Her breath reeked of alcohol. She was dizzy, disoriented and weak, so much so that one day she passed out and hit her head on a kitchen counter while making lunch for her school-age children.
Yet not a drop of liquor had passed her lips, a fact that the 50-year-old Toronto woman and her husband told doctors for two years before someone actually believed her.
Auto-brewery syndrome, also known as gut fermentation syndrome, is an extremely rare condition in which bacteria and fungus in the gastrointestinal tract turn the carbohydrates in everyday food into ethanol.
Since 1974, 20 diagnosed cases of auto-brewery syndrome have been reported in English medical literature, according to an April 2021 review. Additional reports of auto-brewery symptoms have occurred in Japan, where the condition is known as meitei-sho, or “alcohol auto-intoxication syndrome.”
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Auto brewery syndrome occurs when certain species of bacteria and fungi overpopulate a person’s gut microbiome, basically turning the gastrointestinal tract into a still apparatus.
Scientists believe the process takes place in the small bowel and is vastly different from the normal gut fermentation in the large bowel that gives our bodies energy.
