A man gave himself poop transplants using his mom's feces to treat his debilitating Crohn's. Then he started experiencing her menopause symptoms.

• A mom donated her feces to her son for DIY "poop transplants" to treat his Crohn's disease.
• He put her poop in his rectum for over four years, and experienced her menopause symptoms.

A man who was hospitalized by debilitating Crohn's disease found relief after putting his mom's poop in his rectum in a DIY treatment — but was surprised to experience her menopause symptoms, too.

Charlie Curtis, from Toronto, Canada, who's in his mid 30s, did DIY "poop transplants," or fecal microbiota transplants, for over four years, he told filmmaker Saffron Cassaday in the new documentary "Designer $hit."

FMTs usually involve a doctor taking poop from a healthy donor, and blending it with a saline solution. In FDA-approved procedures, the saline and feces mixture is then inserted into the recipient's gastrointestinal tract through an enema, or taken via oral capsules (it can also be done via colonoscopy or upper endoscopy).

The recipient absorbs healthy bacteria from the donated stool, and this repopulates the bacteria in their gut, which might be depleted from using drugs such as antibiotics or illness, according to Cleveland Clinic.

FMTs are currently only FDA and Health Canada-approved as a treatment for persistent C. Diff bacterial infections, so Charlie Curtis and his mom, Sky Curtis, decided to do the procedure at home.

Doing an at-home FMT always runs the risk of contracting a disease from donor stool, Dr. Amy Shah, a gastroenterologist in Maryland, previously told Insider.

Curtis was hospitalized with Crohn's disease

Charlie Curtis was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in 2006 at the age of 18, and then developed Crohn's disease, BBC News reported in 2014. Crohn's disease is the inflammation of the digestive tract from the mouth to anus, with some parts remaining healthy, whereas ulcerative colitis is inflammation limited to the colon.

Crohn's symptoms can come and go depending on whether the condition is "active," and can include: fever, diarrhea, fatigue, stomach pain and cramps, bloody stools, mouth sores, low appetite, weight loss, and pain or drainage near and around the anus. There is no cure, but treatments can include drugs, changes to the diet, and surgery.

Despite taking medication, Charlie Curtis' Crohn's symptoms got so bad that he was hospitalized and was going to the bathroom forty times a day, his mother, Sky Curtis, told Cassaday.

Desperate for her son to get his life back, Sky Curtis contacted Thomas Borody, the director of the Centre for Digestive Diseases in Sydney, Australia, who pioneered FMT treatments in the 1980s. He suggested that she donate her healthy stools to her son.

After her stool was tested for any infections or diseases, they began doing the transplants on Christmas day 2008.

They did them "every day for a month, then every two days for a month, then every third day for a month. Once we got down to once a month, we did once a month for three and a half years," with newly donated stool each time, Sky Curtis told Cassaday.

And it worked. "When I was actually doing the procedure," Charlie Curtis said, "I'd feel tingling inside of me. It felt healthy, it felt like it was working."

Charlie Curtis was symptom free and off medication when Cassaday spoke to him in 2019.

Curtis experienced his mother's menopause symptoms

Charlie Curtis experienced some unexpected side effects from the FMTs: sweating, hot flashes, and mood swings, similar to what his menopausal mom was experiencing.

"At the time, I was going through menopause," Sky Curtis said in the documentary. "And so was he!"

The donated poop does "transmit high levels of hormones," Borody told Cassaday, so it's possible that Charlie Curtis was experiencing the same symptoms as his mom because he was absorbing hormones from her poop, although that has not been proven.

This isn't the first time that an FMT is thought to have caused changes outside of the gut in patients. In one 2019 study involving autistic children, as well as helping gastrointestinal issues, FMTs were linked to improvements in social responsiveness and their developmental age, while multiple studies suggest that they can improve symptoms of Parkinson's Disease such as sleep disturbances. There's even been a few cases of people with alopecia regaining some hair growth after FMTs.

However, there's not enough research on FMTs yet for them to be approved to treat other health issues, and Charlie Curtis' case is anecdotal.

Doing an at-home FMT always runs the risk of contracting a disease from donor stool, Dr. Amy Shah, a gastroenterologist in Maryland, previously told Insider.