Tuesday, January 12, 2016

A Brewery In Your Gut

Apparently this really happens...
ALBANY, N.Y. -- Drunken-driving charges against an upstate New York woman have been dismissed based on an unusual defense: Her body is a brewery.

The woman was arrested while driving with a blood-alcohol level more than four times the legal limit. She then discovered she has a rare condition called "auto-brewery syndrome," in which her digestive system converts ordinary food into alcohol, her lawyer Joseph Marusak said in interviews this week.

A town judge in the Buffalo suburb of Hamburg dismissed the drunken-driving charges this month after Marusak presented a doctor's research showing the woman had the previously undiagnosed condition in which high levels of yeast in her intestines fermented high-carbohydrate foods into alcohol.

In tests done to prove her case, the woman achieved a blood alcohol level of .36, without consuming any alcohol.

All possible jokes aside, this doesn't sound like a fun way to live.

See "Woman Beats Dui Rap With Claim Her Body Brews Alcohol" for more on this rare, but not unheard of condition.

4 comments:

  1. My brother had a classmate in med school that did a research paper explaining that if the human body had just one change of enzyme (I think, that was a long time ago)that we would be perpetually drunk. I wonder if this is related to that.

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  2. We had a field guy like that - he couldn't eat bread because it was the same as drinking for him.

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