Woman Denied Liver Transplant Due to Alcoholism—but She Hadn’t Had a Drop to Drink

Odd Phenomenon

The syndrome flares up when “gut disturbances” like antibiotic use allow fermenting fungi or bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract to grow uncontrollably. When a person with this type of auto-brewery syndrome consumes carbs like bread, pasta, pizza, or sugary drinks, the fermenting microbes turn into ethanol—leading to “extreme blood alcohol levels.”

Advertisement

Next Page →

The More You Know

  • Dogs can learn up to 165 words.
  • Mysterious sand dune holes baffled Indiana for years.
  • Mark Zuckerberg said a voting mechanism that says whether posts are good or bad is 'not something that we think is good for the world'.
  • There are around 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body. If you took them all out and laid them end to end, they’d stretch around the world more than twice.
Next Page →