I'm interested in this too. I've been working on rebuilding my gut flora in the ways Dr Ayers suggests- not being too scrupulous about washing organic veg, etc. Also as much probiotic foodstuffs as possible. Logically though it does seem like soil should be the richest and most diverse source of organisms. However, the issue with going out the back yard with a spoon is that you don't know what else is in the soil, ie parasites, pathogenic bacteria, etc. I must stress that I haven't tried this and it is pure speculation, but I've been wondering if, given that bacteria in soil would be dynamic and parasites might tend to be static, a way round the parasite issue at least could be to innoculate some 'clean' soil (maybe heat treated in the oven?) with some fresh organic compost, leaving it to repopulate, and then eating the resulting dirt. The mixture obviously could not be stirred and you would have to put the culture at the bottom of the container and eat from the top, otherwise you might still be ingesting the parasite eggs. Once again this is total speculation and maybe would not work, but I'd be interested in anyone's opinion!

Since I started eating dirt. Started with a pinch built up to two teaspoons over a week I have been having the best bowel movements. I learned that eating dirt is a practice recorded on almost every country on every continent for thousands of years. Over 75% of all antibiotics are derived from dirt and we have evolved symbiotically with the bacteria in dirt for as long as multicellular organisms have existed.

We have only recorded the genome of 1% of the bacteria in this world and much still remains a mystery about how these single celled organisms work. I recently talked to a professor at UC who found a bacteria in dirt that increases substantially seratonin in mice, they will now be testing human participants because the results were so promissing.

If you have clean soil without pesticides from the lawn care company then all I have to say is, is it really such a crazy idea that some of the bacteria we've evolved with for the last billionish years might do the body some good?

Idk, maybe you should ask your doctor, lol.

i had a vegan friend who never washed the vege she grew herself because dirt was suppose to have b12 in it. i have no idea if that is true.
i guess if it was your own dirt and you knew it was contaminant free; lots of kids have survived eating worms.

I hope someone here has the background to answer this intelligently. I do not. First of all, even with fecal implants, how do they determine that the donor has all the healthy bacteria? A lot of good bacteria comes from mother's breast milk (I made sure that my children got breast fed for 3 years of their life) however, what if the mother does not have a broad array of "good" bacteria.

I suspect the science on this is rather new. I read a book about a two months ago, called Bacteria for Breakfast, by a Professor of Pharmacology at Penn State. It was very enlightening and basically she suggests rotating different probiotics, not using anti-bacterial soaps (etc), and, of course, avoiding antibiotics unless absolutely necessary.

long history of using clays to heal, also bathing in hot springs, lakes etc with very fertile soil, old growth forests, etc...

To answer above B12 can be found in soil: "Only bacteria and archaea have the enzymes required for its synthesis, although many foods are a natural source of B12 because of bacterial symbiosis. The vitamin is the largest and most structurally complicated vitamin and can be produced industrially only through bacterial fermentation-synthesis."

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12#Synthesis_and_industrial_production