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Man kept getting drunk without drinking. Docs found brewer's yeast in his guts
After years of inexplicably getting drunk without drinking alcohol, having mood swings and bouts of aggression, landing a DWI charge on the way to work one morning, and suffering a head injury in a drunken fall, an otherwise healthy 46-year-old North Carolina man finally got confirmation of having alcohol-fermenting yeasts overrunning his innards, getting him sloshed any time he ate carbohydrate-laden meals.
Through the years, medical professionals and police officers refused to believe he hadn't been drinking. They assumed the man was lying to hide an alcohol problem. Meanwhile, he went to an untold number of psychiatrists, internists, neurologists, and gastroenterologists searching for answers.
Those answers only came after he sought help from a support group online and then contacted a group of researchers at Richmond University Medical Center in Staten Island, New York.
By then, it was September of 2017—more than seven years after his saga began. The New York researchers finally confirmed that he had a rarely diagnosed condition called "auto-brewery syndrome."
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @05:06PM (6 children)
Is there a way I can intentionally develop this syndrome easily?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday October 26 2019, @07:59PM (4 children)
I'd expect so, though it might take awhile.
Get a basic beer recipe. Mix it up, but drink it green. Ignore the bloat and gas resulting, and keep drinking.
I don't know how long it would take. It might take several batches. (Green means before the alcohol has killed off the yeast.)
P.S.: This is just my guess, but it would probably work. I didn't say it would be comfortable or quick, just easy.
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(Score: 4, Informative) by lentilla on Saturday October 26 2019, @11:59PM (1 child)
No, that won't work. (Well; it will; you just won't get much of a buzz from it. Read on.)
Most beer contains live yeast (unless the manufacturer has killed it). The ethanol in beer doesn't so much kill the yeast as simply slow it down, and the reason the beer stops fermenting is that the yeast has run out of nutrients. If you add more nutrients to beer out of a bottle, the yeast will reinvigorate and fermentation begins again.
Humans have been drinking beer (and eating bread, and yogurt, and so on) since the dawn of time. Most of us are mostly sober most of the time.
I suppose if you made a batch of beer and consumed it after the yeast had multiplied but before the nutrients were spent - yes, you might do a lot of belching - but your body would process it quickly. Add more nutrients and the process would start again but most people's digestive system is too fast for the fermentation to get very far. You'd get more tipsy by drinking the finished beer. It'd taste better, too :-)
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday October 27 2019, @12:19AM
I think your best bet would be to take such yeast and attempt to introduce them to your intestinal microbiome, i.e., shove them up your butt. You'd probably want something like an endoscope to really jam it up through your intestines, and there's probably a risk of infection or destroying your intestinal microbiome or developing strange sexual fetishes. Attempt at your own risk.
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday October 27 2019, @06:29AM (1 child)
There has to be something that relates with strong doses of antibiotic in the first stages. Otherwise the yeast has too little chances to survive the competition.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by fraxinus-tree on Sunday October 27 2019, @11:12AM
Antibiotics are a good start, but not enough. You have to mess your digestive system enough so it will not kill off everything almost at the start (yeast is particularly sensitive to the low pH in the stomach). Try high dose of proton-pump inhibitor. (Antibiotic combination AND proton-pump inhibitor is how helicobacter infections are treated nowadays. I suppose they do something more to prevent exactly this outcome, but IANAPhysitian.) Well, YMMV. There are common cases where these medications are used for problems unrelated to each other.
You can also try to introduce the yeast to your gut from the "backend". Start by taking a bath of beer. Be sure to have someone to take you out if you mis-estimate the time needed.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Sunday October 27 2019, @04:07PM
There was an old lady from Rhyde
who ate a green apple and died.
The apple fermented
inside the lamented
and made cider inside her inside.
I'll get my coat.