Man Makes Beer in his Own Gut

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EoinMag

EoinMag

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http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/20...tly-you-can-make-beer-in-your-gut?ft=1&f=1001


The patient had an infection with sacchromyces cerevisiae , Cordell says. So when he ate or drank a bunch of starch — a bagel, pasta or even a soda — the yeast fermented the sugars into ethanol, and he would get drunk. Essentially, he was brewing beer in his own gut. Cordell and McCarthy reported the case of "auto-brewery syndrome" a few months ago in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine.
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I gotta call BS. High carbohydrate diet? Unless he's sucking down soda or candy, or has an active mash tun in his abdomen, I can't see how this is possible.

Anyone want to do any calculations on how much fermented table sugar it would take to get your BAC to .37?
 
ImNoExpert said:
I gotta call BS. High carbohydrate diet? Unless he's sucking down soda or candy, or has an active mash tun in his abdomen, I can't see how this is possible.

Anyone want to do any calculations on how much fermented table sugar it would take to get your BAC to .37?
Click to expand...

First, I hate you for burying this idea in my brain and making me do this, lol. Anyway, looking @ a BAC table, a 120 lb person needs to consume 5 oz of alcohol to hit 0.38. That equates to about 10 oz of sugar (over 1000 calories), and also means the person has to belch off about 5 ounces of CO2. This is where I call BS. That would be 70 liters of gas, which has to be impossible. At least I hope it is. And you've got to believe this guy isn't exactly Frank Shorter, so if he's pushing 200 lbs, the we're looking at eating over a pound of sugar, and burping out 100 liters of gas. This conversion would also have to happen fast for his BAC to spike so high, otherwise he's eating even more.
 
So they "isolated" him from alcohol? What exactly was their methodology for doing this? Did they literally watch him *every second* during this?

Complicated explanation: exactly the right conditions in his gut to brew sugar into alcohol (those conditions would probably have much more awful health consequences...)
Simple explanation: alcoholic who is good at concealing a hip flask and even better at lying. The symptoms resolved after "treatment" because he realized he could no longer have any excuse and had to turn his life around.
 
FarmerTed said:
First, I hate you for burying this idea in my brain and making me do this, lol. Anyway, looking @ a BAC table, a 120 lb person needs to consume 5 oz of alcohol to hit 0.38. That equates to about 10 oz of sugar (over 1000 calories), and also means the person has to belch off about 5 ounces of CO2. This is where I call BS. That would be 70 liters of gas, which has to be impossible. At least I hope it is. And you've *** to believe this guy isn't exactly Frank Shorter, so if he's pushing 200 lbs, the we're looking at eating over a pound of sugar, and burping out 100 liters of gas. This conversion would also have to happen fast for his BAC to spike so high, otherwise he's eating even more.
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I have no problem believing a man could eat 2000 calories worth of sugar and expel 100 liters of gas. This happened in America.
 
Randy_Bugger said:
I have no problem believing a man could eat 2000 calories worth of sugar and expel 100 liters of gas. This happened in America.
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Yeah, but how long would it take the yeasts to convert all that sugar? It would pass out of his system before the yeasts really got to chow down on it. Let alone the other things in his body taking that sugar and converting it to energy. This story sounds pretty hokey to me.
 
LandoLincoln said:
Yeah, but how long would it take the yeasts to convert all that sugar? It would pass out of his system before the yeasts really *** to chow down on it. Let alone the other things in his body taking that sugar and converting it to energy. This story sounds pretty hokey to me.
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Did you read the medical journal?

http://file.scirp.org/Html/1-2100535_33912.htm

Things like this don't get published without being reviewed by a panel of medical experts. It may sound strange and unbelievable, but it isn't improbable.
 
FarmerTed said:
First, I hate you for burying this idea in my brain and making me do this, lol. Anyway, looking @ a BAC table, a 120 lb person needs to consume 5 oz of alcohol to hit 0.38. That equates to about 10 oz of sugar (over 1000 calories), and also means the person has to belch off about 5 ounces of CO2. This is where I call BS. That would be 70 liters of gas, which has to be impossible. At least I hope it is. And you've got to believe this guy isn't exactly Frank Shorter, so if he's pushing 200 lbs, the we're looking at eating over a pound of sugar, and burping out 100 liters of gas. This conversion would also have to happen fast for his BAC to spike so high, otherwise he's eating even more.
Click to expand...

My wife would tell you that I'm capable of expelling 100 liters of gas.
 
Randy_Bugger said:
Did you read the medical journal?

http://file.scirp.org/Html/1-2100535_33912.htm

Things like this don't get published without being reviewed by a panel of medical experts. It may sound strange and unbelievable, but it isn't improbable.
Click to expand...

No, it's HIGHLY improbable, or else many of us would be experiencing the same exact condition. I think you meant "isn't impossible."
 
It seems odd to me that the guy, his wife, nor the health care professionals would mention anything about an obscene amount of gas coming from his airlock.

And if they did, how could it not make it into this abstract. I would think an exceptionally gassy patient who is highly intoxicated but claims to not have had a drop of alcohol would be a dead giveaway to diagnose this condition.
 
I heard about this today while listening to the radio at work and became fascinated. Apparently, according to the US National Library of Medicine, this defence has been tried before and the researchers found "The notion that a motorist's state of intoxication was caused by endogenously produced ethanol lacks merit.". I'll give the guy credit, though.

And here I thought my brew days would become easier by just sucking down a White Labs vial and eating a 10lb bag of grist. :(
 
I also call shenanigans. The average pH of the stomach is 3. Brewers yeast cannot live in such an environment. Star san diluted to the recommended concentration is about the same.
 
chocotaco said:
So they "isolated" him from alcohol? What exactly was their methodology for doing this? Did they literally watch him *every second* during this?

Complicated explanation: exactly the right conditions in his gut to brew sugar into alcohol (those conditions would probably have much more awful health consequences...)
Simple explanation: alcoholic who is good at concealing a hip flask and even better at lying. The symptoms resolved after "treatment" because he realized he could no longer have any excuse and had to turn his life around.
Click to expand...

I just read the article, and they said his wife tested him as high as 0.38 at home with a breathalyzer. I suspect you're right, that he was hitting the bottle and trying to hide it from her. They say that in the hospital they saw his blood alcohol climb to 0.12 when he was eating a crapload of carb's under their care. That I guess I can believe, but he might've been downing some Scope on the sly.
 
This happened to me in the past, I was called a liar at the time, this is why I posted this to the forum.

It's posted in peer reviewed medical journals, so those of you calling shenanigans are MD's right?
 
FarmerTed said:
I just read the article, and they said his wife tested him as high as 0.38 at home with a breathalyzer. I suspect you're right, that he was hitting the bottle and trying to hide it from her. They say that in the hospital they saw his blood alcohol climb to 0.12 when he was eating a crapload of carb's under their care. That I guess I can believe, but he might've been downing some Scope on the sly.
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FarmerTed or DoctorTed?

Cos FarmerTed should be out with the cows or something and not speculating about a published medical article...
 

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