Wednesday, September 24, 2014

The Most Incredible Thing Your Beer Gut Can Do

Last week I read a story about a magical man from Texas with a rare gift, and now I have a new dream: to jump the biological rails and brew beer in my own stomach.  

But it's a tall task. According to experts, I have better odds of dying in a plane crash than making my dream come true. 

See, I've been ringing up medical professionals to ask how I can contract a condition so strange that it sounds like one of those offbeat diseases you'd hear about on House. It's called auto-brewery syndrome, where, per microbiologist Michael Schmidt, Ph.D., "your stomach has been converted into a brewery."

It sounds awesome.

About 50 cases have been reported in various medical journals across the globe. Probably the most famous came a few years back. You see, this 61-year-old Texan--my inspiration--went to the emergency room after blowing a 0.37 percent blood alcohol concentration (BAC) on a breathalyzer despite not having a drop of booze all day. Stranger yet, it wasn't his first immaculate inebriation. He was frequently intoxicated without so much as a sniff of booze.  

After doctors did some sleuthing, they determined the guy had accidentally ingested significant amounts of brewer's yeast over the years while making his own beer. This, in addition to a cleansing dose of antibiotics, had paved the way for some microbiological magic whenever he ate a starchy meal like pasta. 

"These factors led to the body converting normal sugar to alcohol, like you would with a home brewing kit," says Donald Dumford, M.D., an infectious disease specialist in Akron, Ohio.

I'm already mentally concocting potions for my own gut--a dash of antibiotics here, a sprinkle of yeast there, maybe a handful of hops to brew up a hearty IPA within my gastrointestinal keg.

I start quizzing the experts like a cat burglar casing an art museum--inquiring about, you know, how someone could create auto-brewery syndrome on their own. Just, um, hypothetically speaking. 

The good news, they tell me, is that auto-brewery syndrome is easy to stop. Doctors in Texas shut down their patient's micro-distillery like the 18th Amendment with only a dose of antifungals and some yogurt.

Unfortunately, gut fermentation is far harder to actually kick into gear. "Basically, you'd have to be the Walter White of home brewers to figure out how to do it on purpose," says Dr. Dumford. "It would be nearly impossible." 

"How the auto-brewery condition manifested is a mystery," Schmidt adds.

I hear the words, but I'm still a little beer goggled by these dreams. I soldier onward, searching for a glimmer of hope for my belly beer.  

I am told auto-brewery syndrome seriously throws the body out of whack on a microbiological level, screwing up blood pressure, body temperature, even your ability to taste. And, oh yeah: "You would have all the secondary effects of chronic alcoholism, like cirrhosis of the liver," Dr. Dumford says.   

As if reading my mind, Schmidt sends one more warning shot across the bow: "The other waste product other than alcohol is gas." I picture my spare tire inflating with more air, bursting apart a pair of button-fly jeans, like Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  

So, it turns out brewing high-octane hooch inside your own stomach isn't nearly as much fun as it sounds. I know when I am beat. I wave the white flag and decide to simply get drunk the old fashioned way.

"Is there anything good about this stupid thing?" I ask.

"Yes," Schmidt says. "Scientists and doctors are researching how to take something as bizarre as getting drunk from a high-carb meal to developing a strategy to treat one of the more serious problems facing our species today: obesity."

It's a nice consolation prize, but I can't help but appreciate the sweet irony. Just imagine: The beer in one man's gut may someday be used to treat the rest of our beer guts.

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