Imagine how different your spring break would have been if instead of inhaling 2,847 Piña Coladas, you got drunk off of eating a piece of bread.
For Nick Hess, a man living with a condition called Auto-Brewery Syndrome, this is a reality. Ingesting carbohydrates raises his BAC and effectively renders him drunk.
He first noticed it around four years ago. “It was weird,” he explained to BBC. “I’d eat some carbs and all of a sudden I was goofy, vulgar. Sometimes it would come on over the course of a few days, sometimes it was just like ‘bam! I’m drunk’.”
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Characterized by an abnormal increase in intestinal yeast, this condition affects an unknown percentage of the global population, but there have been reports of it across America and England.
The conversion of carbohydrates into alcohol is not unusual–it happens to all of us, but to a much smaller extent. Typically, the bacteria in our bodies combat the yeast formed by the conversions and prevent the alcohol from having any effect on us.
For people with Auto-Brewery Syndrome, the bacteria are unable to counteract the formation of yeast fast enough, resulting in easily raised blood alcohol levels.
Hess now takes anti-fungal medicine to avoid symptoms, and has been put on a low-carb diet. He reports the treatment is slowly working, but it is still something he is cautious of every day.
So while pasta definitely tastes better than a tequila shot, we should be grateful that we don’t have to make tally marks on our arms for every potato chip we eat.
Gif courtesy of giphy.com
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