The Ultimate in Home Brewing

To stay healthy, we need 38 trillion or so microbes that live in our gut. If that microbiome becomes unstable, we get sick, sometimes with conditions such as diabetes or depression.   

One illness that’s rare and at times disbelieved by family and even doctors is ABS which stands for auto-brewery syndrome. That’s when the gut microbiome goes into fermentation mode and creates intoxicating levels of alcohol. Norbert, when I was writing this episode, my mind started making up all these bad drinking jokes but it’s not funny for people who have to live with ABS.  It can be rough on them because again, some aren’t believed. People have had to prove in court that they had ABS to explain their behavior which includes slurred speech, stumbling, and compromised driving consistent with alcohol abuse.   

For years, scientists thought ABS was caused by fungi in the gut, but recent studies suggest both gut bacteria and yeasts are to blame. It’s not very different from beer production where you need carbohydrates and yeast to start fermentation.   

ABS can be caused by poor nutrition, a high carbohydrate diet, liver disease, and following antibiotic therapy. Left untreated, it can also lead to scarring of the liver or cirrhosis. These people have higher levels of E. coli and another gut bacterium, Klebsiella, that can be alcohol producers.    

Treatment includes diet changes such as eating more protein, antibiotic treatment to re-establish a new gut microbiome or even fecal transplants.