Throughout my life I've often thought, "If only I didn't need to eat."

I would prefer not to have to eat - it's a function that just causes hassle for me.

My health is fritzy due to ulcerative colitis and so when I'm becoming ill, my appetite completely disappears.   I have no interest in food at all and I have to practically forced to eat by constant nagging,    During this time, I can only tolerate things like boiled eggs and chicken.     I also sleep a lot more so I miss meals.   

When I'm on high recovery-doses of steroids, I have an appetite where I could easily eat a horse - I'm constantly hungry and could pile on a lot of weight very quickly - I have to be vigilant about calorie intake.      When combined with the water-retention caused by the steroids and the massive weight loss when I'm ill (sometimes a stone per week), it's very difficult to work out what my correct weight should be as I yo-yo by more than +/-10kg.

I also have that typical Aspie trait of eating exactly the same thing every day - food is fuel - I rarely enjoy eating because of the immediate effects it has on my body - the nausea & cramping - similar to terrible sea-sickness.   Some foods trigger all sorts of issues within seconds.     

The only foods I actually like are a really good steak or a perfect burger - which is surprisingly hard to find.      Everything else is just fuel and is instantly forgettable.

Apologies if you’ve already seen this.

https://www.spectrumnews.org/features/deep-dive/supplements-worms-stool-families-trying-game-gut-treat-autism-traits/

There's a lot of research going on in this field in the treatment of UC and Crohns - as well as FMT - faecal micro-biotic transplants - where close family members 'donate' their similar gut bio and it gets 'transplanted'.   Think handstands & funnels.    Errrrm - yes.   

The worm thing has pros and cons - at the end of the day you're dealing with living parasites and things can get out of hand very easily if you make mistakes with handling and processes.

There's a school of thought that blames genetic micro-chemistry within cells and the accidental production of Hydrogen Peroxide within the membranes that upsets the cells and causes the white cells to arrive on the scene - and their additional imbalanced chemical production triggers a cascade-failure in the local area - which becomes a bleeding ulcer in the gut wall - which will then demand more white cells and so the failure gets out of control - and the gut is not a good place to have open wounds with all that bacterial action - so sepsis is almost immediate.

Most treatments revolve around shutting down the immune response - the worms do that locally as a natural way to not get flushed out - but most of the immunosuppressants are pretty nasty and their side effects often include sudden death syndrome and UV-triggered skin cancers. (20 mins of a typical UK summer is enough to trigger a  cancer).

I was on Cyclosporine a few years ago and with no immune system, I developed viral encephalitis - I had about a 10% survival chance - but I'm still here.

The only treatment I've ever had that worked was Extra Corporeal Leukocyte Apheresis which mechanically removes the white cells by running my blood through an external oil filter.  At £5000 per treatment, it's not widely available on the NHS

Genome-wide association study of gastrointestinal disorders reinforces the link between the digestive tract and the nervous system https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/811737v1 Published this week.

There's a lot of research into the fact that babies are born half-finished - big enough to be self-sustaining but small enough to be physically born and a minimal drain on the mother's resources.     Depending on the mammal, there's a long period after birth where the body finishes off wiring up the brain (you can see babies randomly twitching which is sending signals down the nerves to see what is connected).     This period is crucial in how things get wired and interruptions in this process can really mess things up - like if a mouse paw is taped up so it can't move, when the wiring process is completed and the tape is removed, the mouse can never use that paw - it was left out of the internal wiring process because no useful signals were returned to the brain during the critical time.       This process works across the whole body - eyes must learn to see, legs must learn to move.    

Lots of things can go wrong and environmental stimulus is undoubtedly a large factor in how the finished baby turns out - with all it's bacterial loading too.

There's a lot of research into the fact that babies are born half-finished - big enough to be self-sustaining but small enough to be physically born and a minimal drain on the mother's resources.     Depending on the mammal, there's a long period after birth where the body finishes off wiring up the brain (you can see babies randomly twitching which is sending signals down the nerves to see what is connected).     This period is crucial in how things get wired and interruptions in this process can really mess things up - like if a mouse paw is taped up so it can't move, when the wiring process is completed and the tape is removed, the mouse can never use that paw - it was left out of the internal wiring process because no useful signals were returned to the brain during the critical time.       This process works across the whole body - eyes must learn to see, legs must learn to move.    

Lots of things can go wrong and environmental stimulus is undoubtedly a large factor in how the finished baby turns out - with all it's bacterial loading too.

Genome-wide association study of gastrointestinal disorders reinforces the link between the digestive tract and the nervous system https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/811737v1 Published this week.