Auto-Brewery Syndrome: The Ability to Brew Beer in Your Gut
This guy’s beer belly will beat yours any day. In 2013, Dr. Justin McCarthy, a gastroenterologist, and Barbara Cordell, dean of nursing at Panola College, featured a paper in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine, detailing a strange case. A 61-year-old man went to the emergency room complaining of dizziness. After several tests, the nurses determined the man was drunk. Five times more than the legal limit drunk. Except the man hadn’t had any alcohol that day.
What was causing his phantom intoxication? Turns out, it was an overbalance of brewer’s yeast in his gut. His own intestines had been functioning as an internal brewery, essentially making and digesting beer in his belly. Whenever he ate starch, the yeast fermented the sugar into ethanol, making him drunk. The issue has since been dubbed “auto-brewery syndrome.”
If you’re worried about your sandwiches and chips, don’t be. Most of the time, brewer’s yeast just passes through our systems like any other food. It’s only rare cases that the yeast may take up residency in the guy and cause problems. And while we imagine it must be embarrassing at times to get drunk without drinking, it could be a pretty neat party trick.
