A rare infection has led to a 61-year old man’s body brewing alcohol in his stomach, leading to constant drunkenness.
The Texas man would seemingly appear to get drunk spontaneously, without touching a drop of alcohol. Doctors at first shrugged off the drunk man’s insistence that he had not been drinking, despite being five times over the legal limit.
Doctors isolated the man and checked on him periodically. After eating carbohydrate-rich foods, the man’s blood alcohol level shot up.
As it turns out, the man had an infection which led to an overabundance of brewer’s yeast in his gut – meaning his gut would ferment sugars into ethanol and he would get drunk.
As explained by FoxNews:
Or, an infection more commonly known as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or “auto-brewery syndrome”, as reported in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine.
Here’s how it worked: when the man consumed starch – like pasta, or fizzy drinks – the yeast fermented the sugars into ethanol, essentially turning him into a drunkard.
Source
- Auto-Brewery Syndrome: Apparently, You Can Make Beer In Your Gut (Michael Doucleff, NPR: September 17, 2013)
- Rare infection causes Texas man to brew beer in own stomach (FoxNews.com: September 19, 2013)
