While obesity is one of the major health issues in modern times, the latest way to fight obesity devised by scientists sounds like a really unapetising one, as it involves indirectly feeding human feces to people.
Yes, that’s right, researchers led by Elaine Yu of Massachusetts General Hospital are trying to work out a way for using fecal samples from slim and fit donors to facilitate weight loss obese patients.
How it works
According to scientists, Feces contain intestinal microbes, and these call the shots when it comes to weight. The idea is to replace the microbes in obese people with microbes from donors, by freeze drying human waste and putting it in capsules, which are then given to patients, as reported by Ars Technica. The idea is not entirely new, as such capsules have been used for replacing intestinal microbes and successfully treating gut infections.
An experiment was conducted with microbes obtained from two twins, one obese and the other slim, and were fed to mice. It was later observed that despite similar diet, the mice with microbes of the obese person became chubby, while the others were slim.
But a lot is still not known about human microbes, and that is why donors are being selected carefully after various tests, and the obese individuals will be studied over intervals of three, six and 12 months after giving them fecal doses, before reaching a conclusion.
