What makes Indians unique? A lot of thoughts would pop up--our hospitality, culinary and cultural diversity, perhaps even how we manage to snake through heavy traffic. But the last thing one would think of is Indian faeces as a symbol of our uniqueness. Interestingly, however, that might well be true. Research has found an average Indian excretes more faeces than those in developed nations. There are also a large number of gut bacteria unique to Indians that protect us from several diseases, resulting in us having one of the lowest colon cancer and Irritable Bowel Syndrome incidences in the world.

In this episode, we learn how doctors are able to use the faeces of a healthy poop donor to treat diseases of the gut. Known as a faecal or poop transplant, this procedure has high rates of treatment success and is currently done by a select few doctors in India. Dr Avnish Seth, chairman of the Manipal Institute of Gastroenterology & hepatic-biliary-pancreatic Sciences, is one of them. His team shortlists healthy donors, harvests their poop in an ice-cream cup, mixes it in a blender and then strains it through a soup strainer before inserting it into a patient using colonoscopy.

Tune in to learn more about this unique procedure that has the potential to transform lives and hear why researching Indian feces is critical to improving treatments for not just gut ailments but a variety of other diseases.

Produced by Anna Priyadarshini

Mixed by Kapil Dev Singh