Are “Poop Pills” The Ultimate Bowel Biohack Of The Future? The Science of Fecal Microbiota Transplants (FMT) with Jason Klop.

My name is Ben Greenfield and on this episode of the Boundless Life podcast. So most of the research around FMT is doing some sort of a clean-out phase to white the slate clean and make a larger sort of real estate or more space for these new microbes to come in and graft and there's less competition. Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist and nutritionist and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity and beyond. All right, I've been asked about this little can I take out of my pocket sometimes and I'm at dinner. I take it out and people are like, oh, is that a zen? Can I grab one, bro? Is that nicotine? It's not. It's a healthy alternative to nicotine that does not result in the vasoconstriction, the erectile dysfunction with long-term usage, fellas. The standing up and getting dizzy, the addiction, the burning in the back of your throat. 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That's Q-U-A-L-I-A life.com slash boundless to support healing and repair for a lifetime. So I have never done a podcast before devoted to poop transplants or so-called FMTs, but the field has changed quite a bit and this is super interesting. So I interviewed Jason Klopp of Novel Biome. You'd be shocked at what a fecal microbiota transport plant can do to your gut and how easy it is to do now. So anyways, bangereedfieldlife.com slash FMT or all the show notes are. Here we go. All right. I've been getting a lot of questions about FMT. That stands for fecal microbiota transplant. And those of you who are familiar with that term might picture someone getting someone else's poop and some kind of a slurry shoved up their backside. There's much more to it than that. And the field has actually grown, believe it or not, in terms of clinical precision. I've had my eye on the field of FMT for a while because it went from being something that might be indicated for someone with some pretty severe, you know, colonic inflammatory type of issues to being something that seems to now be accessible to people who might just have irritable bowel issues or some microbiome problems. Leading up to this podcast, being the good little immersive journalist that I am, I actually did an FMT protocol. I did a capsule FMT, which is capsulated stool from healthy donors and tested before and after my via Genova stool test, all the inflammatory markers and bacterial composition, et cetera, of my gut. And I also did a pre and post food allergy food sensitivity test to see how an FMT would affect that. Now, the product that I used for this was created by a company called Novel Biome, which is Canada's first licensed FMT manufacturer. I went through a friend of the podcast, BioReset Medical in San Jose, to actually secure my FMT capsules because you need to go through a doctor for these. And what Novel.Biome does is they make high quality fecal microbiota transplant capsules for clinics and clinical trials around the world. The CEO of Novel Biome is here with me to shoot the shit for the next hour. Jason Klopp, welcome to this show, man. Thank you. Yeah, this is very exciting. You set this up really well. And I'm glad we're able to clear up some of the myth around FMT because although the name does include fecal, the way that it's processed, and I'm happy to get into the weeds on you with this one, really means that we're getting rid of a lot of the waste product that's typically in the FMT or in a stool. And we're concentrating for the microbes within the microbiome. And so at the end of the day, it really looks simply just like a probiotic pill. I brought some here. I don't know if there's a visual, but it looks like a probiotic. It's a powder. It doesn't have any smell. It doesn't have any taste. I know. I've taken a lot of those for the past couple of months just to do my full FMT. And we can talk about my results later on. But for people who might not be familiar with FMT and kind of like how the landscape of it has evolved, I was at a conference probably about 10 years ago with a guy. I actually forget his last name. His first name was Jeff, but he was one of those guys who's kind of like an epidemiologist and a little bit of an Indiana Jones type of character. He was describing to me how he had visited, I believe it was the HOSDA, Hunter Gatherer tribe, and had actually had like a HOSDA warrior sample of crap shoved up his backside and hung upside down in the village to repopulate his flora and to see how his biome actually changed after doing that. And I made mental notes that that was interesting, but probably not accessible for the average person. But some people might have heard that story or heard of people flying overseas to get a protocol like this done. But all I did was take a couple of months of capsules at home. So tell me about the evolution of FMT. Yeah, I mean, the story goes back a long ways. I mean, the earliest writings on FMT are actually 4th century China, where they were essentially using it to treat what today we know as C. diff, which is a pretty serious case of diarrhea. So they called like diarrhea back then was like a yellow soup and they used it. The more modern emergence of this is in like the 1950s, 60s, where it starts being used again. And that's where, you know, we start seeing more case studies and trials. And then in the last 10, 15 years, it's evolved much further. And so to your point, yeah, it was typically done rectally. Cologoscopy was a standard approach. Gastroenterologists were really the ones leading the field. And most of the early research was in C. diff, which has an amazing cure rate about 90% antibiotic resistance as a category is going up significantly. But again, colonoscopies are not all that accessible. And although a colonoscopy works great for C. diff, someone dealing with more severe IBS or all sort of colitis or neurological diseases or oncology, we need to treat over a longer period of time. And you're not going to want to be treating with a colonoscopy on a repeated basis. So from colonoscopies emerged enemas. And you know, there's some advantages to enemas. Of course, it's easy to administer fairly easy in comparison to a colonoscopy. The issue only with an enema is you're only getting the distal part of the way. Can I interrupt you real quick? When you're saying colonoscopy, do you mean colonic? No, like a gastroenterologist would go in with the scope. Okay, literally administered by a gastroenterologist. Okay, interesting. Okay, so then you were saying you get to enema. Yeah, so the enemas were sort of the next version of a colonoscopy, which is, you know, you can administer them even as a patient. Of course, a doctor could administer them. And but the issue with the enemas, you're only getting the distal part of the colon. And we know the microbiome, I mean, it stems from your mouth all the way to your anus. They're just different categories and different growths in different parts, but there's a microbiome throughout. And so if we're only inoculating the distal part of the colon, we're not going to have the same benefit. And so that was being done for a very long period of people were doing several of them or multiple over a period of time and still showing benefit, but not the same benefit as what we're seeing now with an oral treatment. So when I got started, I started as well doing enemas. But then in 2019-20, we switched to doing more enema combination with oral capsules. And that has evolved. So again, looking at the research we're seeing from about 2019 on to today, way more of the treatments being done orally and patients as a preference definitely prefer oral treatment over rectal delivery. And the key distinction or the key advantage is that you're able to treat over a longer period of time without having to continually readminister that lowers the cost, lowers the barrier. And as you pointed out, it's something that can just easily be done at home versus colonoscopy and enema. If they're done in a treatment center or a hospital, there's very exhaustive protocols that go into place and doing that. The whole ward has to be cleaned out. Like there's all these protocols that just make it really complicated versus Dr. Bainmose say, hey, here's the bottle, go home, take 15 capsules a day for two days and one or two per day thereafter. So the protocol and the ease of access in that regard has improved dramatically as well, shelf stable, easy to store in fridge temperature. And so really the barriers to access have evolved and changed significantly over time. Yeah, that's exactly what I did. I had five bottles I took on each bottle at 30 capsules. So I took, I went through, I believe the first two bottles over two to four days. And then it was like one to two capsules a day after that. So I think for me, it was about a month and a half or so. And I did travel a couple of times during that time period. I just had a little, you know, little soft cooler that I could easily put a couple of ice packs in just to make sure the FMT capsule stayed cold, which I understand is. And that's a bonus, but not even a requirement. I mean, the studies that we're doing show that it's stable at shelf temperature. We just encouraged longer term storage. So, you know, you are being a good student. Okay, good, good. And then we'll get into some of the things I personally experienced for those of you who are interested in that. But back to the capsules, you know, you said that it's important to repopulate the flora in or seed, you know, the gut beyond just the colon, which you might get from an enema. But is there any actual research on the capsules and whether they do that or the extent to which they might populate, you know, the upper areas of the colon or I don't know if they even populate the small intestine or anything like that? Yeah, definitely. I mean, so the way that we do the part of our release is capsule disintegration testing. So the capsules are double encapsulated and terracoded. And so we test them to make sure that they begin opening when we want them to. We actually want them to open in the start of the small bowel. Oftentimes, people sort of have the assumption that just because there's proportionately significantly more microbes in the large bowel or colon, that means the small intestine is in comparison almost sterile. But it's not a sterile organ. And we absolutely want to have microbes taking hold and transplanting there as well. So as for the research, they've compared, and most of the research to be transparent is in the world of C. diff. It's evolving and many more conditions, including IBS and SIBO and IBD and neurological diseases and oncology are all coming on board. But in the C. diff trials, they compared enema, colonoscopy and capsules. And what they found is that enema have about a 60% cure rate for C. diff colonoscopies and capsules are around 90% cure rate. So we know that and like enemas are not that effective in curing C. diff, although still amazing. I mean, 60% is phenomenal, but not nearly as good as because of colonoscopy, you're going all the way like they're going almost to the transition between the small and the large bowel, whereas a capsule will begin opening up in the small bowel and make its way all the way through. Like, I mean, like everything, you put it in, it's got to come out. So it'll trans, you know, go through the whole digestive tract and begin, you know, having an effect in whichever environment those bugs are needed. See the, the, the environment within the gut is going to be favorable to some microbes over others. And so you'll get a seeding in an area where it's needed or beneficial, not in an area where it's not needed or not beneficial. So, you know, again, we'll talk about your results later, but just for example, prevatella being something you want in the earlier part of the gut, not the later part of the gut, because you want the plant fibers to digest early. If they digest too late in the colon, now you have more gas producers breaking down those plant fibers, and you get more gas production, more bloating. And you're not getting the nutrition from those plants that you would if that engraftment took place and was earlier in the tract or the movement of the food through the gut. Wow. Okay. I know people are probably wondering about the elephant in the room here. Where the heck does the poop come from? I've come a long way from the smearing extra virgin olive oil on my face as a moisturizer days. I've learned a lot and I've interviewed some really smart people on my podcast about peptides and stem cells and exosomes and all sorts of things that you can activate or enhance at the skin level with the right type of products. So probably the most scientifically advanced cutting-edge company I know of in the beauty space is called Young Goose. They have, for example, a blue peptide spray. This has methylene blue in it, yes, for your skin and does not turn your skin blue, but it does help your cells in the same way as methylene blue that you might eat. It also has GHK copper peptides in it. So that's your cellular energy foundation. They have vampire exosomes that you smear on your face to enhance cellular communication and even help you with something like a post-cosmetic procedure support. They also have their youth daily moisturizer, which has NAD in it and spermedine to help with autophagy support. So this is kind of like the long-term cellular resilience layer and you can get this as a three-pack at a 10% discount. If you go to younggoose.com and use code BENTEN at checkout, that's younggoose.com and use code BENTEN. You can start your day with the spray, move on to the exosomes, put on the NAD and the spermedine in the form of the youth daily moisturizer and know that you're using the best of science to look younger and feel more confident. All right. 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Here's how to get in. Bengreenfieldlife.com slash become boundless for the become boundless retreat April 28th through May 3rd, 2026 in the Bahamas. I hope to see you there because it is going to be awesome. Like that was one of the first questions my wife asked me. She's like, whose poop is that in our refrigerator? Yeah, this is great. You mentioned the hads us, right? And those trides and imagining, of course, I'm in this space. People ask me the question all the time. I would personally, as being a little bit bent, I consider, you're probably consider yourself a little bent and quirky. I would totally do that, but I absolutely would not recommend that for most people who are going to be beneficiaries of FMT because what these tribes that are untouched have are parasites and things that would probably kill the average American who's got a weak immune system, no real diversity. And so although it's a cool concept, we actually wouldn't want someone to come from that tribe to be a donor in a program like ours because they just wouldn't, there's such a difference. And as well, I would say that most of what we're transplanting probably wouldn't stick around because our sort of Western diet, even if you're doing a good job of it and eating more diversity and things, it's just so different from there. So right. It's kind of like if I decided I wanted to get like Dwayne the Rock Johnson's fecal capsules transplanted into me, but I wasn't following his diet, whatever, whey protein and steak. They might not survive in the climate of my gut. There you go. And that's another discussion we can go on later is the carnivore diet and everything related there. But yeah, the donor piece is a really important one. I think there's two things that have an effect on safety and efficacy. The main one is of course the donors, but the other piece is something you mentioned, the manufacturing. That is a really important piece. You want to make sure you're not introducing new microbes from the environment into the sample. But the donors, there's sort of language around super donors. I think there's a certain standard that health regulatory bodies like Health Canada, the FDA, in Australia, the TG, they all have a standard. The standard is fairly low in my estimation. Most of those standards would allow for someone to have had an antibiotic say within three to six months. Well, we know it takes potentially years to recover from an antibiotic, especially some strains will not recover. They'll be gone like oxalobacter bacteria, for example, are very sensitive to antibiotics and can completely be lost with a single round. And so our donors, we're looking at a lot of variables, but primarily breastfed, vaginally born, limited, or in many cases, no lifetime use of antibiotics. We're looking at their diet. We're looking at their physical activity, their BMI. We're screening out for anything that could be related like anxiety, depression. We're looking at their family medical history. So is there any early onset of neurological diseases, autoimmunity, autism, ADHD, early cancers? So we're looking at a lot of variables. And then of course we're doing all of the standard blood, urine, stool, screening out for anything pathogenic, potentially infectious, their vaccine history. So we're really going into the weeds and all of these things and less than 1% of people who apply to be a donor actually make it into the donor pool. And so when we get them, we really don't want them to go anywhere. We try to treat them really well. And yes, we do pay them. Unfortunately, I was going to say that the college students listening in here are looking for a few extra quarters might be perking up now. Yeah, well, they have to be local to us, which is the challenge. So potentially there's some listeners who are more local. We're in the Fraser Valley closer to Vancouver, Canada. So yeah, but there's a lot that goes into being a donor and staying a donor. And we're on top of making sure that they're the best possible donors. But they do represent the North America. And that was the had the tribe. It's just so far removed from where we are that there's probably not going to be a lot of benefit comparatively to someone who's living and is very healthy within an environment and sort of food chain that is similar representative. Yeah, and it makes sense that you wouldn't want someone who had kind of like nuked their bacteria with a recent dose of antibiotics. But then on the flip side, before I started my protocol, I believe I had gone through a dose of I think it was refaxamine. And I'm not sure if that was kind of like to create a clean slate in my gut. But then during the protocol, the instructions were actually to avoid some of the like antimicrobials, you know, a lot of the things people might be familiar with like bairbarae and oregano, etc. So walk me through like some of the the dues going into the protocol and the don'ts during the protocol and why those exist. Yeah, so the pre usually the treatment is divided in three phases. So the pre treatment is actually some cleanup. And that's where using the stool testing like you did is insightful, because you can see our is there anything pathogenic? Is there a lot of dysbiosis? Is there an overgrowth of clostridia? Is there a fungal overgrowth? What's going on? And if there is, you can be somewhat proactive and trying to clean the plate. It would be like the analogy of a garden, right? Like you could just go plant your seeds in a garden that was full of weeds, but you're going to get less of it growing. And the same concept is true here. And so most of the research around FMT is doing some sort of a clean out phase to to wipe the slate clean and make a larger sort of real estate or more space for these new microbes to come in and graft. And there's less competition because these sort of bad bugs will call them. They don't want to be gone, right? They're protective over their environment. And so if there's a new bug that wants to come in and take hold, they're going to play a role in trying to squeeze them out, get rid of them. And so that clean out phase is an example of being making more space for the new microbes to engraft and having less competition. As for during the treatment, you're going to generally want to avoid things like even herbal antimicrobials, although they aren't more selective to bad bugs, they still over time will kill off good bugs. And so in the early stages of a transplant, we don't when it's in a very sensitive state, we don't want to put more sort of antimicrobial things that would potentially kill off a fragile new microbe versus something that's really engrafted, it will have very little effect on. So and the same goes for probiotics is that we generally suggest avoiding a probiotic because it's skewing like we're trying to give your microbiome. Here's what a healthy community looks like, not a healthy community plus 10 billion lactobacillus, right? That's not skewing healthy, that's skewing unhealthy. So we generally suggest avoiding, although in theory it probably does little to nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it's something to think about. And so phase one, clean, phase two is generally a loading dose, so a higher amount of capsules. And the whole concept is like you're overwhelming the system, you're putting in a whole bunch, it's like overseeding of a lawn, you know, you're just putting in so much and you're hoping that a majority of them stick and it can overpower potentially like bad dysbiotic bugs and displace them quickly. And then there's that, the third phase, which is really the maintenance piece where you're trying to maintain with a daily dose for a period of time, which could be, you know, four to six weeks and some protocols all the way up to three to four months and other protocols with the idea of being here's a daily dose as a reminder, this is what healthy looks like every day. And in the meantime, you're really trying to convene your lifestyle to support this new microbiome. And the primary way to do that is through the diet, expanding the diet to include more diversity to feed these bugs. Yeah, interesting. You know, one of the things, this is kind of a fringe question, but you read about people getting like a heart transplant and their behavior actually seems to change to be a little bit more like the person from whom they receive the organ transplantation. And it's kind of like this idea that maybe there are things that we carry with us anatomically or biologically that have kind of a psychosomatic effect. And I'm curious if beyond, you know, controlling IBD or SIBO or colitis or C. difficile or some of these other things you've already mentioned, if you ever see people experience like a mood change when they do an FMT? It's a great question. I get this one all the time, especially because it's a really sort of interesting thought experiment. Right. I've treated hundreds of cases and what I would say is that as a company, you know, we provided product to thousands of patients. I don't think that's a real thing here. What I will say though is that when a patient goes from being in pain, having gas or bloating or brain fog or you name the like frequent bowel movements, 15, 20 bowel movements a day, they can be kind of miserable. And so clearing that up, yeah, they become happier, but I don't think they're happier because they have a microbiome from a happy person. I think they're just generally happier because now they're no longer suffering. And maybe a change in neurotransmitter production, you know, serotonin is a gut brain access piece that's dependent on a healthy microbiome. Significantly. Yeah. So it's a, yes, you're changing the sort of building blocks, you're getting more of the neurotransmitter production, you're getting all of those things, but that's just playing into your general psychosomatic, you know, place as it is. Now, what is important about that question though is that we're removing anybody from the donor pool that would have a proclivity to anxiety, depression, any of these mood-based disorders. Because we don't want to potentially introduce a microbiome that is not supporting them, right? Like if someone's really anxious, potentially they're not producing a lot of GABA as an example. And via the butyric producers, and so if that's happening, that's of concern. And we want to be, you know, calculating that in. But as a shifting their like spirit or, you know, some of those, I don't think so. I've never seen it. I know people have mentioned to me like, eye color changes and don't see it. I was wondering if you could charge more for school from a Zen Buddhist monk or something like that. Maybe. Okay. All right. So the other thing I want to ask, and then I would love to kind of using me as a case example, point out some things that might change in the gut or symptomatically. Are there risks or are there people who come to you and you're just like, no, you can be a candidate for any reason? Essentially no. And this is the great thing about FMT is that the safety profile is just so high, right? Like, you know, has the word transplant in it. And so you're thinking like, well, this is a big procedure. I've treated kids as young as three and adults into their 80s. The only case where I would have some pause would be if someone literally had no immune system. And I don't mean like low white blood cell counts or something like that, but literally no immune system. And that can happen for some people in some diseases. Outside of that, there's really not a case point where I would say absolutely don't do that. When I was still actively practicing as a naturopathic doctor, I would avoid active cancer patients. And that was really for two reasons. One, I just didn't have a lot of experience and didn't want to be sort of messing up what was going on in their cancer treatment protocols. Since then, there's been a significant amount of research in the use of FMT during oncology protocols and actually allowing drugs that didn't work before. Now the patient responds from the same drug just because they did a fecal transplant. So now if I had someone in my family or a doctor, and we do, we have oncologists and functionally and a grade of doctors who treat a lot of cancer using FMT during the cancer protocols, pre and post chemo, radiation, so on and so forth. So at this stage, I'd be kind of hesitant in some of these really severely immunocompromised people outside of that. No. Now if someone's listening or watching and they have an existing diagnosis of, let's say, IBD or colitis or Crohn's or C. difficile, like I mentioned, I went through BioReset Medical and I'll put links in the show notes if you go to bengreenfieldlife.com.fmt. This isn't like Walgreens where you can just wander in and buy FMT capsules over the counter. You do have to go through a doctor, but if someone were to, and I don't know if you know the answer to this question, Jason, if they were to call or write in to BioReset, for example, to talk about an FMT, if they have an existing diagnosis, are they able to just get a prescription and kind of to piggyback on that question, does insurance cover any portion of this? No. So as of right now, for C. diff, that's a different story. There's two companies that have an approved drug and FMT is approved for that. Outside of that, it's, there's no approvals for say IBD or CBO or these types of things. So it would be a cash pay thing and it's not a typical prescription in the sense that the doctor writes prescription and the patient takes it to a pharmacy because the pharmacies aren't fulfilling this. This would be something that if they're working with novel biome, we would be the fulfillment partner for the doc, the doctor and the doctor, you know, and if there's doctors listening, I mean, it should have come with proper informed patient consent, right? FMT is approved for C. diff. There's essentially enforcement discretion outside of C. diff. And so as a doctor with a patient in an N of one basis can say, all right, this is exploratory, it's experimental. There's a bunch of research on X condition. It's really positive. And but here you're taking it with this knowledge knowing. And so we act as like an on demand contract manufacturer for that doctor in the individual patient case. Okay. And if a doctor is listening in or a potential patient who has a doctor who they wanted to look into this, if they weren't going to go through, say, bioreset medical, could the doctor just like reach out to you to become what would it be called? Like a provider, like a clinical partner of ours. Yeah, they could just go through our website, novel biome.com. And there's a spot where they just register and become a partner. And as long as they meet our standards, we would approve their account and, you know, educate and train them and get them protocols and everything else that they need to get to get running. Okay, cool. Let's let's let's talk about my results. You know, symptomatically, I had a little bit of SIBO ESC symptoms a few months ago, some gas and bloating that would that would mostly predominate in the afternoon, and a few food sensitivities. And I'll all publish all of my pre and post food sensitivity results and pre and post Genova diagnostic stool panel results. To the show notes with my phone number blurred out for people who want to see what those look like. But, you know, I went through the protocol. The first few days, I would say of the FMT, I would say that I experienced an increase in bowel movement frequently. I actually had to go to the bathroom more for about the first two or three days. And then symptoms began to gradually improve. By the time I finished the couple of months of the protocol, the main things I noticed were that I could withstand a wider variety of foods, like like dietary diversity, seem to be some of my gut did a better job with, particularly as related to gas, bloating, and the quality and consistency of the next day's morning bowel movement. Like I was tending towards like thinner consistency in the morning bowel movements, less formed stool, and the Bristol stool scale, so to speak, improved as far as more well formed stool. And then I also noticed, interestingly, the my stool smelled different. I mean, I guess that's not really a surprise. And not in a bad way. I would say a little less of like a like a sulfurous smell. And maybe a little bit more of just like, I guess, I guess the best word I could use to describe is like a little little bit more of a sweeter smell in the stool. And I also noticed that markers of what might be described as leaky gut seem to improve, namely that when I looked at my store, I didn't take a picture and upload it to seemypoop.com or whatever. I thought it was going to be in the show notes. No, no, but a little bit less formed foods in the stool. Again, for the morning bowel movement, even though the stool consistency was a little bit more solid. I know I'm probably grossing some people out right now describing my poop, but I want to be very specific about the symptomatic improvements. So overall positive from that standpoint. But then we also, of course, have the actual results here. And that's where I wanted to hear some of your comments, Jason, because I sent all this to you, the pre and post. And just wondering if anything leapt out to you as far as what you saw and or like what you've seen in other patients who have submitted similar results. I am asked quite a bit what I light my home with. I use Flickr-Free low EMF light. You can get these lights from a company called Block Blue Light. So they are 100% flickr-free. So there's no back of your head sympathetic nervous system overdrive that most people experience during the day and don't realize it's from their lights. They're ultra low EMF, producing all the hidden stress and biological impact caused by conventional LED lighting. I worked with World Famous, building biologist Brian Hoyer to extensively test these lights. He recommends them, by the way, is the healthiest lighting solution possible. So I've got circadian friendly lighting throughout my entire house. And I don't have to change out the bulbs for different areas of the house because their bio light actually has three different modes, day, evening and light. 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Yeah, so just to comment on the sort of process what you described as normal and typical in the sense that especially when you're doing the loading dose portion, like I mentioned, it's a large amount of microbes. And when that happens, you're going to be displacing, I hate using the word bad, but you're going to essentially be displacing like dysbiotic or bad bacteria. And in some cases, when you're displacing them, they'll be dying off is essentially what we're meaning. And when they die off, they're going to be releasing toxins like as a part of their cellular wall. There's lipopolysaccharides and other things in the cell wall. And when they die off, it's who I consider to toxin for the body. And for some people that might actually cause an increase in bowel frequency, simply because they're the body is just programmed eliminate toxicity. So more bowel movements. Now, there's a difference between a slight increase in like full blown diarrhea that was, you know, long term like this is a very different, it's a very transient change. For other people, they might trend to a little more constipation than they would have previously. So some change in bowel frequency and consistency is very normal, especially in those initial days. And what we'll begin to notice first is usually changes in the digestive symptoms first. So that might mean more consistent, more regular in your context, like a better smell. So that sulfur smell is sort of consistent with the sulfur type SIBO, where there's an overgrowth of those sulfur producing compounds or which is by the way, the type of SIBO that I had. Okay. Or also, you know, because, and I'm glad you're posting everything so people can see this, but you had a not a lot of prebitella, for example, and prebitella is what's breaking down the plant fibers. But if they're not broken down later on in the digestive system, more of the gas producing bacteria will start to break them down, but they do it less efficiently and produce more gases result, which can be sulfurous gas as well. So the sort of process that you went through is quite a normal one as far as a symptoms one. And then anybody, you know, from your context, you're already operating on a very high level. But if someone was dealing with more like extreme fatigue or brain fog or anxiety or other things like that, we would see that following. So first, we see the improvements in the GI symptoms. And this all makes sense, right? Like you heal up the gut lining, you have less inflammation, the immune system can calm down. And now you have less of these immune sort of inflammatory markers circling throughout the body, passing through the blood brain barrier and creating, you know, neuro excitatory responses, neuro inflammation, etc. So that's the typical trend. Usually in the first couple of weeks, you'll see the GI symptom improvement. A few weeks later, you'll see the sort of brain related type improvement for some people that might mean like less brain fog or it could even just mean, you know, thinking clear, thinking faster, having less, you know, anxiety or depression or panic, you name the thing. There's a few things that really stood out for me, we'll sort of call them out specifically. The first one was the fecal bacteria and presnutsi. So that's like a keystone species. You know, there's sort of this idea that there's several bacteria categories that are more like keystone type bacteria. And in your case, there was about an 85 fold increase. So that's significant. And these f presnutsi, they actually help fuel the colonocytes. So they produce the butyrate. So these short chain fatty acids are being produced by the f presnutsi. So in your case, that went up significantly. And the importance of that is if you have butyrate production, that's basically like an anti inflammatory and it's a fuel source for the cells that align the whole digestive tract. So now it can begin to heal. And that it up regulates the proteins for tight junctions, which are the junctions between all of these cells. And so you start to get like a leaky gut begin to heal. And that's what this f presnutsi plays a large role in is improving this leaky gut type situation. Okay. So basically, that was an increase in one of my major anti inflammatory butyrate producers. Yes. And a keystone species, like one that we recognize as being really critical to a balanced functional gut. And so then along with that, you saw an increase in rosburea. So that in the initial test was flagged as low or potentially not even there. It's now in range. And why that's interesting and also important is that it works synergistically with the f presnutsi that we talked about previously and works along the same line as a short chain fatty acid producer, lowering anti inflammatory markers and actually plays a role in satiety. So there's some role of the microbiome, of course, in obesity and metabolic diseases and disorders. And there's been, you know, fat mouse, skinny mouse, skinny mouse, fat mouse. There's a lot of really interesting studies in that role. So that was one that alongside the f presnutsi came up. I found that very fascinating. And I think it, you know, all of this plays along and sort of is the explanation for why we're seeing changes in the symptoms as well, which at the end of the day is really what matters the most. And then three other categories that I thought were really interesting, particularly in this test was the bifidobacterium longus. So that's one of the ones that is really one of the first bacteria that begins to seed our gut, especially in breastfed infants, but is also one that is very sensitive to antibiotics. So in a world where a lot of antibiotics are used, it's one that's easily lost. And taking the bifidobacterium longi and the results of the food sensitivity test, it's a very interesting story. So the bifidobacterium plays a real role in immune education. And so your testing in the food sensitivity panel was for IGA. You know, that's the one pre-post that we can compare. And the bifidobacterium longi plays a key role in educating this immunoglobulin response to things that would be considered like, is this a problem, or is it not a problem? Should we fight this? Should we not fight this? And your food sensitivity panel is telling the story that you're becoming less reactive to foods. And the bacteria very likely play a role in that as a category. Yeah, I especially noted that the sensitivity to legumes, beans, and pulses basically disappeared on the post-food intolerance test. You know, one that didn't, and that I know symptomatically I'm still very sensitive to, are a lot of dairy products, and milk. I think for me it's a true sensitivity. And no matter what I do with my bacteria in my gut, I just have to be super careful with dairy. But a lot of the other ones improved as far as like my tolerance to certain grains, fruits, legumes, beans, pulses, even meats. Right. Yeah, there's a roughly like an 80% reduction in your food sensitivity panel, which is pretty dramatic. And I would think that if you repeat this again, that might even shift further in a positive way, especially if you can continue to do some of the dietary things that will support these new microbes. By the way, I'm doing another test in two weeks. Oh, great. Yeah, this will give us even more. And so because that would be the one thing that I would just sort of you know, thinking for the future, anybody who wants to develop a protocol for themselves or for a patient is generally we're going to suggest retesting about a month post FMT, because we're still in this really transitory zone, just following FMT. And so to get a better picture of where we're at, it's going to be about a month post FMT. But then the other two were the Prevotella and the oxalabacter from Inje's. And Prevotella is another one, something that you're getting early and is really associated with the hunter gatherer tribes, the Hadza and Papua New Guinea and other places like that, where they have a higher Prevotella. And so that's an indication now and there was about a five times increase. So that's the one that really plays a large role in plant fiber digestion. And so it'll help, it helps produce the enzymes that play a role in breaking these plants apart and allows you now to better extract the nutrients from these plants as a result of it. So that was pretty cool. And then about a seven times increase in the oxalabacter from Inje's, which helps to degrade oxalates, which is these oxalate digesting bacteria play a really important role in breaking apart oxalates. And someone who's, I consider you to be like an athlete the way that you train, you tend to be athletes tend to be more dehydrated. And so the more dehydrated you get, especially in short sprints, right? Even if you're adding like hydration during training, over longer training periods, you can actually have more dehydration and you can get damage from the oxalates if you can't properly break them down. And then it just reduces your risk of kidney stones and other things like that. But there are patients that totally have no oxalates at all. And they can't even eat foods that are high in oxalates. Chocolate as an example, kale as some of these green leafies have high oxalates in them. And if they do that, they'll have urinary tract pain, inflammation, it'll lead to kidney stones and other problems. So FMT as of now is the only way to replace these oxalate degrading microbes. There's no oxalate probiotic that will even come close and do the job of these bugs. Yeah, interesting. You know, one of the other things I noticed, I don't know if you saw this on the pre-post Genova Diagnostics test was, Klebsiella was markedly elevated on the pre-test. And I think they refer to that as the PP bacteria, which from what I understand is bacteria that act as kind of like essentially signaling alarmones. And I know Klebsiella is kind of considered pathogenic. That disappeared. Yeah, and that's those are very interesting and positive development, likely FMT just crowded it out. You know, sometimes people say, oh, well FMT must be an antibiotic then, right? Like, hey, we got rid of Klebsiella. It's an antibiotic. No, it's telling a different story. I think it's telling us that it, this new microbiome was able to go in and overcrowd it. See, that's the way it's so magical. It has so much respect for the microbiome because it works in such an intelligent fashion where they understand it's something's bad. They can work together to help eliminate it, get rid of it. So the combination of the microbiome with the immune system should actually take care of a lot of these pathogenic things. But in your case, it definitely knocked it out. And it was showing it was resistant to ampicillin and a bunch of drugs. And so it was listing like Cipro as an example of something you could use, which of course, you know, I highly recommend, unless it's life and death, you avoid Cipro. I mean, it's horrible for you. But once on Cipro, I mean, the things I've done to my body, I was what's on Cipro, well, racing half Ironman World Championships in Florida, you know, finish the race with sunburn and intense joint pain. And it was horrible. Wow. Yeah, some people just don't come back from it. The two things that I'll be really interested to see in your other test is we did see a decrease in acrimoncia and ruminococcus. Yeah, after the FMT we said decrease acrimoncia. You don't know why that is. You know, it's kind of unusual to have something and then for it to, in essence, go to a lower level. Of course, there's going to be some variable changes during the course of your diet, right? Like over time, if you're eating more or less of something. And the same thing is true for the food sensitivity testing as well. Like you're going to see some fluctuations just depending on what you're eating on a day to day basis and the days leading up to the actual test. But seeing those go down, of course, I'd love to see that having stayed the same or gone up. It's not like, oh, this is a critical problem, but it is an interesting artifact. And yeah, it is interesting though, because the probiotic that I was taking and stops taking was the pendulum probiotic, which has a great deal of acrimoncia in it. And so, of course, I cut all probiotics during the course of this protocol. So I'm guessing that that's probably one of the reasons acrimoncia dropped. Okay. Yeah, because it was probably detecting it from the actual probiotic that you were taking initially. And okay, so that is an interesting one. I would say, try to focus on a fairly high polyphenol type diet in the lead up in the next little while and see if you can't bring it back in the absence of using any probiotic. But yeah, I would have hoped that we would have seen some engraftment with FMT. Of course, we know probiotics don't engraft, so you could take those until the cows come home and it's just not going to engraft. But yeah, so that to me was an interesting one from that standpoint. The other thing that was interesting is there was some mycology growth. So basically, fungus, that's not a bad thing. We usually think of the microbiome as being like, oh, it's all about the bacteria. But really, there's a whole other story going on. And the fungal microbiome, not micro, micro with a Y, is just a fascinating space. And I think something so understood, underutilized, but the microbiome is a whole another, just like mushrooms, right? Like, people are starting to understand them and use them more consistently in clinical work. And the research there is just fascinating, but it's the same in the mycobiome. So we're seeing some microbiome growth happening, but it's not a candida thing. And people typically associate candida with a problem. But the going, you know, sort of tying these two together, the stool test results and the food sensitivity panel. So, you know, the positive on the food sensitivity panels, we see about an 80% reduction in your IGA reactivity to a bunch of foods. And people can see those foods when they're listed. Why we see that, I think, is because of the bacterial changes. So we see more short chain fatty acid or butyrate producing microbes. And those, as we've talked about, help to heal the gut lining. Also, we saw the increase in the the bifidobacterium long guy, which plays a role in that immune educating side of things. And so, as your gut heals, and as the immune system that is like directly interplays with it, it's called the gut associated lymphatic tissue. So as that lymphatic tissue that interplays with the immune system, as that becomes less reactive, so you become less reactive to the foods. And so, gut healing, more anti-inflammatory compounds being produced, now your immune system can calm down and not think that all of these foods are invaders and pathogens. And over time, that response should decrease. So there's been a really interesting case report where a patient actually had a C. diff and they had a severe gluten sensitivity but severe, the C. liac form. And they did FMT for C. diff. They resolved the C. diff and they resolved the gluten intolerance. They no longer had C. liac disease. So there are random case reports showing that these more like true food allergies can be resolved with FMT, including peanut allergies and like type one allergies. But in my experience, generally, I think there's some genetic type component, especially with dairy, where there's an interplay there between the genetics and just your lack of ability to properly digest that. And it might not be a full picture of primarily being a microbiome issue. Yeah. I'm sure just like lactose or lactase enzyme production alone. Something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very genetic. Hey, one other question you had briefly mentioned, the carnivore diet. What have you seen, if anything, as far as what type of microbiome might exist in someone who's eating purely meat, or do you have any thoughts on that and whether or not you consider it to be sufficient for a healthy microbiome? Yeah. So I mean, I think anytime someone, especially if they're sick, makes a shift in their diet, that's dramatic, including being an omnivore to a carnivore or a carnivore to just eating like a vegan or vegetarian. Like basically anytime you clean up your diet and get rid of a lot of shit and junk food, you're going to see some change. The problem is simply that any of these diets that are overly restrictive, and I'll include medical diets as well, right? Like SIBO diets, like low FODMAP, very restrictive. And so any of these highly restrictive diets that are only relying on a very small amount of food groups are going to have long-term consequences. Because these bacteria, the way they live, is through digesting fiber. That's their food, that's their fuel source. And so if you restrict the amount of fibers and fuel sources you're giving them, they'll eventually die off. And so in a short term, you can see some actual improvements on a microbiome panel with, say, a carnivore-based diet, because you're getting rid of a lot of pathogenic bad bugs, fungus overgrowth and things like that. But long-term, you're going to start to see a loss in species. There's only so long they can hang around and actually stay there. But over the long term, I've seen negative outcomes from a very rigid diet. I don't care what it is. I'm just saying anything that's super restrictive, you'll start to see long-term consequences of a loss, a total loss of species. And then when you try to reintroduce, it might be too late. The body doesn't want to make something that it doesn't need. And so if it's like, well, this is gone and it seems to be gone permanently, we're going away. And so to bring that back now can be really challenging. And that concept is the very same for alcohol. If you haven't drank alcohol in years and you start again, well, the alcohol, the hydrogenase and other enzymes, they can come back again, but that's the whole cheek-drunk idea. So in the context of a really restrictive diet, over time, you will lose those species and they may be gone. And so short-term, I think it can be a great way to reset someone's gut, reset their immune reactivity and things like that. But long term, if that's the only way that you're able to stay functional, it's painting a totally different picture. There's a problem and the solution's not just being on a super restrictive diet. That's only a bandaid. Yeah, I'd noticed a trend over time of a lot of people doing a carnivore diet combined with fermented vegetables like kimchi and sauerkraut or fermented carrots, fermented beets, et cetera. And perhaps it is because people are noting those type of microbiome deficiencies or they just want to be like RFK. Who knows? But it seems to be an increasing trend. This is super fascinating. I know a lot of you probably have questions, is this right for me? How can I try this, et cetera. In the show notes, if you've got a bengeringfieldlife.com.fmt, I'll link to Jason's website, novel biome, but then also to BioResetMedical where that's who I went through to get my fmt. They're at least the provider I worked with. I can vouch for them. That's Dr. Matt Cook. Many of you might be familiar with him because he's been a guest on this podcast many times. But in the meantime, Jason, this is really fascinating. I'm glad I discovered you. I'm glad I can introduce novel biome to my audience because I think it'll help a lot of people. I just want to thank you for coming on the show. Thank you. Yeah, this was a lot of fun. And again, I really just love, A, that you did a lot of this data collection and then your willingness to be just transparent about it as far as seeing the pre and post, you know, because, but at the end of the day, I mean, what's most important is how you're feeling. And I think there's a real distinction between someone like you who's already functioning at a very high level. There's a whole element here of actually disease prevention. So I'll just say from my side, like I have a risk on my father's side of developing colon cancer, very common. It happens all the time. I've had uncles, you know, grandpa, like they're all coming from colon cancer. And fmt is something that can be preventative. Especially if you know there's a family history of something. So when you're a wellness type person, you're already biohacking and you're at a high level, actually more of your improvement might be in disease prevention as a complete category versus simply symptom improvement, which is of course awesome. But long term, that's really what we care about, right? Live longer, have a quality of life while we do it. Yeah, the ultimate bowel biohack. All right, well, this has been another episode of shooting the shit with Jason Klopp. And it's actually the boundless life show. Leave a rating, leave a review. If you enjoyed this episode, leave your comments, your questions, your feedback at Ben Greenfield life.com forward slash fmt and have an incredible week to discover even more tips, tricks, hacks and content to become the most complete, boundless version of you. Visit Ben Greenfield life.com. In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. 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