Andrew Huberman· PhD
So it's somewhat of an arbitrary thing. If somebody out there feels way better when they do this, and are not experiencing problems with it, then maybe it's the right thing for them. But I certainly can't say that it's something great to do. I can't imagine a future where as the microbiome gets incorporated into this emerging paradigm of precision health, you go into a clinic, somebody types your microbiome and says, oh, there's this huge, massive misconfiguration. You have all these engrafted bacteria that are residents in your gut microbiome that are sending out molecules that are not good for your health. It would be good if we do a mass-reprogramming of it. The way that we do that is we flush your gut, and we actually give a light antibiotic treatment to try to kill everything that's there. And then we repopulate with this other consortium of microbes that we've studied and know are healthy, know are compatible with your human genome, and can be reinforced with a diet that we know is good for you. We'll install those microbes, we'll help you along in the diet so you know how to nourish those microbes, and that will be the way that will reconfigure your gut microbiome. So I can't imagine a future where that sort of flushing, or cleansing is part of something for repopulating the gut. But right now it seems a little half-baked to me.