Search Here

Can microbes taken from a lean person's gut help you lose your extra tyres?

Scientists are working on studying whether 20 obese volunteers, who consume pills full of freeze-dried poop, can lose weight if they ingest them regularly.

The clinical trial  is expected to begin this year. It will probe "the impact of gut bacteria on weight" by taking a "'stool transplant' from a healthy, lean person to an obese person,' the study said.

To those who are wondering what a poop pill looks like, Dr. Elizabeth Hohmann, an infectious diseases doctor and member of the team said that it does not look like a Tylenol capsule, as she had thought. But it needs to be acid-resistant, which has to be rather translucent---and a bit revolting!

"So they are sort of brownish-colored capsules," Hohmann told NPR. "Fortunately, because they're frozen, when you take them out of the freezer they sort of frost up a bit and they're not too gross."

Even though the idea sounds repulsive, it might work, say, experts. In a 2014 study from the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell University, it was discovered that gut bacteria is linked with obesity. Moreover, a 2013 study  explained how the gut bacteria from twins, one of whom was obese and the other lean could affect the weight of mice.

Scientists transplanted the fecal bacterial culture from the lean twin to the obese one, but it did not lead to obesity. But when the fecal bacterial culture was switched from the obese to the lean one, it led to weight gain, even though the diet was the same.