My Fecal Transplant, Your Immune System, and Covid-19

Living in a pandemic world is like a rotting tomato floating atop a gazpacho of natural disasters, a divided nation, racism, climate change, job loss, a collapsed economy, and on and on. On top of all those things, we now need to obsess over how to keep ourselves healthy.

There is so much to worry about in 2020 that many of us are slogging through our days in a fog of despair from living in a constant state of anxiety. That’s a bad thing for one’s physical and mental health. In the world of Covid-19, it’s more important than ever to make sure your immune system is in tiptop shape and that your stress levels are low.

This starts in the gut.

Did you know that 70% of your immune system is housed in your GI tract? Not only that, but 95% of serotonin is manufactured by your gut bacteria. Serotonin regulates stress, anxiety and depression, states that seem to go hand in hand with the coronavirus pandemic. This means that having a healthy gut not only gives your immune system a head start when you get sick, but it can also help regulate your emotions as you navigate this complex world we are now living in.

Everyone, it’s high time to get our guts in order!

It seems like a lifetime ago that a fecal transplant saved my life after my increasingly losing battle with a deadly antibiotic resistant superbug, when in reality it was only nine months ago. Last fall I contracted Clostridium difficile (C. diff), which is a resilient mother f’er of a super contagious bacterium that takes up residence in your gut causing dangerous swelling of the colon and extreme abdominal pain, fever, diarrhea and vomiting. It could have killed me. I spent a week in the hospital with sepsis. Two weeks after I was discharged, I relapsed a second time, meaning I was finally eligible for a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT), which has an 80% – 90% cure rate, but strangely isn’t approved by the FDA until you’ve had multiple relapses and virtually destroyed your gut by killing all the good bacteria with very strong antibiotics.

An FMT is when stool from a healthy donor is transplanted into a sick patient’s large intestine, often by colonoscopy. Basically, the donor’s healthy gut bacteria was sprayed throughout my colon, thus repopulating my microbiome with diverse good bacteria that smothered out the C. diff. It’s not like this is new science—the first recorded use of an FMT to treat food poisoning and diarrhea was in the 4^th century by a Chinese physician named Ge Hong. Hong had a recipe for yellow soup, and patients would take it orally. Gross.

Once I had my FMT, I was cured of C. diff immediately. I was told it would take three months for my microbiome to match my donor’s, but the fascinating thing is that my food cravings, and even some food allergies, instantly completely changed (thank you anonymous poop donor for eating so well!). I’ve been true to my new year’s resolution and have spent the past eight months giving my new gut lots of TLC with prebiotic foods (these feed the good bacteria in your gut), homemade kefir, homemade kombucha, lots of fermented foods, and eating a Mediterranean diet. My digestive system feels stronger than it’s ever been.

It’s not everyday that you are the recipient of a poop transplant, so naturally I’m curious as to what’s going on in there and where there’s room for improvement. So when I was invited to try the Thryve Gut Testing Kit, I jumped at the chance. Thryve’s kit made it easy (and clean) to collect a sample to send in. Thryve uses the DNA in your stool sample to pinpoint the exact bacteria in your gut. It only took a couple weeks to get my results, which I accessed on an online dashboard. I learned the number of bacteria species in my gut and what health benefits or diseases are associated with each. I’m rejoicing that my gut diversity score of bacteria species is at 90% and my gut wellness score is at 80% of optimum (thank you again anonymous poop donor). No bad bacteria were detected—Hallelujah! Take THAT C. diff.

Anonymous poop donor, I do so love you.

However, when it comes to individual bacterium, my levels are lower than average for two that help regulate anxiety and stress levels. Since 2020 seems to be a global dumpster fire, I really need to work on increasing these because stress and anxiety can weaken an immune system.

Thyrve’s dashboard gives personalized food suggestions (462 in my case) with recipes to help grow and balance gut bacteria, and tells you which foods you need to avoid (62 in my case). They also offer customized probiotics blended specifically for your unique biology. If you are working with a doctor or nutritionist, you can even give your practitioner access to your results.

Last Christmas Eric gave me a gut testing kit by a company called Viome. I haven’t yet used it, but it will be fun to compare the results with the Thyrve test, and see what progress I’ve made in optimizing my gut.

So back to the pandemic: one truly scary possibility is that because so many people with Covid-19 are being treated with antibiotics for secondary infections, C. diff cases may be on the rise. To get C. diff on top of Covid-19 would be truly horrific. So use your time in lockdown (or modified lockdown, depending on where your state is at with reopening) to heal and strengthen your gut to boost both your immune system and your mood. Cut out sugar, eat lots of fruits and veggies, eat prebiotic foods (green bananas are your friends) and probiotic foods (yay yogurt!), exercise, meditate, and get plenty of sleep. Perhaps you’ll even decide to get a gut test from one of a handful of companies who offer them so that you can work on increasing deficient good bacteria with targeted probiotic supplements to rebuild gut flora that produces healthy immune cells.

Always avoid unnecessary antibiotics because they kill the good bacteria in your gut that not only do important work with your immune cells, but that also protect you against bad bacteria like C. diff. Covid-19 is caused by a virus, so unless you have a secondary bacterial infection, antibiotics are not going to help you get better. If you absolutely must go on antibiotics, then take a good probiotic two hours after your dose of antibiotic. Studies have shown the most effective probiotics to protect against C. diff are Bio-K Plus and FloraStor.

Your gut should be like a booming diverse rainforest, with each species of bacteria having a unique job in making sure you thrive in life, physically and emotionally. Once you get your belly balanced, it just might help you find one of the silver linings to the world we are navigating right now. They are there; you just have to look for them.

Visit the Peggy Lillis Foundation for information and resources related to C. diff.

 

Tagged as: C. diff, coronavirus, fecal transplant, lockdown, pandemic life