Bacteriotherapy, which is also known as fecal transplantation, is the process of taking the stool from one person’s digestive system and implanting it into another person’s digestive system. This may sound strange, but fecal transplantation is providing relief for many people with digestive problems like IBS.

No one is quite sure why fecal transplantation works for some people. It is thought that those with digestive problems have a microbial imbalance within their digestive system that is causing their illness. While people can take probiotic supplements in an attempt to regain bacterial balance in their digestive system, usually probiotics are limited to a few specific strains of bacteria which may not provide what the digestive system is missing since there are literally thousands of different types of microbes within the digestive system. This is where bacteriotherapy comes into play. Fecal matter is essentially a snapshot of a person’s bacterial & microbial ecosystem. Fecal transplantation transplants that healthy ecosystem from a healthy digestive system into someone with an unhealthy digestive system. It’s almost like how a doctor might transplant a working organ into the body of someone who has a failing one.