A 46-year-old man from North Carolina claimed for years he did not touch alcohol, but no one believed him. He was prone to falls, displayed brain fog and aggressive behaviour and was even arrested for driving while under the influence of alcohol.
His family, police and doctors believed that he was just a closet drinker. Only years later researchers at the Richmond University Medical Center in New York discovered that the man was telling the truth. He was not hiding his alcohol addiction, instead there was yeast in his gut that was converting carbohydrate to alcohol. In other words, his stomach was brewing beer.
First I thought this was some kind of Onion story, but then I saw that Wikipedia has an article on the condition, which means that it is absolutely 100% true:
Auto-brewery syndrome is a rare medical condition in which intoxicating quantities of ethanol are produced through endogenous fermentation within the digestive system. Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a type of yeast, has been identified as a pathogen for this condition. Recent research has also shown that Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria can similarly ferment carbohydrates to alcohol in the gut which can accelerate Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
“These patients have the exact same implications of alcoholism: the smell, the breath, drowsiness, gait changes. They will present as someone who’s intoxicated by alcohol, but the only difference here is that these patients can be treated by antifungal medications.” said Fahad Malik, the chief internal medicine resident at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Sounds amazing! Where can I get me one of these?