Would you accept another person’s faeces if it changed your health? Health researchers who just quizzed thousands of Kiwis - in the largest survey of its kind anywhere - were pleasantly surprised to hear most would. Jamie Morton reports. It might sound like a hard pill to swallow.
A capsule containing a healthy donor’s stool - albeit treated, tasteless and securely enclosed so it doesn’t dissolve until it reaches the gut - that’s taken as a clinical treatment. Get past the squeamishness, though, and there’s a world of incredible things gut microbiome transfers - or “poo transplants”, as they’re crudely called - might do for our bodies. Most of us would know about the extraordinary community of bugs that live within us , helping us to harvest energy from food, fight germs and support our health and wellbeing.
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