In his previous life, the 46-Year-old was healthy and active. Medication the employee of a construction company swallowed no, not even pain pills or herbal supplements. Alcohol, he drank only from time to time in the company. But then everything changes, as Doctors report to Fahad Malik from Richmond University Medical Center in New York in the journal “BMJ Open Gastroenterology”.
January 2011: The transformation begins a week after the man due to an injury to the thumb antibiotics taken had. Suddenly, he developed memory problems. His mood fluctuates, he lives by depressive phases. He often has the feeling that his thoughts are clouded, he sometimes behaves too aggressively. All that was previously foreign, now the problems month to month accompany him. In the end, it will take six years until the Doctors can save him.
January 2014: After three years, he for the first Time help. His doctor can refer him to a psychiatrist who prescribes him an antidepressant and a strong sedative to waste. The problems do not go back, but disappear entirely.
March 2014: It follows the first low blow: One morning, the man was detained. Suspected: He drove drunk in the car. When he refuses to take a breathalyzer test, and deliver him to the police officers to the hospital. His blood contains two per Mille of alcohol. Again and again the man protested that he had for years had nothing to drink. Neither Doctors nor police officers believe him.
March 2015: His aunt is the first to be a suspect. By chance, she learns from a human, the unusual a lot of the yeast had settled fungi in the intestines and alcohol produced. As a result, the Affected person was drunk, without drinking. Doctors speak of the Auto-Brewery syndrome. Could suffer your nephew also including? The aunt persuades him to drive hundreds of miles to Doctors in Ohio that have helped other patients.
May 2015: As the man in Ohio, a stool sample emits, he suffers already since four years the mood swings. In fact, the Doctors discover in the sample, two yeasts: Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, better known as brewer’s yeast, and the closely-related Saccharomyces Boulardii. Both of them can ferment carbohydrates from food to alcohol. The man is wearing is really a brewery in the gut?
Carbs, yeast and alcohol
Carbohydrates consist of sugar molecules, which are often strung together into long chains. They are the main component of grain, and therefore bread and pasta, but also occur in large quantities in potatoes, bananas, beans and legumes. How the person can gain also yeasts of carbohydrates to energy, however, partly thanks to alcoholic fermentation. Then Ethanol is produced. In beer brewing the person makes use of this process in a targeted manner.
September 2015: The Doctors tables and their patients a meal full of carbohydrates, then watch his alcohol level. After eight hours, the value increases to about 0.5 per mil and the aunt was right. For some time the man anti-fungal agents is increasing, he also should be avoided strictly on carbs. A few weeks later, but his complaints returned.
February 2017: The next low point In the noise rushes the man on to his head, suffers bleeding. Ten days he must go to the hospital. In the time his level reaches at times almost four per thousand. Again, no one believes him that he has nothing to drink.
September 2017: After unsuccessful appointments with internists, psychiatrists, neurologists, and gastroenterologists contacted the man, a self-help group on the Internet. In addition, he travels to New York to Physicians from the Richmond University Medical Center, who deal with the Auto-Brewery syndrome.
September 2017: the following is a kind of remake of the first treatment. The physicians from New York, will send samples from the intestine to the lab, there are two yeast-like fungi to grow, this Time not the brewer’s yeast, but Candida Albicans and Candida Parapsilosis. Both can produce alcohol. Again a week long treatment with anti-fungal agents and a strict carbohydrate-free diet also, the fungi starve.
October 2017: The complaints take off – but then comes the relapse: Without consulting with his Doctors to eat the guy’s Pizza and drinks soda, both of which are carbohydrate bombs. His body reacts violently, he needs to go to the hospital.
January 2018: There will be more weeks with anti-fungal and a strict diet. The Doctors do not trust the Whole, however. For safety, you prescribe to the man in addition, six more weeks of anti-fungal agent, this Time intravenously.
February 2018: At the end of the therapy, refer to the Doctors a second Time, samples from the intestine. This Time no yeast to grow. Even after 200 grams of glucose, the alcohol level of the patient remains at zero, the mushrooms are sold.
May 2019: After more than six years, is the man in his old way of Life returned, including Pizza, soda, and other meals full of carbohydrates. A relapse has not occurred in the one and a half years since the end of the therapy.
The Doctors can’t say with any certainty how the man has captured the yeasts. Probably, however, is that the antibiotics-taking had before the start of the complaints have a big impact. The agents not only kill pathogens but also can decimate the helpful bacteria in the gut. Then, there is the risk that the yeast-like fungi, or other harmful microbes from spreading. In General, however, the bowel is recovering in healthy people, all by itself.
Also, the Auto-Brewery syndrome is very rare, although probably many people wear a brewery in the tiny scale in itself. In a study of 1400 people in Saudi Arabia, the researchers discovered, for many of them alcohol traces, even though they drank. The amounts, however, were so low that they remained completely unpunished.
