Submitted via IRC for Bytram
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: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 27 2019, @04:41AM
The problem here is that most of the time, those doctors have a really good idea about the problem. Hypochondria and malingering are way too common. The auto-brewery syndrome is probably already well-known enough that some people are already blaming their regular drunkenness on it.
You can't always trust the patient.