Man’s body brews its own beer, gets him drunk without drinking
'Auto-brewery syndrome' differs from driving a car while intoxicated.
Add another ability to the human digestive system: It can brew its own beer.
Or at least it did in the case of a 61-year-old Texas husband, according to a report from NPR.
He'd go to church, for example, and come out dizzy. His wife got so suspicious, she bought a Breathalyzer. He wound up at a hospital, where his blood alcohol was found to be five times the Texas legal limit.
To determine if he was surreptitiously nipping, he was confined for a day without any access to alcohol – and still wound up drunk.
Apparently, the man had done some home-brewing and somehow his guts collected enough brewer's yeast to turn ingested carbs into firewater.
"Auto-brewery syndrome" is the name applied to the case by Barbara Cordell, dean of nursing at Panola College, and Justin McCarthy, a gastroenterologist, in their report for a medical journal.
It's possible, agreed a Duke microbiologist, though he cautioned that one case isn't enough to warrant recognizing self-brewing as a real condition.
Contact staff writer Peter Mucha at 215-854-4342 or pmucha@phillynews.com.