Woman says faecal transplant saved her and could help many more like her
After 18 yeas with bipolar 1 disorder, an Australian woman's life has been changed by a poo transplant from her partner.
As the blender blitzed and Jane Dudley prepared for a radical procedure, the concept of being at the forefront of a potentially revolutionary change in the treatment of bipolar disorder was far from her mind.
But months after her husband Alex, a zoologist with a lifelong interest in ecology, first proposed the "gross" idea to Jane as a way of managing her crippling bipolar, she decided it was worth a try.
"I was at a point of desperation where I felt I can't continue living with this level of suffering," Jane tells Australian Story.
Eight years ago, Jane began a series of home-administered faecal microbiota transplants (FMT), or "poo transplants", with the hope it would "take the edge off" her mental illness, which had led to her being hospitalised multiple times.
The couple took Alex's faeces, blended it with saline, passed it through a sieve, put the slurry into an enema bottle and "then head down, bum up, squeeze it in".
