Because of his condition, the man often gets drunk out of the blue

Sep 19, 2013 01:56 GMT  ·  By

A 61-year-old man from Texas can brew beer inside his stomach, specialists writing in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine say. What's more, he occasionally gets drunk out of the blue, all because of the rare medical condition he is suffering from.

In their paper, specialists Barabara Cordell and Justin McCarthy detail how, when the man first arrived at a hospital in Texas, he asked that he be treated for dizziness.

Nurses in charge of looking after him ran tests, and found that his blood alcohol concentration was one of 0.37 percent. But for the man's maintaining that he had not had anything to drink all day long, they would've probably sent him home on the spot.

However, the 61-year-old man did his best to convince doctors that he had not consumed any alcoholic beverages, and his wife backed up his story.

At this point, Barabara Cordell and Justin McCarthy decided to place him in isolation and closely monitor him for about 24 hours. While he was in isolation, the man was allowed to eat as many carbohydrate-rich treats he wanted, NPR tells us.

Throughout this entire time, specialists kept a close eye on his blood's makeup. Apparently, it did not take long for the man to experience an increase in his blood alcohol levels. Specifically, said levels somehow rose to an impressive 0.12 percent.

Tests carried out later on indicated that quite a lot of yeast bacteria known to the scientific community as Saccharomyces were growing inside his guts.

Doctors explain that, whenever these bacteria came into contact with sugars, they fermented them into ethanol. The result was that the 61-year-old got drunk without even having to spend money on beer or other alcoholic beverages.

The rare medical condition is called auto-brewery syndrome, Barabara Cordell and Justin McCarthy say. Apparently, it has been documented before, but only in a handful of people.