Her breath reeked of alcohol. She was dizzy, disoriented and weak, so much so that one day she passed out and hit her head on a kitchen counter while making lunch for her school-age children. Yet not a drop of liquor had passed her lips, a fact that the 50-year-old Toronto woman and her husband told doctors for two years before someone actually believed her.
“She visited her family doctor again and again and went to the emergency room seven times over two years,” said Dr. Rahel Zewude, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto. The information you need to know, sent directly to you: Download the CTV News App Doctors found the woman’s alcohol levels could range between 30 millimoles per litre and 62 millimoles per litre — below 2 millimoles per litre is normal, Zewude said.
Alcohol levels of up to 62 millimoles per litre are extraordinarily high and would be considered life-threatening, even fatal, said Barbara Cordell, president of an advocacy association called Auto-Brewery Syndrome Information and Research, which provides patient education and does research on the unusual condition. While no one she knows has had alcohol levels reach that level, many people can function at blood alcohol levels of up to 30 millimoles per litre or 40 millimoles per litre, Cordell said in an email. “I know of over 300 people diagnosed with auto-brewery syndrome and we have over 800 patients and caregivers in our private Facebook support group,” said Cordell, who.
