Beer is a favorite the world over, but one man found he had an ability that sounded great on paper, though less fun in practice. His stomach was creating brewer's yeast and getting him drunk off carbs.
The 61-year-old man, who was no stranger to home brewing, stumbled into a Texas emergency room complaining of dizziness, according to NPR. But "dizzy," of course, meant drunk.
"He would get drunk out of the blue — on a Sunday morning after being at church, or really, just anytime," says Barabara Cordell, the dean of nursing at Panola College in Carthage, Texas, to NPR.
Obviously, everyone figured the guy was "closet-drinking," so they locked him in a hospital room without alcohol for 24 hours. He ate high-carb foods while under supervision and his blood-alcohol level rose 0.12% at one point.
A study in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine called his affliction/X-Men power, "auto-brewery syndrome."
Gut Fermentation Syndrome also known as Auto-Brewery Syndrome is a relatively unknown phenomenon in modern medicine. This article presents a case study of a 61 years old male with a well documented case of Gut Fermentation Syndrome verified with glucose and carbohydrate challenges. Stool cultures demonstrated the causative organism as Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The patient was treated with antifungals and a low carbohydrate diet and the syndrome resolved.
"This is a rare syndrome but should be recognized because of the social implications such as loss of job, relationship difficulties, stigma, and even possible arrest and incarceration," the study's authors wrote.
