A 46-year-old man developed a rare condition known as auto-brewery syndrome, which caused his gut to create a beer-like substance after he ate carbs — and he ended up in a medical journal as a result. The man, who was not identified, is the subject of a new BMJ Open Gastroenterology case report, which details how he started having dizziness, brain fog, memory loss, and aggression issues in 2011, about a week after he finished a round of antibiotics for a thumb injury.
His aunt had read about cases of people who acted drunk after they said they hadn’t been drinking and urged him to get more tests, and eventually doctors ended up finding the fungus Saccharomyces cerevisiae (aka brewer’s yeast) in his stool sample, the report states.
Brewer’s yeast is usually used to turn carbohydrates into alcohol during the brewing process — and it was going to work inside his gut. The man was then diagnosed with auto-brewery syndrome, prescribed anti-fungal medication, and told to stop eating carbs.
But that didn’t work. The man ended up taking different anti-fungal medication and stopped eating carbs for six weeks, and eventually he recovered.
As crazy as it sounds, this isn’t the first time this has happened. A New York woman made headlines in 2016 after she had DUI charges dismissed due to her auto-brewery syndrome diagnosis, and a Texas man made news after being diagnosed with the condition when he went to the ER, complaining of dizziness, with a blood alcohol level that was almost five times the legal limit.