Ifeanyi IbeCall it abominable, detestable, disgusting, distasteful, execrable, odious, repugnant, repulsive. These are fitting words that attempt to describe the medical article that shows a breakthrough in the use of faecal material to bring about longevity.
Whereas it will mean none of these words for the Western and American peoples, in Africa it will not hesitate to elicit such level of repugnance that it would be seen as an abomination.This poo therapy we are told enhances the chance to live to a ripe old age when poo is taken as a treatment substance.
It’s not even your personal poo but another’s, making it so unlikely to be received by Nigerians, nay Africans.
Hmmmmmm!! Science can really experiment some things.
However, this article vividly reminds one of the days of Mrs.Elizabeth Kafaru, an alternative health exponent who propagated the medicinal value of urine therapy till death unfortunately came calling. Mrs. Kafaru had ruled the alternative medicine field with so much intellectual conviction in the 1990s and early 2000. At different fora and through widely circulated incisive alternative medical articles she propagated the healing properties of urine to the health of its owner-user.
Interestingly, Mrs. Kafaru did not advocate use of another’s. Her fervent urine therapy was that your personal urine contained healing properties for some ailments when drunk. To most Nigerians that followed her advocacy the thought was unwholesome and incongruous to the quest for good health; what was seen as an anathema. It’s not surprising that after she passed on the advocacy died because no disciple of urine therapy emerged from her works.
Today, from oyinbo land, another therapy, albeit the most abominable, is being peddled in the form of science where we are expected to “eat shit” to be able to live long. That is, other people’s shit. If Nigerians could reject “urine therapy” it is not a difficult thing to predict that the “poo therapy” will be discountenanced, mocked. It’s dead on arrival. The reason isn’t far-fetched: poo is seen as the highest grade of human waste and is highly detestable. It is going to be herculean to get people turn to it for assurance of long life.
In the Bible, God frowned at poo seriously in the book of Deuteronomy 23:12-14, instructing that Israelites must discharge it outside of their living environment; it must be buried under the ground where it was dropped. He warned that if they disobeyed and He found any poo around them He would give them up to their enemies.
As the world becomes highly knowledge-driven, we can understand the fixation of science in the pursuit of knowledge in every area, including how to resolve the challenge posed by ageing and dying. We can understand all the arguments about the genetic composition of the microorganisms in our body. But reconciling this science of poo with longevity is difficult to manage considering the repugnance associated with faecal material in human setting. In Nigeria, nay Africa, where we were not persuaded by Mrs. Kafaru’s many years of researches on the health benefits of urine therapy, there will be millions of reasons to ward off the acclaimed benefits associated with “eating poo to live long”.
Indeed, Africans will argue that when one is 75, 80, 90 years why will one be so obstinate with life that one would want to “eat shit” to continue living? What is one living for after all these years? What else about life intrigues one? This question would not allow the African to be persuaded to “eat shit” belonging to him how much more somebody else just to cling unto life. Even one’s family would find a “shit prescription” so abhorrent.
It is interesting that scientists have devised a means of administering the “shit therapy”. So the production comes in either raw fluid through pipe or capsule. However the fluid will pose the most repugnant challenge. Capsule or tablet, well, okay, coming as food supplement. Yet, it is doubtful that such will address the perception of Nigerians.
Speaking about the challenge of administering such a therapy, it is axiomatic that at the age between 75 and 90, family members would be convinced that such step would be a sin to allow for such medical administration on their loved one. It is this same argument that has held back Africans from the administration of Euthanasia. They prefer to take home their loved one till the person passes on naturally. Instead of giving their loved one poo to eat and live longer the family would reason that at 75 to 90 years their loved one has lived well enough and should be spared such abominable and psychologically agonising treatment procedure. The procedure would be seen as a trauma which may become the subject of community mockery where it would be held that “their father/mother eats shit to live” or “is living by aide of shit”.
On the flip side of this so-called medical triumph, Nigerian authorities should be wary and very serious because of the propensity of abuse by our teeming youth who now go for anything that willmake them rich overnight. Government should remember that in the past three years it has become competitive for our youths to “eat other people’s shit” to make wealth. Our youth now ambush other people’s shit in other to become wealthy. This phenomenon is what has become popular as “yahoo-yahoo” with the practitioners called “yahoo boys”.
Very recently in Owerri, Imo State, we watched in a viral video the disgusting “poo eating” with bread under the full glare of vehicular and pedestrian traffic. No arrest was ever made. It’s worrisome that such indecent behaviour was perfected and till today no arrest has been made.
It is hoped that since this new, bizarre scientific breakthrough is for the aged to eat the shit of the young to live long it won’t become another get-rich-quick industry where shit would be sold to hospitals and laboratories or even pharmaceutical companies, thereby opening a floodgate of “shit market”. It is hoped the poo therapy would not give fillip to the yahoo-yahoo challenge Nigeria is already enmeshed in among its teeming youth.
It is reasonable to posit that since the study of the gut microbiota results from good foods eaten such as yoghurt, palm wine, fruits such as vegetables, soya beans, banana, garlic and whole grains, it is logical to encourage people to eat these foods that will enhance their beneficial bacteria. It would make any faecal prescription for long life to be unnecessary.
Ifeanyi Ibe contributed this article from Lagos.
I followed Ifeanyi Ibe’s article entitled, “That poo therapy for longevity”, with interest. The article was in response to my article entitled, “Poo is the Elixir of Youth”, published last year, here in Prime Business Africa.
Mr Ibe’s article though written with sincerity, was just uninformed, which was understandable as he was writing as a layman.
To correct a few things in the said article given the cultural setting and mentality of the average persons, the scientific approach to Faecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT), which is increasingly being applied in the treatment of various gut infections, is based on transferring the beneficial microorganisms from a healthy individual to a patient in order for those healthy microbes to replace and carry out the essential functions required for the wellbeing of the patient.
Agreed that this involved faecal material, but the operation is done in a safe and aesthetic condition by experts in the field. And now, more aesthetic and un-invasive approaches are being trialled. These involve packaging the purified stool sample in pill formats, and isolating those beneficial bacteria and growing them in fermenters, after which they are purified before using them for the therapy.
Another misunderstanding from Ibe’s article is that he seems to think that the FMT therapy is limited to the elderly for prolongation of life. This is not so, the therapy is being trialled to rejuvenate and restore cognitive decline not only in the elderly but also in young persons with learning disabilities. And may also be applied to those looking for a youthful health.
The therapy does not in any way involve one “eating one’s shit” as Mr Ibe crudely put it. Stool donors are carefully screened for transferable diseases, and the sample subjected to extensive purifications to weed out harmful microbes and other objectionable bodily fluids before use.
Processed human stool (poo) is being increasingly used worldwide to fertilise plants. Chances are that, that vegetable or fruit you are eating was produced with the aid of poo!
I hope the above clears the air about FMT.
Thank you.
Dr Gabriel Uguru.