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Extreme Microbe Brewing: the Curse of Auto-Brewery Syndrome
An anonymous reader writes with a story excerpt that may inspire envy in some readers: "Most beer guts are the result of consuming fermented brew, but a new case study describes a rare syndrome that had one man's gut fermenting brew, not consuming it. It's called gut fermentation syndrome or auto-brewery syndrome, and it's 'a relatively unknown phenomenon in Western medicine' according to a study published in July's International Journal of Clinical Medicine. 'Only a few cases have been reported in the last three decades' according to Dr. Barbara Cordell, the dean of nursing at Panola College in Carthage, Texas, and Dr. Justin McCarthy, a Lubbock gastroenterologist, the study's authors." (More at NPR.)
Futuramas Bender already did it!
Funnel this.
it's not the gut but the critters living in the gut. Lactic acid bacteria can ferment starch into alcohol and so can yeasts. Seems the gut flora needs to be way out of balance to get one drunk.
There is no causation between beer consumption and a "beer gut". People should keep urban myths like this out of "scientific" oriented texts so people might actually learn the truth. Beer guts exist because people exercise less than they should and have a diet that doesn't match their metabolism and activity pattern. The fact that beer often is part of that diet is a correlation at best, but no causation.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
In Nigeria people have been eating beetle larvae for centuries. Anthropologists have explained this as a rich nutrient source which could help mankind in the future. Now it turns out the little buggers (weevils) have an ethanol-content of more than 6 %! So, food or protein my ass. Those Nigerians were just getting some cheap booze!
The authors, Ogbonda & Kiin-Kabari (2013, http://www.academicjournals.org/SRE/PDF/pdf2013/11Feb/Ogbonda%20and%20Kiin-Kabari.pdf) write "Result will help to explain the observed intoxicating (auto-brewery syndrome) property of the larva".
Life is fantastic.
Drunk for five years straight??? Must have been a hella of a hang over after being drunk that long!!!
Karma: Bad
Cop: You just ran a red and you're weaving like a Sarejevan shopper. How much have you been drinking?
You: Nothing, honest. But I did eat two donuts and a large muffin.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A curious thought! Here is the WSJ's bit on it. I'm somewhat skeptical that the process accused could produce ketone bodies to the same magnitude; keep in mind that ketosis occurs when the body starts burning fat because it's starving and/or exercising. Even with the minuscule amounts of water being consumed by lipolysis and the citric acid cycle, there's still a lot more water in a live human body than in a hunk of pork.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Bonus: This theory explains those crazy emails they keep sending me.
Manbeerpig
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Candida yeast don't generate ethanol.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
SCIRP are a for-profit, supposedly peer-reviewed journal scam with a history of spamming academics and operating bogus conferences. Their journals frequently list academics as being on the editorial board without the academic's knowledge or permission. I'm a mail administrator for a university, and I block their junk on sight.
I'm not saying the paper has no merit - I'm just saying the authors have done themselves a grave dis-service on the credibility front by publishing with a journal that spammed them, spams others, and looks like a con.
The very idea of eating larvae makes me wanna puke! It's been discribed to me as biting down on a tiny water ballon. Only it's a puss filled sack that fills your entire mouth when they burst.
Life is not for the lazy.
In his main book, Michel Montignac also talks about this, about a person who never drank, but got cirrosis due to alcohol forming in his body. Unfortunately, he generalises it too much, saying that everybody can get it by eating too much fruit after dinner.
GI in Japan after surrender of Japan in WWII, picked up gut bacteria and whenever he ate carbs he got drunk.
That may be the one my parents told me about, back in the '60s or so (but as a war story which probably puts it in WWII.
In the one I heard about the GI was thrown in the brig and put on bread and water - which of course made him even more intoxicated. Then they mounted an investigation to see how he was getting the booze smuggled in. That finally showed it was a medical problem.
Turns out he had diverticulosis - one or more failures in the intestinall muscle wall where the gut membrane bubbles out into a little appendix-like pocket and is prone to infections - and one of these became home to a culture of brewer's yeast.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Umm, ya. Tell yourself whatever it takes to keep it down. I for one will pass.
Life is not for the lazy.
TFA describes gut proliferation of a yeast called saccharomyces cervisae, which indeed produces ethanol. This is fairly uncommon compared to gut proliferation of other yeasts called candida.
Just imagine if the World Congress of Mullahs somehow managed to weaponize (read: aerosolize) this beelzebubian yeast and it got loose during a demo at their Annual General Meeting...
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
Considering the microbiological fun fair we alreadhy have in a healthy gut and that a yeast infection or other disturbances in the balance of gut bacteria isn't too uncommon, I'd have expected to see alcohol producing yeasts more often.
bickerdyke