As the new year approaches and we say goodbye to the insatiable 2016, named so for the number of celebrity deaths occurring in it, stirrings of New Years Resolutions come into play on Facebook in meme-form. I don't know why so many people think 2017 will be better than 2016, but perhaps a New Years Resolution is what everyone needs to stay hopeful. My NYR is a bundle of things I have drafted to better myself, including to write more, to give it a rest with the wordplay, and to become tumblr famous without using my really, really fascinating body. Perhaps the most important NYR I've thought of is to clean up my act. You can interpret this however you want, but the year is ending soon and I want this article to serve as one last romp in one of my favorite subjects: Fecal health. I heard about this thing called a "fecal microbiota transplant" and I just gotta share it. Just one more farticle (and one more play on words), and then I'll wipe it all off. My interest in crap will be flushed away with 2016. Maybe. We'll see. For the record, this article is going to publish in January I reckon, but I'm writing it in December, so don't comment something like "I see you already broke your resolution." I'll ignore you very hard and so will everyone.

I work at a publishing company that publishes medical journals. I won't say the company name because it wouldn't be good for all three of you to correlate my job with excrement. But I was reading this journal called Nutrition Today because lunch break had me like [what would Bobby say?] and I discovered this article about the gut microbiome and how it might have an effect on obesity. Well I thought it was neat. Anyway, the article mentioned this procedure called a "fecal microbiota transplant." What does that mean? It's essentially a one-sided turd trade. Yes. You've heard of someone donating a kidney, but kidney beans? Oy!

According to the very real Fecal Transplant Foundation, fecal transplants were first recorded in 4th century China, and it was called "yellow soup," a suitably gross term. And check out this quote: "It is customary in many areas of the world for a newborn infant to receive a tiny amount of the mother’s stool by mouth, thought to provide immediate population of good bacteria in the baby’s colon, thereby jump-starting the baby’s immune system." I don't know if I believe that, but I'm glad they at least provided a reason as to why poop is good for your baby. Wish my mom hooked me up early. I didn't eat crap until I went to school and tried cafeteria food. *The last rimshot of 2016*

I'm open-minded and comfortable talking about how great my poo is, but this concept is a little grody even for me. You have my permission to be disgusted. Putting something as intimate as yesterday's dinner into another person feels like a step backward for medical science. Why would someone need a donation of this smell? According to this website with a "donate" button, a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) can help treat infection caused by the bacterium clostridium difficile, or C. Diff for the lazy of tongue. C. diff colitis is a colon infection that can develop into lethal diarrhea, so the tone of this article is no longer of humor, but of fear. Although Elvis Presley was quite the looker, dying on the toilet isn't pretty, so no more poop jokes. The jist of the FMT procedure is by harvesting stool from a healthy donor (not just any poo will do) and plopping it into a patient, the good bacteria killed by C. Diff can be restored by the foreign, clean poop and fight off or suppress the C. Diff menace.

I had an infantile understanding of the actual FMT procedure before I looked into it. I imagined someone removing poop by surgical methods and then putting it into a patient just like that, solving the C. diff problem once and for all. It's actually more reasonable. The donor is allowed to poop like how a human usually does, then the coveted pile is blended with saline. At least it's clean crap. The poop is strained and injected into the patient or frozen for later. Not kidding. It seems like colonoscopies and enemas are a means for delivery, or you could take the brown pill, Neo.

The gut biome is an exciting area of science that interests me, but I understand if you've had your fill. Very sorry if this article is the first you've heard about the bacteria living in your gut. It's not all feces and nastiness, it's actually really interesting. But rather than share the cool stuff about the gut, I thought I would share the most potentially funny topic because all I care about is exploiting reality for humor. At first I thought this poop transplant was kind of ridiculous, but if it has the potential to help people that most of us don't understand yet, I guess I'm for it. I'll wait until more research is done before I start donating though. Aw, who am I kidding. My stool ain't good enough to help people.