Immune : A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive (9780593241332) by Dettmer Philipp

Author:Dettmer, Philipp [Dettmer, Philipp]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Digital
Published: 2021-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

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* This is the footnote about poop transplants and the time during World War II where German soldiers ate camel poop. So it is known that your gut microbiome and how healthy it is has a strong association with how healthy you are and what you can handle. So in the last few years the so-called poop transplant has become a thing in modern medicine. Which means what you think it means—poop from a healthy person, which carries a healthy dose of their gut microbiome, is administered via a special pill to a patient. (Or, if you have to know, via a long tube that drips down the poop from the back of your throat into your stomach.)

It is not entirely without risks but, for example, it is very effective in fighting Clostridium difficile infections, which is a nasty bacteria that are ubiquitous in nature and can also live in small numbers in your gut. In certain cases, like when a patient has to take large doses of antibiotics that kill a lot of the bacteria of your gut, it can take over and become a pathogen that can cause everything from diarrhea, vomiting, or in the worst cases life-threatening chronic inflammation of your gut. They are very resistant and sturdy bacteria and today many strains have become resistant to many antibiotics, which can make it very hard to get rid of them. One of the things making it possible for Clostridium difficile to become a problem in the first place is a weakened natural gut microbiome. Poop transplants have been shown to have a high chance of restoring the natural balance and help the patients to get rid of the invaders on their own.

This is basically the idea behind poop transplants but it is not really a new idea. There is evidence that thousands of years ago eating the feces of animals was used to treat stomach and gut-related problems and diseases. Which brings us to World War II and the failed conquest of North Africa by the German army. Among problems like land mines and, well, losing, a huge problem the German troops faced was dysentery, a chronic inflammation that causes horrible cramps and dizziness, diarrhea, and dehydration (of all the places, the desert is not the place to lose a lot of water) and can be deadly.

The problem was simply that the soldiers were not used to some of the local microbes and since this was a time before antibiotics they had little recourse. A medical science unit that was sent to find a way to help the suffering men out discovered something peculiar though. Locals who got sick did not die of dysentery but instead collected the poop of camels and ate it. And to the utter astonishment of the observers, usually within a day, the sickness disappeared.

The locals had no idea why it worked, just that it did and that it had been done for generations. So the German doctors examined the camel

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