you do testing then before he donated to them?

Yes.

What kind of testing did you do?

The International Guidelines for Selecting, uh, Donors, so blood and stool tests basically, to make sure he didn't have any nasty parasites or sexually transmitted diseases, that kind of thing. We haven't done like a biome or microbe kind of analysis to see actually what genera or species are there. I don't know what value that would be, that would have.

Yeah, I know the main reason to do that would be if you could access the raw data. Well, you know, a metagenomic sequencing would pull out any potentially pathogenic species.

Right. Right. Well, interestingly enough, he wouldn't be accepted as a donor in any clinic because of his age, but also he does have Blastocystis hominis.

Oh, okay.

So that's an interesting one because there's a lot of controversy around that, even in the functional medicine community. And there have been studies of kids, and I think it's something around 60% of them in developing countries have Blastocystis hominis and show no signs of illness or problems. I think it's coming to not be considered a parasite.

When Alex got tested and we— when it was like, oh, he's got Blastocystis hominis, that's when we did our own looking into the, into the research and was like, huh, it's pretty inconclusive.

Yeah.

Whether it is pathogenic or maybe— I haven't read this data, but I've heard that there's potentially like 7 subspecies and that maybe one or two actual species is pathogenic or has definitively been linked to GI issues. But what was interesting was I didn't have gut issues. Both my sisters had IBS. Oh, okay. And then later on, my mother started FMT with Alex as a donor because my mom has had gut issues like for a long time.

Wow. And so have those resolved as well?

Partly, but we think she needs more.

Okay. But for your sisters?

Their gut issues were the first things to be resolved.

Wow.

So it was the gut issues, their IBS issues resolved, and then their, you know, mental health issues over time resolved.

And were they more in the IBS-C or IBS-D spectrum or mixed?

I haven't discussed in depth their IBS.

Okay. And how many total transplants did your sisters end up doing over what period of time?

10 or 11 each. Yeah. Over— I can't even remember, Lindsey. They want to do more. So months, years, a year. Okay. Yeah.

I don't think we've done any in 2020 and they want to do more still.

So it was just enema that we did. And at the time when I was looking into FMT, I was really scared about top-down pills. But interestingly enough, when I had this post-viral fatigue, issues, I was like, well, maybe poo can fix this because obviously the viruses that I had changed my microbiome. You know, I started doing enema again to try and help me with this post-viral fatigue, and the enema actually made the fatigue worse. But then I learned how to make enteric-coated, double-encapsulated pills. So I thought, well, maybe it's a different— like, you know, enema only gets part of the large intestine. Maybe if the poo goes through the whole digestive tract, it'll colonize other areas or whatever. So I did Top Down Method and it definitely helped.

Cool.

I felt a difference. And so now my sisters want to do poo pills as well. And I think my mum, I mean, it's a much more palatable, I think psychologically a bit more palatable to just swallow pills that look like supplements than shove an enema up your bum.

Yeah. Not for me. I assume you, to make them clean, you pretty much just do the one that may be messy, but then you put it inside another one.

Well, I've done it so it's not messy at all.

Oh, really? How do you do that?

Okay, so—

Go for it. This is the podcast in which we talk about these things.

Well, I found a video online of this guy in a lab going, this is how you can make poop pills at home. So I bought size 00 enteric-coated capsules because that's the biggest size you can get in Australia. And so enteric-coated capsules survive the stomach acid because I figured you don't want it to break down in the stomach. And I looked at clinical trials where they're using capsules. They usually do an enteric coated and then like sort of double layered kind of thing. So I got the poo and instead of mixing it with saline, I mix it with a food grade glycerin because saline actually breaks down the capsules very quickly. And also I was like, okay, well I'll make some and take them fresh, but also freeze them and glycerine has a bit of a cryoprotective element to it, apparently. It's not the best cryoprotective thing to mix poo with, apparently maltodextrin is, but anyway, I had glycerine. So I make up the enema and with glycerine instead of saline, and because I had Fleet enema bottles, they're actually perfect little squeezy bottles that I could squeeze the FMT slurry into the pills, and I had a size 00 pill machine and filled it up. Squeezed a bit of the poo into it, put it together. Then you've got 25 capsules in the enteric-coated capsules. And it's like, well, you can kind of see the poo in it, so let's double coat it. So then I had size 000, uh, like veggie caps that were green, and then put the pills in those. It just looks like a green supplement. And consumed them fresh and then froze them. And I found that the frozen ones probably didn't have as big of a kick as the fresh ones, but they seemed to work. So yeah, that's how I made pills.

And so this machine, is this an expensive thing to get? What does it look like?

Oh, it's a, an encapsulator machine. It cost me like $30. Okay. It's just a little machine that you put the capsules in, press it together. Okay. It's not very expensive.

Yeah, no, that sounds very doable. I mean, especially for people who are pretty hesitant to do an actual fecal transplant rectally.

Well, I mean, you still have to handle poo.

I don't know that that's the part that grosses people out. Although I'm less easily grossed out than a lot of people, I think.

Yeah. Well, I'm not grossed out anymore, obviously, by this discussion. I even went on national television in Australia and put poo in a blender on national television.

Beautiful. Was this, uh, the ABC?

SBS. This was a few years ago.

Okay. And you wrote that there are 12 people now that, that have experimented with FMT for bipolar disorder with success. Can you tell me a little bit more about who those people are?

Well, there's actually more than that now.

Okay.

There are currently 6 people who have been in remission for a little while. So there's me and my 2 older sisters, and then there is a guy in Peru called Kerwin who has bipolar 2 disorder. He found my story a few years ago and experimented with FMT with his wife as a donor, and he's basically been in remission for a few years, although FMT didn't resolve his anxiety, so he's adopted like a low-carb kind of ketogenic style diet, which keeps his anxiety under control. But his wife wasn't— she was a good enough donor to resolve his depression and mania, but like she wasn't the healthiest of donors, basically.

Yeah, and of course there can always be other underlying issues at a physiological level, at a genetic level, that are causing, for example, low serotonin.

Yeah, it's very complicated. It's an ecosystem. And I feel like potentially I may have been— I mean, my story was very linear. It was I did the poo and then within a few months all my depression went away. And that hasn't been the case for everybody who has tried FMT. Some people it has been, but other people— my friend who lives in the United States, she has a very different kind of bipolar that I'd never heard of until I started communicating with her, called like mixed bipolar, which is an incredibly dangerous kind of bipolar because it's like people who have mixed bipolar can be exceptionally depressed but manic at the same time. So it's like you're suicidal and actually have the energy to follow through with it. So she started FMT 3 months ago, and she's done a lot of FMT, like 40 FMTs, and it has not been a linear process. She's definitely improved dramatically, but it was like up, down, up, down, up, down. And the up-downs got less up and less down kind of thing. It was just this dramatic, you know, depressed, manic, depressed, manic. And then it got less and less. So it's kind of like evening out over time. But it was not been a linear process for her. With my sisters, it was pretty linear. With Kerwin, it seemed pretty linear. And the most kind of incredible story recently was this guy Steve in Australia who— people want Alex's poo. Steve's story is out there. People contact us like, can you be a donor? It's not logistically possible because of where we live and etc. So this young guy, Steve, has bipolar 1 disorder, had severe manic episode mid-2020, and then after the manic episode became like exceptionally depressed and suicidal. And he was in the middle of this depression and he and his girlfriend found my story and contacted us and wanted Alex to be a donor. We're like, really sorry, can't be a donor. But, you know, left them with some resources about 'If you're serious about this, you know, these are these clinics, or if you want to find your own donor, make sure you do it safely. This is the way to make sure your donor is safe.' And also that just because it worked for me doesn't mean it's going to work for you. We don't know, it's all anecdotal, etc., and left it at that. And then a few months later, we got an email from them saying that Dave's girlfriend Pride had been tested and she was a safe donor, and they did FMT, and he came out of his depression within 30 minutes from one FMT.

Wow.

From his girlfriend. Like severe depression to not being depressed anymore in 30 minutes. And that is unprecedented.

And he didn't do a second one?

Oh, he's done more. He's done more since then. Yeah.

Wow.

That, that was incredible.

That is incredible. So your story has been printed in a journal, is that right?

So my psychiatrist, he was rejected so many times, he was very frustrated. Eventually got published in, luckily, a respected journal called the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, but they only let him write 400 words about my story. But I see it as a victory for sure because it's now a drop in the ocean of the research. And I'm so humbled. I was actually asked by Professor Felice Jacka from Deakin University, who's like a world pioneer in nutritional psychiatry, to be an associate investigator for an upcoming clinical trial, which will hopefully— they'll get funding for in the next few months to treat major depressive disorder with capsules.

Wow.

And so they used my case study in their ethics application and etc. So it's like my story is fantastically helping science.

I mean, I assume they're applying for grants, but if they want donations, is there a place that people could donate to help fund that research?

Oh, for sure. You could go to Food and Mood Center. If you look that up, you'll be able to find them. I would love that.

Well, I'll get a link into the show notes. They're out of where?

Sorry, Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.

Okay, great. Anything else that I haven't asked about that you would like to share about your experience?

I think I'd like to kind of say that FMT didn't cure everything in the sense that I kind of worry that I've painted a false narrative of like, ah, I did— I took poo and all my suffering went away and all my, you know, all my problems are resolved. And the life-threatening problems were resolved. I mean, the, the bipolar dramatically reduced my capacity to live, you know. So FMT resolved my bipolar symptoms, which gave me quality of life, which made it possible for me to live and be functional. And at the age of what, 37, learn how to be an adult. But what it didn't do is it didn't resolve my trauma. So interestingly enough, FMT resolved my sister's anxiety, but it didn't resolve my trauma. I had PTSD and complex PTSD that still kind of limited my ability to really function in the world. But what, what FMT did do for me is it resolved my depression and mania. Etc., and gave me space to now finally work on healing that trauma, which I have been doing for the last 3 years basically. Because, you know, sexual abuse, that leaves— that changes you, that changes your perception of the world and yourself. And so I had a lot of anxiety that was still debilitating. So I think I just wanted to mention that because it's, it's like, you know, FMT isn't going to resolve your trauma.

Sure. Sure, it'll clear the physiological obstacles perhaps to healing.

Yes.

And one more question. Do you know anybody who you've talked to with bipolar who maybe didn't have gut issues, but instead of going the FMT route, just went the route of trying to heal their gut in another way?

I followed for a while a woman in the United States who seems to keep her— anecdotally, people are controlling their symptoms with diet, like a ketogenic style diet. I don't know if the mechanism there is to do with inflammation or not, but a ketogenic style diet, like, it kind of concerns me a little bit in the long term if there isn't enough fiber, just because we know how important fiber is.

Uh, yeah, no, you should look at Lucy Meiling's work on this question. She's a PhD who studied the gut microbiome and exercise for her doctorate, but she just put out an article talking about the flexibility of the gut microbiome, and in particular when you're on a ketogenic diet how there is butyrate produced as a ketone body and that that will feed the gut epithelial cells the same way that butyrate produced by bacterial fermentation of fiber is produced. So it's an alternate route to feeding your gut colonocytes or the cells lining your colon.

That's really heartening to hear then.

Yeah. So that's why that would probably work.

Yeah, because I know that I've heard many stories, many, many anecdotal case studies that are people that I've actually talked to who control their bipolar symptoms through a ketogenic style diet. However, you know, the underlying issue isn't resolved.

Yeah, no, I think that that's the fundamental problem, and that few people are able to sustain a ketogenic diet indefinitely because, let's face it, carbs are delicious and nobody wants to live like that when everyone else is eating carbs all around them.

Well, if you— I, I don't know, but like, having a serious mental illness is a pretty big motivation.

Yes, yes. No, I understand deprivation. I have, for autoimmune disease, gone— went for many years very strictly without gluten and dairy, but fortunately have been able to reverse my, my conditions through healing my gut.

I think one thing I wanted to add, Lindsey, before we go, is that there has been a clinical trial already in Toronto, Canada, treating bipolar disorder with fecal transplant. And that data, I believe it's currently being peer-reviewed, and hopefully it will be published this year. So I'm exceptionally excited excited about this trial because, you know, at the moment, people are desperate. People are doing, like me, FMT at home, which you can limit the risks by ensuring that your donor is properly screened, etc. But really, this is not going to become mainstream, it's not going to become available to people until we have the data from, you know, randomized controlled double-blind trials. And this is the first trial. And yeah, I'm very excited about Yeah. The data being published for that.

Awesome. That's really exciting. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story with us, and I'll put all the links to relevant things in the show notes for folks who want to see anything further, see the journal article and maybe the link to your show on the news.

Sure, sure. My very neglected blog.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Happy to, uh, to post that as well. Well, I'm wishing you complete healing from all of your trauma and all of the remaining issues. And thank you so much for sharing with us.

Thank you, Lindsey Parsons.

Wow, what an amazing story. And I hope it offers hope to a lot of people. And if you're one of those people who's struggling with a mental health issue and you don't have a safe FMT donor, or you aren't yet ready to try FMT, please feel free to set up a free 30-minute breakthrough session, and I can see if I think I can be of help to you in repairing your gut-brain connection. There's a link for that in the show notes. And if you want to stay in touch and get transcripts of my shows, as well as my free ebooklet on finding your root cause through stool and organic acids testing, pop over to my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, to join my newsletter list. You can also connect with me by joining my Gut Healing Facebook group if you want to ask a question about gut health or suggest a topic or a guest for the show, or email me directly if you'd like to submit a listener question at Lindsey@HighDesertHealthCoaching.com. And that's L-I-N-D-S-E-Y. And if you'd like to support the show, you can buy third-party vetted, temperature-controlled, high-quality supplements from my FullScript and Wellivate dispensaries. Links are in the show notes. And that's it for today. Thanks for listening, and here's wishing you all the perfect stool.