In Case You Haven't Heard…

Sometimes people can seem drunk after eating — but not drinking. Researchers have called this “auto‐brewery syndrome” due to fermenting carbohydrates in the gut, but in a 2019 paper, and then a study of patients published this month in Nature Biology , there may be treatments for the syndrome that involve changing alcohol metabolism in the patients' gut. “This disease is terrible on families,” says gastroenterologist and researcher Dr. Bernd Schnabl of the University of California San Diego, who led the new study. He says that “patients are not believed”— even by their doctors — when they insist they aren't drinking. The condition can be confirmed by administering glucose followed by a breathalyzer or blood alcohol test under strict supervision.