Have you ever wished you were drunk all the time without the stigma of being an alcoholic? Do you enjoy home brewing but hate needing a vehicle to get the beer from the bottle to your belly? Now you can forgo the bottle if you have the auto-brewery syndrome.
A 61 year old Texan man suffers from this disease and try as he might, he cannot stay sober. Every time he eats bread, pasta or anything with carbohydrates, his stomach produces a surplus of brewer’s yeast that goes into his bloodstream and creates the same effect as drinking beer.
When he wakes up, goes to church, work, or for a walk, he becomes drunk. At first, his family was worried that he was drinking without them knowing, but one day, he stumbled into a hospital complaining of dizziness. Doctors laughed at his claim that he did not have any alcohol even though his blood alcohol levels were five times over the limit. After being put in isolation for 24 hours without any alcohol or sugar, the man’s blood alcohol level was still higher than the legal driving limit. His doctors were astounded when the gastroenterology tests revealed that his stomach uncontrollably brews beer, which is a buildup in Saccharomyces cerevisiae – a common yeast. Whenever he ate starch-heavy or sugary foods, the carbohydrates would ferment into ethanol and travel into his blood stream.
Now the Texan man is on a low carbohydrate diet and an antifungal drug prescription to help him manage his blood alcohol levels. This can happen in patients after taking antibiotics; the antibiotics kill all the bacteria in the stomach and allow yeast to grow and thrive. Researchers have documented another case of auto-brewery syndrome in a 13 year old girl whom doctors suspected of abusing alcohol.
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