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My FMT (fecal transplant) Treatment at the UK Taymount Clinic
Published 5 December, 2013
TweetThis is fairly off-topic for a celiac travel blog, but FMT (fecal microbiota transplant) treatment is saving lives, so I want to do what I can to promote it here in the UK.
I got my FMT at the Taymount Clinic near London, where they regularly see patients with Clostridium Difficile infection (C-Diff), for whom they are the last resort. Typically, FMT will cure C-Diff in 2-3 days. Most of these patients have been suffering for years, and there is nothing more medicine can do for them. Today, around 8 people in the UK will die from C-Diff infection.
Thankfully, my situation was no way near as severe.
Taymount Clinic FMT Treatment Testimonial Video Transcript
8 weeks ago I went to the Taymount Clinic in a small town called Hitchin, near London for their FMT treatment.
I had been suffering from increasing food intolerances for over 10 years, and things had got to such a stage where I could only eat a highly restricted diet.
This included being histamine intolerant, meaning that any protein based food I ate like meat or fish had to be really fresh, ideally cooked from frozen immediately before eating.
In addition to this, I’m coeliac, so all my food has to be scrupulously gluten free.
Over the years I’d tried everything you can think of, including spending a lot of money on nutritional consultants, having allergy injections, taking god knows how many supplements. The only thing that really made any difference to my health at any stage was moving to a paleo diet, but even then I still continued to lose more and more foods.
By the time I went to the Taymount Clinic I was pretty desperate because things had worsened to the point where I was starting to worry that I would soon have no foods I could eat without becoming ill.
And seeing as the medical profession didn’t know what to do, there was nowhere I could turn. I didn’t undertake a fecal transplant lightly, but I really didn’t feel I had any other option.
Attending the clinic was fine. Glenn and Enid who run the place are really caring, professional people who have a lot of experience in the field and genuinely care about the outcome they get for their patients.
And to be honest, I didn’t really hold out much hope. Nothing had worked before, and I knew from experience that getting my hopes up generally just led to disappointment.
After the treatment, nothing seemed very different, I was still getting reactions to food and I didn’t feel like trying too many foods that gave me problems before for fear of damaging the treatment.
But then, a couple of weeks afterwards I was on holiday with my family, who were eating at a restaurant who do great gluten free food and I kind of snapped. I ordered a burger and chips - gluten free of course - with all sorts of sides that I would normally never tolerate and ate the lot. And the next day I was fine - usually I would have been too tired to do anything more than lie down and read a book.
And it continued from there. For the last six weeks I’ve been eating more and more foods, some of which I haven’t eaten without being made ill for over 5 years.
This is early days, and there may of course be some backsliding, but I can’t describe how it feels to have been given some respite from the situation I was in.
So I just wanted to make this video to say thanks to Glenn and Enid at the Taymount clinic, and to hopefully spread the word about the service they provide. For some people, it has been life-saving, like those suffering from Clostridium Difficile infection, or food restrictions that threaten their health through malnourishment.
So thank you Glenn and Enid, from one very happy customer.
Click here for my 17 month post-FMT report
