Change Your Brain Every Day - This Man’s Stomach Brewed its Own Alcohol

Episode Date: November 27, 2019

For this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen take a look at some of the current news items and weigh in from a brain health perspective. This week’s pieces range from the surprising, such as how Omega 3 can help children with mood disorders, to the bizarre, like the man who was arrested for drunk driving with a high BAC level, even though he never took a sip of alcohol.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. This is our weekly Brain in the News. There's so many articles about Brain in the News, but if you learn one thing, post it on any of your

social media sites, hashtag BrainWarriorsWayPodcast. Leave us a comment, question, or review at BrainWarriorsWayPodcast.com and we'll enter you into a raffle to win one of Tana's cookbooks. So what do you have? So apparently more Americans are going to be going gluten-free

whether they like it or not because U.S. winter wheat acres are set to drop to the lowest in 110 years apparently we so the farmland dedicated yes is dropping the lowest level since 1910 yes because um there's so much competition and the prices are so low that the farmers can't really afford to grow it. And so they're switching to corn and a lot of them are switching to cotton, sorghum, all sorts of things, but not wheat. And so it's very interesting. But when they switch to corn or soy, which is commonly what they're saying is going to happen, that's not necessarily super

healthy either. So just be aware of that because a lot of it is still it's not organic it's genetically modified it's sprayed with pesticides so you still need to be aware just because you're going gluten-free does not necessarily mean you're going healthy so gluten-free health is so important and i talked to the author of wheat belly and he said gluten-free foods are often just as toxic or worse because they're made with high glycemic starches and so on. All right. So I read this article. It just blew my mind. I actually didn't know.

The title is, No One Believed Him When He Said He Hadn't Been Drinking. Then researchers found his body was producing alcohol. That's crazy. When a man in North Carolina was pulled over on suspicion of drunk driving, police didn't believe him when he said he hadn't had any alcohol. The man in his late 40s at the time refused to take a breathalyzer test and was taken to a hospital where his initial blood alcohol level was found to be about two and a half times the legal limit and the equivalent of consuming 10

drinks an hour. Despite the man swearing up and down that he hadn't had anything to drink, doctors didn't believe him either. But researchers at Richmond University Medical Center in New York eventually discovered that the man was telling the truth. He wasn't downing beers or cocktails. Instead, there was yeast in his gut that was likely converting carbohydrates in the food he ate to alcohol. In other words, his body was brewing beer. The findings were reported in a study in the British Medical Journal, Open Gastroenterology. The man, whose identity has not been revealed, had a rarely diagnosed medical condition called auto brewery syndrome abs also known as gut fermentation syndrome which occurs when yeast in the gi tract causes the body to convert carbohydrates ingested through food so if he has this a low carb diet would help him into alcohol. Well, in fact, when we talk about people having yeast,

people talk about having yeast in their gut, and we treat it a lot. Interestingly, in the past, many doctors considered it to be nonsense. So obviously, it's not nonsense. But what you do is you do put them on a low-carb type of diet. It's a very specific type of diet you put them on. And one of the things you do, you cut out all sugars completely because you don't want to feed the yeast. Researchers treated him with antifungal medications.

And Dr. Fahad Malik said these patients have the exact same implications of alcoholism. Whoa. The smell, the breath, drowsiness, and gait changes. Three years later, after his suspected drunk driving arrest, the man's aunt bought a breathalyzer to record his alcohol levels. She had heard about a similar case that had been successfully treated by a doctor. Isn't this so interesting? This is wild. And the article just goes on and on. But I think if you Google auto brewery syndrome,

you can learn more about it. It's the hidden reasons why that people suffer. You know, we're learning so much. We used to think that this yeast issue in the gut, a lot of doctors didn't really buy into it. They didn't buy into fibromyalgia. They didn't buy into Lyme. They didn't buy into so many things. And as we progress with science, we realize not buying into it was really just because they didn't know enough about it. Sure. Do you want to do this one? Police picked up a seven-year-old boy who was caught

at school vaping CBD oil in Wisconsin. This is crazy. And obviously this kid has seen an adult or someone else doing this. A social worker with Child Protective Services picked up the boy from school and took him to a local hospital for examination. Doctors said he was okay. Authorities then returned the child to his mother. Apparently they did not file charges, but school officials said they threw the vaping device in the trash. And the concern is that kids are seeing parents do this at home. They're concerned about the safety. We've been hearing about all these people going into the hospital, dying because of doing this, vaping. I think most of them had THC in them.

But you don't know if kids are going to pick those up out of their parents' purses or wherever. That's nearly 50 cases. Right. 50 deaths. And cases reported in every state in the United States. The safety and integrity of students and families is paramount. And cases reported in every state in the United States. The safety and integrity of students and families is paramount.

So obviously this is a national vaping epidemic. It's a concern around the country or the world. But when parents do this and they jeopardize their own health, that's bad enough. When you jeopardize your child's health or another child's health at school who may then use your vape pen, that's criminal. It's just wrong. So you need to be more careful. So how old were you when you tried your first cigarette? Oh, I was forced to smoke a cigarette by a babysitter when i was four that's in my new book so so i had there's a reason i never allowed my daughter just got triggered oh yes there's a reason there why do you think my daughter never had a babysitter that was just one of the stories so yeah so you were four years old i was four years old and a lot of it is because of a lack of supervision i think mine wasn't a lack of supervision. I think- Mine wasn't a lack of supervision.

It was just a horrific, horrible person, a terrible human being. Either lack of supervision- Or a terrible human being. Or a model. I think I was about 11 and just choked my head off. Well, I was four, so obviously I choked. She told me that she would tell my mom I did some other terrible thing that I didn't do, but I was so scared that I-

So she was an abuser. That's what abusers do. But let's not forget children have developing brains, that vaping is not good for your adult brain, whether it's vaping, caffeine, nicotine, CBD, whatever. And I want you to think your lung tissue is the most sensitive tissue in your body. It is one cell layer thin, and it's critical to you being able to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide, a process that's just absolutely essential to every cell in your body living. And so by heating up these pans and inhaling really hot, toxic, often air,

they're damaging their lungs. But there's also something else going on because I think by the time they inhale, the air is not actually that hot. So there's something else going on with this chemical exchange it's making it even more toxic than some of the other ways of smoking so um i'm not even i don't know do you know that they know exactly what's causing it i know it's mostly the thc pens that were doing it they actually think it's in a synthetic form of vitamin E that is causing people to have a negative reaction to it, like an allergic reaction that's causing. One more study. Omega-3 supplementation for children was associated with parent-rated improvements in executive function. So they did this study on 95 kids with depression or bipolar disorder, and they gave them two capsules of fish oil, about two grams total, mostly EPA.

And the conclusions of the study that it improved executive function when they improved the omega-3 fatty acids. So things like forethought, judgment, impulse control. This was published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. And I love that because that's a mainstream journal that's talking about using nutraceuticals to optimize physical cognitive functioning. Do you remember Abigail at our house the other night? This is so cute. I've never seen a baby this young taking fish oil. So one of our doctors that works for us, who we just love, he's one of

our just amazing physicians, they came to our house and he for us, who we just love, he's in one of our just amazing physicians. They came to our house. He has a four month old baby that is just as cute as can be. And one of the mellowest babies I've ever seen wide awake, totally alert, mellow, doesn't cry. I'm like, something's up with that baby. Like she's just so well behaved for a four year old is not fussy at all. Um, but they give this baby, they're already giving her fish oil.

They've been giving it to her since she was just tiny. Well, she's still tiny, but I was so amazed. They're already giving her fish oil, and it's just so interesting, and probiotics. And so you can start really young, starting to optimize the health of that baby's brain. I thought that was so interesting. Wow. Right in the news. You know, we'd love for you to send us links to articles that you come across.

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