A first look at my microbiome
biomehacking.brace.io
A first look at my microbiome
1–10 of 71 posts
Re: A first look at my microbiome
#2While I'm a huge proponent of patient autonomy and knowledge, it's really, really, really a bad idea to perform fecal microbiota transplantations at home, without medical equipment or training, and with an unvetted donor. I do hope that FMTs become an accepted part of medical practice -- the clinical results are more than encouraging -- but this kind of experimentation could go bad pretty fast.
Re: A first look at my microbiome
#3This is pretty fascinating, but I'm not looking forward to the conversation I'm eventually going to have to have with one of my fit friends about putting some of his poop in my butt so I can lose weight.
Re: A first look at my microbiome
#4This is pretty fascinating, but I'm not looking forward to the conversation I'm eventually going to have to have with one of my fit friends about putting some of his poop in my butt so I can lose weight.
Yeah they're missing the around "close" in "a close friend acting as the donor".
Re: A first look at my microbiome
#5This is probably an unpopular opinion but it seems to me that "SV culture" has taken to fetishizing "health hacking" with little to no medical training/background or support. See the recent SV craze with "health informatics hacking". They're putting a shiny, appealing veneer over what amounts to homeopathy and random self-experimentation.
Someone is going to say, "but they have all this data, like this guy from µBiome" -- he's not a doctor, he's not a trained scientist, he's a dude who is shoving fecal extracts from his friend up his bum and hoping the results are positive.
Re: A first look at my microbiome
#6While I'm a huge proponent of patient autonomy and knowledge, it's really, really, really a bad idea to perform fecal microbiota transplantations at home, without medical equipment or training, and with an unvetted donor. I do hope that FMTs become an accepted part of medical practice -- the clinical results are more than encouraging -- but this kind of experimentation could go bad pretty fast.
I agree, and I don't intend to encourage people to be casual about the risks involved. But I'm also concerned about the possibility that this incredible tool will become inaccessible.
Re: A first look at my microbiome
#7I'm no expert, but given the magnitude of the author's deviation from "average", I would have wanted to get several results over time to see typical variance before doing an FMT and trying to reason about the difference.
Re: A first look at my microbiome
#8Is this satire? Did he really have a friend poop into his butt on whim?
Re: A first look at my microbiome
#9I'm no expert, but given the magnitude of the author's deviation from "average", I would have wanted to get several results over time to see typical variance before doing an FMT and trying to reason about the difference.
I'm concerned with the average as a concept. Is the average calculated from every user of uBiome? Does that make any sense? Surely there are significant changes between the sexes? What about race, social group, location, etc?
Re: A first look at my microbiome
#10"Health hacking" is really more about the act of tracking. Most people I know involved in quantified self see benefits in being observant of their daily routines, food, exercise, etc. Drawing causations from the data is generally not possible, but learning more about yourself with tools like uBiome and WellnessFX can lead to better decision making on a daily basis. It can also help you learn how to ask the right questions from a doctor.