A woman's ulcerative colitis got so bad she used her boyfriend's feces to give herself 200 DIY poop transplants

• A woman inserted her boyfriend's poop into her rectum for an experimental colitis treatment.
• Saffron Cassaday shared her experiences with fecal microbial transplants in the documentary"Designer $hit."

Saffron Cassaday was spending $500 a month on medication to treat her ulcerative colitis, which had left her in chronic pain, pooping blood, and often urgently needing the toilet. While the medication did ease her symptoms, they never went away, and she struggled with side effects including hair loss and acne.

Using her husband's feces to give herself over 200 experimental DIY "poop transplants" gave her some relief — but it wasn't until she got pregnant that the condition went away.

Cassaday, who is 36 and based in Toronto, shared her story in the recently released documentary, "Designer $hit."

'Poop transplants' aren't approved to treat ulcerative colitis

In poop transplants, or fecal microbiota transplants, done in a medical setting, a healthy donor's feces is blended with saline solution before being inserted into the recipient's gastrointestinal tract, most commonly via an enema, although oral capsules, colonoscopies, or upper endoscopies are also used.

The donor's bacteria is then able to repopulate the patient's gut, which may have been depleted by illnesses or using drugs such as antibiotics. FMTs are centered around the idea that the health of bacteria living in our digestive system, known as the gut microbiome, can in turn shape our own health.

FMTs are currently only approved by Health Canada and the FDA for C diff. bacterial infections, not ulcerative colitis, which can be treated using various types of medication, including immunosuppressants, and surgery.

But in 2019, after Cassaday found research suggesting that FMTs have the potential to treat ulcerative colitis, she decided to take matters into her own hands.

Dr. Lee Kellingray, a gut microbiota researcher at the Quadram Institute in the UK, wrote in The Conversation that the DIY approach to FMTs "carries significant risks" because unlike medically supervised procedures, there is not the "strict screening" of poop donors.

"Unfortunately, these DIY 'success stories' may lead to more people believing that they may be cured of afflictions through repeating the process, but there is no guarantee of success and a very real threat of complications in later years," he said.

The FMTs worked at first, but then Cassaday's symptoms returned

First, Al Mukadam, her now-husband and then-poop-donor, did blood and stool tests to confirm he was healthy and disease-free.

Mukadam pooped into a bucket, and Cassaday blended it with saline solution and administered it via an enema. She'd then lie for a while with her legs up, or on her knees with her butt in the air, to keep the poop from coming back out.

At first, the FMTs seemed to work. By day 11 of doing them daily, Cassaday was symptom-free and off medication.

But after six weeks her symptoms returned, despite continuing with the daily FMTs, so she restarted her medication. A colonoscopy after two months showed that although her symptoms had returned, her colon was much healthier than it was before the poop transplants. So, she continued with the FMTs, and did a total of around 200 over the course of two years.

Her ulcerative colitis never fully went away, but her symptoms seemed milder, she said in "Designer $hit."

Cassaday hasn't struggled with ulcerative colitis since getting pregnant

Then, two months into her first pregnancy in 2020, Cassaday's colitis symptoms "completely disappeared," she said.

And, three years later, they haven't come back. She said: "There's no longer any sign of colitis in my body except for a bit of scar tissue that remains in my rectum."

Dr. Thomas Borody, the director of the Centre for Digestive Diseases in Sydney, Australia, who pioneered FMT treatments in the 1980s, said in the documentary that "the fecal transplants were working slowly over time, and pregnancy provided the perfect environment for them to take hold." As Cassaday's body worked to not reject the "non-compatible tissue" of the baby, it may have also worked as an immunosuppressant for her colitis, he said.

There's some evidence to support Cassaday's experience. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the exact cause of ulcerative colitis is unknown, but it is thought to be an autoimmune condition. Research suggests pregnancy can help autoimmune conditions go into remission, although they can later return. However, other studies suggest that inflammatory bowel diseases such as ulcerative colitis are associated with a higher likelihood of premature births and stillbirths.

Since we don't know the cause of ulcerative colitis, the research isn't clear on the relationship between pregnancy and autoimmune disorders, and Cassaday herself acknowledges that her case is anecdotal. It's not certain that her pregnancy or the FMTs worked to "cure" her ulcerative colitis, or that they would have the same effect for other people.

Insider previously reported on another one of Dr. Borody's patients, who seemingly cured his Crohn's disease by doing FMTs, but also experienced his mother's menopause as he used her poop.

"Scientists are working hard alongside doctors to understand what is needed to be able to provide FMT for a wide range of potential treatments and getting closer every year to reaching this goal," Kellingray wrote, adding: "In the meantime, reports of DIY FMT are likely to increase as success stories are reported in the media. But the final message should always be clear that doing so is gambling with their health."