From: mha23x@gmail.com   
      
   Science, Art, Beauty by Josiah Zayner, Ph.D.    
      
   MAY    
   7    
      
   I transplanted someone else's microbiome in(on)to my body and it was so   
   surreal - Part II    
      
   You can follow along Here for my daily questionaire and Here there is a diary   
   near the bottom    
      
   Tuesday Feb 16th - Antibiotics Day One, Experiment Day One    
   The first day I would be taking antibiotics. Didn't sleep much the night   
   before or the night before that. Stress can induce mania in me. It doesn't   
   take much these days to give me the adrenaline of skydiver. The strange thing   
   is I usually have no problem    
   falling asleep, I just end up waking up some hours later and no matter how   
   hard I try can't go back to sleep.    
      
   The plan was to take 500mg Tetracycline and 500mg Cirpofloxacin, both broad   
   spectrum antibiotics that target different proteins in bacteria to increase my   
   chances of wiping out as much bacteria as possible. Tetracycline tastes like   
   sour acrid sulfur,    
   pretty awful. If you think the Malort face was bad the Tetracycline face is   
   worse. I weighed out 500mg and mixed it with water and took it as a shot. I   
   had some ciprofloxacin in pill form so it wasn't nearly as bad.    
      
   The diarrhea that came after was bad but I had expected as much. As anyone who   
   has taken a significant dose of antibiotics before knows, you get the shits.    
      
   My chess rating on chess.com began dropping. Dahhhh, this usually happens when   
   I am preoccupied and have a hard time focusing. It is a pretty good measure of   
   my mental acuity. Also, because my stomach was messed up I wasn't consuming   
   alot of calories    
   which definitely messes with my mental acuity. In fact I only consumed 1000   
   calories on Feb. 16th!! Yikes. I generally need around 1800 to 2000 calories   
   to perform well on memory tests and chess.    
      
      
      
   Wednesday Feb 17th - Antibiotics Day Two, Experiment Day Two    
   My stomach was pretty upset by this time I was also feeling pretty loopy.   
   Unfortunately, it was time to go to the donor's place and pick up the samples   
   for the transplant. I wanted them to be fresh for the transplant tomorrow. I   
   told the donor to try and    
   not eat anything crazy or abnormal the night before.    
      
   Fortunately, I had someone to drive me to the donor's place. By this time I   
   was pretty out of it. The donor gave me a pretty hefty fecal sample in a   
   plastic bag fresh from this morning. Then I made him take significant swabs of   
   his arms, legs, mouth and    
   nasal passages that I stored in 150mM NaCl. These would be used to inoculate   
   my arms, legs, mouth and nasal passages. During the experiment I stored all   
   the samples at ~4C in the fridge.    
      
   I took two doses of antibiotics today, still had diarrhea and still was having   
   trouble eating much but better than yesterday at 1200 calories, chess score   
   still suffering.    
      
   Because I didn't feel tired and hadn't slept much in two days I took 1mg of   
   clonozepam to help me sleep and I accomplished an amazing 6 hours.... Usually,   
   if I can get at least some sleep it keeps me from being manic. Mania for me is   
   compounding, the    
   less I sleep the more manic I become and the less I sleep. To help abate the   
   cycle I take medication that helps me sleep. Sometimes this doesn't work and   
   is insanely annoying    
      
   Thursday Feb 18th - Antibiotics End, Hotel Room Day One, Experiment Day Three    
   Still on the antibiotics but moved to the hotel room on Thursday, with my   
   chess rating still suffering, down from 1425 before to 1393 today. The   
   experiment has already started to become surreal but today it took it to a   
   whole new level.    
      
   Once in the hotel room, I strip down to my boxers and put on booties, gloves   
   and gown and start cleaning. I use disinfectant wipes and spray to clean most   
   areas of the hotel room I would feasibly touch. I took bed sheets I purchased   
   from amazon, still in    
   packing and placed them over the hotel bed sheets and used pillow cases from   
   amazon over the hotels. Anyone who entered the hotel room had to wear booties   
   and if they planned on touching stuff, gloves. There was also a separate bed   
   in the room that I    
   never touched that they could sit on or lay on.    
      
   Then it was time. I went in the shower and cleaned myself and then started   
   scrubbing myself using a sponge and antibiotics. My goal to wipe my microbiome   
   completely off and out of my body before the transplant. For about 1 to 1.5   
   hours I scrubbed ever    
   crevice and part of my body. Alot of people suggest it is impossible to remove   
   all microbes from your body or that you would die if you did or any other   
   number of insane hypotheses. It's possible but I didn't think likely. And   
   though I didn't imagine I    
   could remove every microbe I really wanted to try. Sadly, I only remembered to   
   take microbiome samples before the cleaning and didn't really take any at all   
   on the 19th because I was feeling so strange and out of it and just forgot.    
      
   At 1730 I took my first FMT pills and performed by first skin, mouth and nasal   
   inoculations.    
      
   I did it again a few hours later.    
      
   I wanted the end of my antibiotics to overlap with the start of transplant so   
   that the new bacteria had overwhelming numbers on and in my body.    
      
   I put on a white t-shirt I purchased from amazon. I put on underwear from   
   amazon and a pair of laundered jeans while people were around. The Verge   
   mention the laundered jeans as strange instead of just having purchased some   
   new ones from amazon. How much    
   different would the bacteria be on a new pair of jeans versus an old laundered   
   pair of jeans? I don't know, maybe there would be a significant difference but   
   I imagined not so. I also imagined not wearing pants much(I only really wore   
   them when people    
   came to my room).    
      
   I think in probabilities and some people think in exactitudes. What would the   
   probability be that an old laundered pair of pants would effect the outcome   
   versus a new pair of pants. In my opinion it was very small to none. I call it   
   reason.    
      
   Friday Feb 19th - Hotel Room Day Two, Experiment Day Three    
   I ordered some take-out and chilled. I had heartburn all day but was   
   refraining from taking an antacids because I didn't want them to mess with my   
   gut. I actually was starting to relax and regain some of my normalcy as can be   
   seen by my chess rating    
   increasing and my calorie intake was also up. I enjoy staying in hotels   
   because I don't have cable or network TV at home and it is great to watch old   
   movies.    
      
   Saturday Feb 20th - Hotel Room Day Three, Experiment Day Four    
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)