Finding the Perfect Stool . . . Donor with Michael Harrop of HumanMicrobes.org

Welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. This is your host, Lindsey Parsons, and today I'll be speaking with Michael Harrop, founder of Human Microbes, Huffhacker, primarily through the means of do-it-yourself fecal transplants, and microbiome expert and documenter of all things microbiome. I had Michael on episode 5, and this is a follow-up to that conversation. But before our conversation, if you haven't yet followed or subscribed to the show, be sure to do so. And if you want to get transcripts of the podcast, pop over to my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, and sign up for my newsletter. You'll also get my free ebooklet, Finding Your Root Cause Through Stool and Organic Acids Testing, when you sign up. And if you haven't yet done my quiz on which stool test would help you get to your root cause, you can find a link in the show notes and take that. Now on to the show. Hi, Michael. Welcome back to the podcast.

Hi, nice to talk with you again.

You too. So I had you on episode 5 of The Perfect Stool when I was just starting out, where you described doing 9 do-it-yourself fecal transplants on yourself and using various donors and your efforts to find the perfect donor and, and the things that you had done at that point. So I thought this would be a great time to do an update and hear what you've been working on and if you've had any changes to your health. So why don't we start there? With your health, and if you can just briefly describe what conditions you would say you had at the last time we spoke and what has changed since then and how you did it.

Well, I've had irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome for most of my life. Those are the main things that I'm trying to treat.

Mm-hmm.

I can't remember actually what exactly was different since the last time. There have been like so many different ups and downs. But mild Alzheimer's symptoms is also something I'm dealing with now in recent years.

Like brain fog type of thing or memory loss or—

So there's actually some really interesting papers on the connection between diabetes and Alzheimer's and they call it type 3 diabetes, I think. And based on the symptoms of what they're describing, that's what I have, a mild version of that.

Mm-hmm. Do you also have issues with blood sugar regulation?

Not yet that I know of.

Oh, okay. Okay. So last time I, we had talked, you had done 9 fecal transplants. Have you done more since then?

Yeah, I've definitely done more.

How many, how many you up to?

I think I'm around like 14 or 15 different donors at this point.

Okay. Multiple times with, with single donors.

Yeah. Yeah. Met many, many FMTs from each of those donors.

Okay. And so did you have any successful ones or?

Yeah, I did. I actually pretty much cured my irritable bowel syndrome from one of them. And then I tried another one, which I, I thought was a 1 in 100,000 donor. And they turned out to be detrimental for me and they reversed most of the benefits that I got. And then I continued on with other donors and I saw continued improvements with them.

And was your IBS more of an IBS-D type, IBS-C type?

Yeah, it was IBS-C. And then I took an antibiotic called Rifaximin and that changed it to IBS-D. And also I was then unable to tolerate proteins and fats.

Oof. That means that's a big part of the diet, huh?

Yeah.

Okay. And, and now can you?

So the donor that cured my IBS, they allowed me to reintroduce protein and fat for the first time in, in a very long time. Other donors were able to restore the fat tolerance, but not, not the protein so much.

Mm-hmm.

At this point, I'm still able to tolerate fat, but I haven't really tried high protein stuff. I, I don't have a craving for it.

And so you just eat primarily a diet of what?

My diet right now is, let's see, almond milk, maltomyel, butter, cheese, fruits, sweet potatoes. Yeah, that's my diet today. Okay.

And where did you find the donors that you used?

So in the past I was just individually trying to find donors. I was going to friends, family. I was passing out flyers at local universities, going online to whatever communities, like I was even trying online dating profiles to try to find donors. So I, I was, you know, trying everything I could think of. And eventually I started up a website called humanmicrobes.org. To officially go into it. And I tried to get the community involved in for at first because there were like hundreds of other people also trying to find a high-quality donor, but that didn't seem like too effective. I assumed that people would be enthusiastic about helping and trying to work together to find good donors, but you know, they did, they didn't really seem to get involved much.

Like you wanted other people to help review applications or?

No, just, you know, help spread flyers.

Oh, right. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Help give advice on how we should go about this designing of the website and recruiting donors methods and stuff.

Mm-hmm.

So when that didn't work, I decided to try to raise the prices that we were charging recipients and also paying out to donors. And that seemed to be pretty effective. At that point, there were only maybe around 25,000 applicants. And then as soon as I raised prices and payouts, we started getting these huge influxes of hundreds of thousands of applicants. And currently we're up at almost nearly a million donor applicants. Wow.

How in the world do you screen those? Do you have some sort of a computer program that helps screen?

Yeah. So thankfully one of the other IBS patients helped me. They, they set up a spreadsheet Excel program that I just input the data into there and it scores it automatically. Mm-hmm. So I can score like about 10,000 at a time and that's really, really helpful. Oh, good. I wouldn't have been able to do it without that.

I'm sure. And so do you feel confident that people are answering questions honestly?

Yeah, for the most part, people seem to be doing it honestly. But e— even for the ones that don't, it's not really a, a big concern because there are other steps that are arguably more important, which is verification of stool type and physical fitness.

Mm-hmm.

So even with most people that pass the screening questionnaire, most of them don't pass the, uh, stool and physical fitness verification point.

So they need to send a photo of their stool or—

Yeah, we ask for a few days of consecutive stool samples. Along with some physical fitness photos.

So stool sample photos.

Yeah.

Right. Okay. And then, and then at that point you're eliminating them if they're not fit enough or their stool doesn't look perfect Bristol type 3 or 4 kind of thing. Yeah.

So I'm, I'm actually looking for some very specific stool type, mm-hmm, stool characteristics. It's more complex than the Bristol stool chart, but. But that chart is very useful as like a basic outline.

So what is, what does the perfect stool look like to you?

You know, it's not something that I advertise because I want people to just submit the most accurate photos.

Okay. Fair enough.

So yeah.

So how many people have gotten beyond the initial screen and then the second level of screening?

So about 20%, 10 to 20% pass the questionnaire.

Mm-hmm.

And go on to the, um, stool and fitness verification. Mm-hmm. And then from that, I would say a majority that turn in their submissions either don't rank high or don't pass.

Okay. And how much were you offering to pay donors for each sample?

We are currently offering $500 per stool sample.

Oh, okay. And how much are you charging recipients?

$1,000.

Okay. So how many people actually have gotten through and qualified as donors?

So we have a list of potential donors that we send out to recipients and recipients get to choose from that list.

Oh, okay.

It, it kind of depends on supply and demand. I have thousands of possible donors, but right now there's only demand for a handful. Of the very top donors.

And have they already had their stool sequenced or what, what testing are you using after that?

So we're just using the basic recommended tests, which are just pathogens. The other stool tests, I, I don't find them very useful.

So you're just doing like basic GI pathogens plus are you doing blood testing for infectious diseases and STIs and such?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Okay. So the donors have to do those at their own expense to be donors and to be on the list?

No, no, we, we cover all the costs associated with applying to be a donor.

Oh, okay. So by the time they get through the process, then they have the opportunity to make money, but no cost to them to apply.

Yeah, that's correct.

Okay. Interesting. And so how many people have you been able to recommend, you know, where there's been a connection between a donor and a recipient?

Currently we have 3 or 4 donors that have sent out shipments to recipients.

To how many different recipients?

Well, the two most active ones have sent out to over 100, maybe like 1 to 200 different recipients.

Wow. And so are they putting their stool on dry ice or are they, what's the, what's the procedure for their stool donation?

Yeah. So they just collect it in a Ziploc bag and then depending on what the recipient orders, they'll then process it into, you know, capsules perhaps, or maybe an enema solution.

The donors produce—

or even just plain stool. Yeah. We, we teach the donors how to process their own stool.

Wow. Okay. So, so the recipients have the option for capsules and the option for—

Yeah. Recipients can basically choose. We really give a lot of leeway to recipients to customize their orders however they, they want.

And for the, the enemas, are they mixing that with anything or is it just straight stool or?

That's, you know, optional. It's really up to the recipient. Default, we do saline with an antifreeze.

Mm-hmm.

Either maltodextrin or glycerol. Mm-hmm.

Okay. And those are things people can just buy online or where do they get ahold of those things?

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're very easy to obtain.

Okay.

Maltodextrin is a, you know, a supplement and yeah.

Food additive. Yeah. Okay. And what kind of success have you heard about? Do you keep, I assume you keep track of that when you have a recipient?

Yeah, we're actually the only source of stool donors that's publicly tracking and reporting results. So anyone can go on our website and see what other recipients have, what results they've gotten. Mm-hmm. Most people I would say are either getting, you know, mild improvements or no improvement. Very few people have adverse events.

And what are, what are the typical conditions that people are looking for stool donations for?

It's usually a wide variety of general symptoms. I guess bowel problems are a common one, but not a primary one, I would say.

Hmm. Are, are there a lot of people with say chronic fatigue looking or with other sort of chronic conditions?

Yeah. Yeah. It's like a, a wide variety of chronic conditions really.

Do you have some sort of, of database or catalog so that you can systematize the responses and analyze them statistically or?

I'm not doing any kind of statistical analysis on our results, but since they're public, anyone is able to analyze them.

Hey, this is Lindsey here. Just letting you know that if you're tired of dealing with digestive issues like bloating, indigestion, soft stool, diarrhea, constipation, reflux, IBS, IBD, or the numerous health conditions that come about when your gut is off, like brain fog, weight gain, UTIs, fatigue, mental health issues, or complex conditions like fibromyalgia and ME/CFS, test, that's my specialty. With my 3 or 5 session gut health coaching packages, we'll discuss different stool and functional medicine tests to find out the root cause of your symptoms. I'll interpret the results and provide clear explanations, empowering you to make informed choices for your gut and overall health. And together we'll develop a customized action plan based on your test results so you can find relief and regain your health and vitality. I come from a functional medicine perspective, trying to incorporate the latest peer-reviewed research and educating you on protocols used by functional medicine practitioners but devoting lots of time and support to my clients the way a doctor simply can't. If you're interested in a 3 or 5 session coaching package, you can sign up for complimentary 30-minute breakthrough session. Or if you can only afford one appointment at a time, you can book an initial 60-minute consultation. Links for those are in the show notes. Now back to the show. But in terms of like the conditions, do you have specific condition lists or specific symptom lists, or people are just listing what they, how they describe their own conditions?

Yeah, they're just describing them however they, they want.

Okay. And you mentioned a few adverse events. What kind of adverse events have you seen?

The one I remember is someone just got generally worse. And then I think the, the worst, like, rating someone gave to a donor was because they got severely constipated.

Mm-hmm.

I think those are the only two.

Yeah.

They're probably like somewhere they just got like generally worse.

Mm-hmm. And so you, you weren't doing any, any metagenomic sequencing or anything like that of the stool. So, so what the contents of the stool is, is sort of still a mystery.

Yeah, it's largely a mystery, but I think for both of our active donors or the two most active ones, we did the GI Map.

Mm-hmm.

And that comes with like a few other test results on, on the kind of the gut microbiome makeup. I, I don't find it particularly useful, but Why is that? Most of those tests are, are not actionable and they're not, there's like current knowledge is just too limited to do anything with that information. And the, the information itself is, is not very useful. Mm-hmm. It, it mostly gives information on the genus level or the species level, and there's just not much you can do with that kind of information.

Mm-hmm. What kind of information would you like to see on a stool test that would be more actionable?

I mean, I just don't think it's possible with current knowledge. Like even if you, I think Viome might be one that gives the strain info, but even with their tests and that kind of info, there's just not really anything you can do with it.

Because the research is just so early in most strains that are in the gut microbiome.

Right. There's just no information out there of like what you should do, what's good, what's bad. Because there, it's just a very complex ecosystem that interacts together. So maybe you have one strain, if you label it good, but what, what if it's not interacting with another strain? Then maybe that changes it. Now, now it's bad. So it's just really complex and so much is unknown.

Do you see hope in the future given the rise of ChatGPT and these AI tools for perhaps being able to get further along in integrating the microbiome research?

Yeah, I think AI is kind of the only hope for that really.

Yeah. It's so complex.

Yeah. There's, there's too much information. It, for humans to process, it would definitely have to be a computer.

I, I've done various stool tests over the years. I think I did one, maybe Genova GI Effects with a functional medicine doctor years ago, and then I did when uBiome was an entity, I did a couple of theirs and then I did a Thorne, which had metagenomic sequencing. But at some point I realized, oh, and I did one with Biome, B-I-O-M. And I realized at one point that there was some 60% or something that was just not mentioned. And those were the strains that had no name or description. I was like, wait a second. So we don't actually know what 60% of this is. So we've got all these tools in which we're sure that this thing is, you know, a major component of the gut microbiome. It's super important, but the other 60% we can't even identify.

Yeah.

So yeah, I know, I guess it is really, I mean, I, I do find some useful things personally in working with clients on the GI map in particular, the intestinal health markers, cuz you can at least see, you know, how's their output of pancreatic enzymes or their secretory IgA. So you can get some sense of whether their gut is dysfunctioning and which, what, in what way. But yeah, how different microbes interact and what to do to bring up one microbe and bring down another is still very much, uh, only at the beginnings of study for relatively few microbes that are particularly well known. Yeah. Yeah. So tell me about what you think about antibiotics and how that relates to people's gut microbiome.

I think they're, they're overused. Like severely. Many of the current studies put it at like 30 to 50% overuse. And that's according to current guidelines, which I think are way too lenient. So it's probably way higher than that. And one frustrating way that that's manifested is that I recently screened a donor that is basically like a one in a million, and they would've had zero lifetime antibiotic use if not for a week's use after a dental appointment. And that's actually one instance, dentistry, where dentists are giving out antibiotics where prophylactically. Yeah. They're not, it's not an evidence-based use. They're just giving it out because I don't know why.

Heart murmurs and things like that. I've had that before. 'Cause I have a super subtle heart murmur and you only even hear it if I'm lying down and all of a sudden I mentioned this and then I start getting recommendations for prophylactic use of antibiotics and I'm like, hold your horses. I've been having dentist appointments my entire life and I haven't had any antibiotics. I don't intend to start now.

Yeah. And I think it, I think it even goes beyond that. There were some papers and articles by some reputable websites where they covered doctors just giving it out where there is no evidence-based use for it at all. And so that's really frustrating to see, especially now that it's actually interfered with what I'm trying to do with getting super high quality donors that can potentially reverse the effects of antibiotics. Now this one, this super, you know, rare one has been unnecessarily damaged. So that's kind of frustrating.

This was somebody who, while you were screening them, had to go and get antibiotics.

No, it was actually, they, they got it prior to me screening them. So hopefully in the future I can, you know, let them know that this is not really an evidence-based use of antibiotics. So you can probably ask your dentist next time, is this really necessary? And if, if you say it is, then, you know, what are you basing that on?

But you don't allow any donor who's had antibiotics at all.

I wish, I wish I could have a, a rule like that, but No, that's so rare to find someone that's never taken them. So I can't really impose that.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think one of my children, I think my older son, but I wouldn't recommend his stool, but I think my older son has never had antibiotics.

That's nice.

Yeah.

I think it's quite strange how there's this huge anti-vaccine movement, but there's no anti-antibiotic movement because the, scientific consensus on vaccines seem to, seems to be pretty strong in favor of them. However, there's a pretty strong scientific body of literature showing the harms of antibiotics. So that's something I find pretty strange.

I think there is a reasonable anti-antibiotic movement amongst people who are gut microbiome enthusiasts and naturopaths and that sort of thing. But it's not anti for any use, of course, because obviously people can die from the infections that antibiotics help them with.

Right.

I know that there's, for the resistant strains of antibiotics that are resistant to, or resistant strains of bacteria rather, that are resistant to different antibiotics, there's phage therapy and have tried to get somebody on here to talk about phage therapy, but doesn't seem like a super available alternative to most people. Yeah.

It's still really early in the research.

Yeah. So with your donors, recipients, do you recommend a protocol of a certain number of donations, a certain number of times, antibiotic pretreatment, et cetera?

I don't like to give recommendations because I'm not a doctor and we try to avoid giving out anything that may be construed as medical advice.

Mm-hmm.

But I do have humanmicrobiome.info, which is a website that anyone can use to do what the latest research is on a wide variety of topics related to the gut microbiome. So I recommend that people go there.

So you keep that separate from Human Microbes just so there's no conflict. Yeah.

Yeah. I try to keep them liability.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Now I know that you have for so many years been documenting research on the microbiome and on fecal transplants and how do you keep up with all that research?

It's just like a daily ongoing thing that I've been doing for many years.

And at the time we last spoke, you had, you'd left high school and hadn't been able to further your education or anything because of your physical issues. Is that, is that still the case? You're just self-taught in the microbiome and reading science and such?

Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah. I'm still not able to do much.

Yeah. Are, are you, you're on disability?

Yeah, I'm getting off because I'm making enough money from my business now, but I'm, I'm still, oh wow. Kind of like homebound.

Right, right. And you look very pale to me. Do you get out in the sun ever? Or is that something?

Yeah, exactly. Pretty rarely.

Yeah.

Oh, that's actually like one antibiotic I took kind of damaged my skin and made it more susceptible to sun damage. So ever since then I've actually, I had to avoid the sun more.

Yeah. So when we last spoke, I, I'm sure I must have asked you about this, but I, I'm wondering if anything has changed since. Have you gone through functional medicine testing and providers at all to, to see if there might be other ways that you can attack your problems?

So in the past I spent like a decade or more just going to whatever doctors I could and they did what they could. And I, I basically learned at the end that they're really limited in what, what knowledge and capabilities they have. So it's up to me to figure out stuff and the gut microbiome may be a solution, but doctors don't really have very many tools to diagnose and correct the gut microbiome yet.

When I have clients dealing with diarrhea or loose stool, I always tell them about Tributrin, which is the best absorbed form of butyrate, which is normally made by bacteria fermenting fiber in your colon. Supplemental tributyrin can help slow your motility down and feed the cells lining your colon, firming up stool and helping create an oxygen-free environment in the colon, which helps the butyrate-producing bacteria to survive and multiply. Those bacteria are often wiped out after taking antibiotics, which is why tributyrin is a great accompaniment and follow-up supplement if you have to take antibiotics. My new supplement, Tributyrin Max, has 750mg of tributyrin, which is the highest dose currently available in a capsule. You can find it at tributyrinmax.com. That's T-R-I-B-U-T-Y-R-I-N-M-A-X dot com. And use code INTRO15 for 15% off your first order. And do you take supplements or do things to help your health?

Personally, I'm very limited on the supplements I'm currently taking. I'm just taking like zinc and iron, just really basic stuff. I've experimented with a lot more supplements in the past, but currently I'm not really seeing any benefits, any big benefits from most of them.

Okay. Just curious. So any anecdotes or stories you have from donors or recipients that are worth sharing?

Well, the best result actually came from someone with severe eczema. They said they completely cured it. And we haven't actually had that many people with eczema or other skin diseases do FMTs from our donors. So it's very possible that we actually currently have a cure for severe skin disorders, but we don't really know because we don't have enough recipients trying it.

Right. Interesting. So in your materials online at Human Microbes, can people find the person with eczema and find the donor and be able to say, I'd like that same donor?

Yeah, they can definitely do that.

Yeah. Wow. That's great. I'll definitely have to tool around the website and, and look at that and we can link to that in the show notes and, and then also the humanmicrobiome.info site. Any other sites that you maintain or have to share info or those are the primary ones?

Yeah, it's mostly those two. And I recently set up a forum on the humanmicrobiome.info website.

Oh, so people can talk to each other.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay. And you also are pretty active on Reddit, right?

Not anymore.

Not anymore.

No, I recommend people avoid that website actually. So I set up the forum.

Oh really? Why is that?

I set up the forum to allow people to get off that website.

Oh, okay. How come?

They've been going on the path of pursuing profit at all costs and they've been degrading their site in that process and it's just become a really problematic site in so many ways. I wrote a, a blog with more info about that.

So like through advertisements and paid posts and that kind of thing, or?

No, like I, I feel like there's really nothing trustworthy on that site anymore. It just seems like so much bots, astroturfing.

What's that?

Astroturfing is when special interests like try to manipulate content in a seemingly organic way.

Hmm. Okay. Yeah. That's sort of inevitable in any of these tools, right?

Yeah. But it seems like a big site like Reddit really attracts that type of manipulation and the Reddit admins don't really seem interested or able to control the manipulation of content on their website.

Mm-hmm. So you don't maintain Microbiome Reddit or?

No, I'm, I'm pretty much off of Reddit completely right, right now. Hmm.

Okay. You handed it over to somebody else?

Yeah, it's just being modded and kind of referencing the forum. Let people know that they can go to the forum now.

Oh, okay. That's good to know. So what are your plans for the future personally and professionally?

That's a big one. So at this point I've really done most of what I can on my own. It would be really helpful to get like funding for an AI to allow the whole screening process to go through an AI. It's very difficult for— I can't really pass on most of the screening to another person. And it's very difficult for a single person to screen almost a million donor applicants at this point. And an AI might be able to learn new things as well and probably do a better job than me even at the screening process.

Mm-hmm.

So it would be great to get funding for that.

Are your donors coming from multiple countries or where are your current donors?

Most of the donors are coming from viral social media videos, so it's all over the world.

Oh, okay.

In the past, I tried to reach out specifically to top professional and college athletes, and I did contact a few hundred and got a few applicants from that, but None of them really ranked high. And currently I'm trying another attempt at contacting top professional athletes. I would welcome help in that.

So, so if somebody is sending from a different country, that's gotta add up in terms of the costs of mailing now.

Well, our donors mail directly to recipients, so it doesn't really matter where in the world they live. It's pretty much the same no matter where they are.

But I mean, how do they keep the, the sample viable for whatever length of time it takes to mail it?

Generally, they'll just store them in their home freezer, but recipients can customize their orders. The donor can store it on dry ice immediately, possibly even other things if the recipient needed.

So, so they're storing it in their freezer and then putting it in the mail for how long?

We do all shipments via dry ice and usually they will ship around the world in under 5 days. So we keep them on dry ice the whole time. So they're, they're still frozen.

The dry ice holds out that long?

Yeah.

Oh, okay. But you don't do the shipping. They ship, you're saying they ship it directly?

Yeah. Our donors ship directly to recipients.

Right. Okay. Well, this is an amazing service that you're providing for the world. I know that I, for a long time, was really was really fixated on fecal transplants and the potential they offered. I think they still are a potential goldmine of cures, but I think we are, we are still far away from the point of being able to say, well, this is the, this is the exact donor for you, which I think is the complex part, right?

Yeah.

Because you have these positive effects from one donor that appears not as good as the next donor, and then you have negative effects from that donor. So it is, that's the tricky part, right? It's, it's, well, I'm deficient in butyrate producers, I need someone who's really rich in those, or I'm deficient in, you know, some other type of microbe. Probe or function.

Yeah, possibly. But so far, from what I've seen from both our donors and just other reports that people are sharing from either their personal donors or other donor sources, it seems like donor quality is more important than those donor matching. But of course, donor matching does have some importance, but if we can find like a 10 out of 10 donor, then possibly donor matching won't matter at all. But we don't really know yet because I haven't found a donor of that quality.

What makes you call somebody a donor, a 10 out of 10? The something from the original screening or?

Yeah, so it's basically the specific criteria that I'm looking for. It's mostly actually a very, very specific stool type and I haven't really found that yet.

Hmm.

One interesting tidbit is that since we pay so much more than everyone else, like virtually every donor that's been covered in the news has applied to humanmicrobes.org and the donors from all major clinics, stool banks, and companies, they've all applied and the vast majority of them either don't qualify or don't rank high. And I, I think that only a single donor ranked in the top tier. And that was actually a surprise for me. There's one donor that's kind of famous and they didn't, uh, rank high.

Has the word gotten out in developing countries where there's a lot less perhaps use of antibiotics or people who are more isolated from Western diets?

And yeah, that's an interesting question actually that a lot of people wonder about. It has a lot of problems going that route. The first problem is that developing countries are now overrun with antibiotic overuse because they can get them over the counter.

Over the counter.

Yeah. And then another problem is that even if you go to very secluded tribes like the Hadza, which many researchers are doing, they have pathogens from their environment. So it's not necessarily a great source of FMT. And even if they were, the logistics would be very difficult.

I'm sure.

Yeah. And actually one of my recipients has gone to the Hadza personally and did FMT from them. And from what I recall, he got temporary benefits which were pretty substantial, but then his long-term results were quite poor and he thinks it was because of their pathogens. He did some testing when he got home and, and he tested positive for a wide variety of pathogens.

Right, right. Which they would otherwise be protected for perhaps because of who knows what else. Like I know a lot of, a lot of, uh, there's a lot of theory around worms that worms are natural part of the human microbiome and prevent say allergic reactions to things. And people use helminth worms for treating various conditions.

Yeah. The helminth community is pretty interesting. A lot of people decide to do that. There seems to be more research on FMT though than Helminths.

Yeah. I was trying to get somebody on to talk about that as well, but they backed out and disappeared.

So that's unfortunate. Yeah. Yeah. The recipient who went to the Hadza actually got better results from my donor and, oh, okay. Yeah. It seems because my donors are generally safer pathogen-free.

Right. Right. Yeah. Well, this is all interesting stuff you're doing, and, and I'm sure that many people appreciate this access to donors that otherwise are not, not findable. So thank you for your service to the world in that.

Yeah, absolutely. And I welcome any participation from organizations, philanthropic organizations, such as The Gates Foundation. I would love it if, you know, they would help out.

Yeah.

I think FMT is actually something that would be like right up their alley of what they are trying to pursue. And not, not a lot of other organizations are pursuing FMT because there's not much profit to be made. So hopefully the Gates Foundation is an organization that doesn't need to pursue profit. So it seems like something that would be good for them.

Have you reached out to them?

I looked into it before and it's something that you have to apply for funding. I'm not sure that I would qualify for funding. Like they don't offer just general help. They offer funding for big projects.

Yeah, I think they're pretty large scale.

Yeah, I did probably reach out on Twitter recently though.

Yeah, I think, I think maybe a smaller foundation that's a little bit more out there about what they're willing to, to do. But there's probably plenty of risks and they probably would want universities to be involved and yeah, approval of medical boards and all that. So that's the tricky stuff with, with funding.

Yeah.

But it sounds like though that you're, you're getting a decent amount of funding now just via the donations and the recipients and the project itself.

Well, it's actually not that much. Just like enough for basically one person to get minimum wage.

Ah, okay.

As, as demand increases and it could increase as well.

Well, I hope it works out and find your 10 out of 10 donor and are able to completely recover your health. You look, you look a little better to me than the first time I interviewed you. You sound a little bit stronger, so I hope that's not just my impression, but the reality.

Yeah, I'm not really sure. There are so many ups and downs that it's hard to keep track of, but I do publish my detailed results that other people can look through.

Oh, okay. Is that at humanmicrobiome.info?

Yeah, I publish them on the forum and then also now that I'm using the humanmicrobes.org donors, you know, all my results are up there as well.

Okay, great. Well, thank you for sharing about all that, and it was good talking to you again.

Yeah, you too. Thanks a lot.

Well, if you're looking for a donor for a fecal transplant that you wanna do yourself, you now have a good resource for that at humanmicrobes.org. And if you'd like to support the podcast, you can buy supplements at a discount from my Fullscript dispensary. Order tests at a discount from my Rupa Health Lab store, or use my affiliate links to eVitamins, which I've now learned is available in many different countries. You just need to click the language button at the top of the page to select your country after following my link, Bulk Supplements, or Amazon. And if you'd like to connect with me online, you can follow my High Desert Health Facebook page, join my Gut Healing Facebook group, or join my newsletter list at highdeserthealthcoaching.com, as well as follow me on X, Instagram, TikTok, or Pinterest. Links for those are in the show notes. Thanks for joining me today, and here's wishing you all the perfect stool.