A woman who has suffered from debilitating ulcerative colitis for 15 years says she cured herself by performing homemade fecal transplants using her husband’s stool.
Saffron Cassaday, 36, had suffered for years from inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system attacks the colon, causing painful inflammation and ulcers in the digestive tract.
One of the most characteristic – and distressing – symptoms is the sudden and urgent need to have a bowel movement.
Although she was taking medication, Ms Cassaday said its effectiveness was wearing off and she was afraid to leave the house because there were “triggering situations” where she panicked and couldn’t get to the toilet in time.
Traffic jams, airport queues and the seatbelt sign sent them into a tailspin.
Then she read about a treatment that is currently showing promising results in medical trials. Medically examined stool from a healthy person is transferred into the gastrointestinal tract using an enema in order to bring the bacteria in the stomach back into balance.
However, she did not have access to the treatment because it is not FDA-approved to treat ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease.
After reading about someone who had seen improvement in their condition through a DIY version, she went against doctors’ recommendations and used her healthy husband Al Mukadam’s chair.
Saffron Cassaday began collecting her husband’s stool and mixing it with water or saline. She then poured the mixture into an enema bottle to administer through her rectum. She documented the process in her new film Designer S*** (Saffron pictured above with her husband Al Mukadam).
She had lived for 15 years with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system attacks the colon, causing painful inflammation and ulcers in the digestive tract
Ms Cassaday said: “I’ve had what I call ‘trigger situations’ where traffic jams would cause me to panic because I thought I wouldn’t get to the toilet in time.”
At the airport, security checks and the flashing of the seatbelt sign while flying resulted in me shooting up in the air, and she felt “embarrassed and embarrassed” by her condition.
“Sometimes I was afraid to leave my house,” she told Yahoo Life.
Ms. Cassady took medication for her condition, but it became less effective and could no longer properly control her symptoms.
Then she read an article about a man with Crohn’s disease whose mother treated him with her own “DIY-style” fecal transplant at home.
Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease that affects the lining of the digestive tract, while UC causes inflammation of the colon and rectum.
The medical term for transferring stool from one person to another is fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT). Medically examined stool from a healthy person is transferred into a patient’s gastrointestinal tract using an enema to bring the bacteria in the stomach back into balance.
An enema is an injection of fluid through the rectum into the lower intestine.
The goal of this procedure is to take the healthy microbiota of a screened donor and give it to someone who does not have a balanced microbiome in an attempt to improve the health of that person’s microbiota – the trillions of bacteria, microorganisms and fungi that live in the digestive tract – restore tract.
A balanced microbiota contributes to a person’s overall health and when the microbes become imbalanced, it can be harmful to health.
Good bacteria are extracted from healthy donors and processed into tablets or a liquid. It is then given to patients using an enema – a liquid administered through the rectum
Ms Cassaday said: “From then on I started doing my own research and realized that there were clinical trials for fecal transplants to treat IBD and many other conditions. “And those clinical trials showed some promising results.”
IBD is a term for both diseases: Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
However, she did not have access to the treatment because it is not FDA-approved to treat UC or Crohn’s disease.
She added: “I couldn’t find a doctor who could help me. “But I thought if I could just find a way to do this, there’s a 30 percent chance it could help me.”
Ms Cassaday went against doctors’ recommendations and used her healthy husband Al Mukadam’s chair.
She began collecting her husband’s stool and mixing it with water or saline. She then poured the mixture into an enema bottle to administer through her rectum.
She documented the process in her new film “Designer S***”.
Ms Cassaday said: “Even when I watch the film now I’m so disgusted and can’t believe I did it.”
“It’s a matter of desperation that drove me to ignore how disgusting it was and just get it done.”
After more than 100 fecal transfers between her and her husband over two years, Ms. Cassaday reports that she is symptom-free.
She also became pregnant, which reduced the autoimmune diseases as more white blood cells called T cells are produced to protect the baby.
“I feel great,” she said.
“It’s been about three and a half years since I had no symptoms at all. And my colonoscopies show complete histological remission. “I really feel like I got my life back.”
Histological remission is complete healing of the colon without signs of inflammation.
FMT is most commonly used to treat recurrent C. difficile infections – an inflammation of the colon that is spread by bacterial spores found in feces. This is the only FDA-approved treatment for FMT in the United States. The effectiveness is 90 percent.
The protocol is approved for various treatments in different countries and can also be used for gastrointestinal diseases such as colitis, irritable bowel syndrome and constipation – although success rates are significantly lower.
Recent studies have looked at the benefits of treating conditions related to a poor balance of “good” and “bad” bacteria in the gut, such as autism.
FMT can restore bacterial balance because it acts like a probiotic and stool samples often contain up to 1,000 different species of bacteria.
The transplant is carried out through tubes – inserted into the recipient’s nostril, down the throat and into the stomach – or directly into the large intestine.
The stool sample can also be transplanted through enemas or tablets containing freeze-dried material taken through the mouth or inserted into the rectum.
There are reports of patients experiencing unexpected weight gain, vomiting and even abdominal pain after treatment.
However, the long-term safety and effectiveness of FMT is relatively unknown, and researchers have called for further studies to determine the risks.
FMT is approved in other parts of the world including Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. It is only approved in the United States for C. difficile infections.