How wine can turn you into a werewolf (And the bad news is, we're not joking)

By Ken Walker
Updated: 17:20 EDT, 19 January 2009

When he developed a striking suntan after a Caribbean holiday, KEN WALKER was rather pleased with himself. But when his nails and skin started working loose and he began sprouting strange facial hair, he realised something was terribly wrong.

Although a doctor himself, the 45-year-old was shocked to be told his wine drinking was having a nightmarish effect on his body...

With hindsight, it didn't start on holiday, but that's when it started to raise its ugly head. It was the final day of a fortnight spent on the Caribbean island of Tobago, and my wife and I were waiting for a taxi to the airport.

Although he's a doctor, Ken Walker was still shocked to discover the devastating effect his wine drinking was having on his body

Along the side of my forefinger I noticed five or six tense blisters, each one about a quarter of an inch across. I put it down to having touched some coral when snorkelling the day before. At least the rest of me looked healthy.

As someone with a Scottish heritage (not quite the red hair and freckles, but with a definite luminosity) I wasn't used to looking like Dale Winton just after a re-spray - my suntan was unexpectedly spectacular. Even my wife was impressed.

About a week after getting home, I noticed something very weird happening with my big toenails. There seemed to be fluid underneath the nails and they were working loose. I figured my toenails could have been damaged by wearing flippers while snorkelling and diving on holiday.

When the same thing started happening to a few of my fingernails, it was less easy to explain. The final straw came when I bought a new pair of shoes and tried to put them on.

When I hooked my finger into the shoe and pulled, the skin on the back of the finger simply got scraped away from the gentle rub on my heel, leaving a bleeding, raw stripe.

My GP had never come across anything like it

About three months after the holiday, I finally went to my GP - although I'm a hospital doctor, I'd never come across anything like this before in practice, or during my medical training.

My GP was as mystified as I was by these strange symptoms, but did figure out that the person I needed to see was a dermatologist. I got an emergency appointment, given that something quite nasty seemed to be happening, and was seen by an NHS consultant within a week. The diagnosis was made within a few minutes - I had one of a group of diseases called the porphyrias, affecting around 3,000 people in the UK.

There are at least 16 different varieties of the disease. Weirdly, given the fact that my skin was affected, my variety turned out to be caused by liver problems. The name comes from the Greek word for 'purple', and it's a disease that is all about pigment. I had also noticed that my urine had been quite dark for some time.

In my particular variety of porphyria, called porphyria cutanea tarda, one of the enzymes needed to make haemoglobin - the pigment that gives blood its colour - was running low in my liver. Another pigment was trying to be haemoglobin, but hadn't quite made it and was sloshing around in my system. That's why my urine was a strange colour - and why I had such a weird Hollywood tan.

Your teeth and eyes can also be stained by the pigments, a 'bonus' I was mercifully spared.

Furthermore, when this pigment reacts with sunlight, it also creates chemicals that do strange things to your skin and nails. It loosens them.

Polyphyria is thought to be the condition behind such myths as werewolves and vampires. Picture from American Werewolf in London

That explained the blisters, the nails dropping off (I found out later that the term for this is photoonycholysis) and the fact that I could rub off skin from the back of my hands and fingers simply by drying them too vigorously with a towel.

Some types of porphyria, including mine, have one other weird, inexplicable symptom. You get extra hair growing on your face. Between my lower eyelids and my normal beardline, I was having to shave for the first time ever.

Not just downy 'bum-fluff' either, but fully- developed dark bristles.

Unfortunately, porphyria doesn't give you extra hair where you really want it as a middleaged man and my temples stayed as bald as ever.

I had turned into a strange-coloured man with weird facial hair who had to avoid the sun. No wonder porphyria is often thought to be the medical condition behind such myths as werewolves and vampires.

The dependence on alcohol was difficult to deny

After some tests on my blood, urine and, embarrassingly, my stools, it was determined that the cause of my condition was quite simple - too much booze.

Even though I didn't think I had been drinking that much, it was more than my liver could cope with. For a few years up to the sunny holiday that triggered my symptoms, I'd been downing increasing quantities of wine, despite my wife's protests that I was drinking too much.

Dependence on alcohol is easy to deny, especially given that alcohol is one of the best de-stressers known to mankind.

Looking back, a bottle of wine every night and possibly two a night over the weekends was far too much.

Losing my skin and nails was thankfully a wake-up call - had I carried on drinking that amount, not only would my porphyria have got worse, but permanent liver damage in the form of cirrhosis would not have been far off.

With this particular type of porphyria, the only truly effective treatment was to give up the booze and give my liver a rest.

Other people who suffer from porphyria have congenital deficiencies of essential enzymes and suffer lifelong problems with - as yet - no known cure.

Until then I hadn't realised just how much of my life revolved around alcohol.

But for a year I didn't touch a drop, using my porphyria as the excuse. Telling people you have a 'medical condition' is a lot easier than telling them you've simply been drinking too much.

For about a year after my sunny Caribbean holiday, I wore cotton gloves around the house to protect my skin, and stayed well away from strong sunlight.

Slowly, my fingers and toes regained their nails, and my skin became less fragile. But it took the best part of a year before my liver function returned to normal and about another six months until my skin regained its normal degree of toughness.

I can't tell you how good it felt when I accidentally scraped my knuckles on the inside of a drawer and came away unscathed for the first time in months.

My face got a little less hairy as well, although I still have to shave in places where I never needed to before.

Two years on, I reckon I have recovered completely. I say 'reckon' because at my school reunion recently hardly anyone recognised me. My skin is apparently still far darker now than it was back then.

I recently went on holiday to a sunny destination and have managed to return home without falling to bits. I even drank the odd cocktail while I was there, but I'm careful about how much I drink.

With my particular type of porphyria being entirely down to my liver, I've decided that 'Look after your liver, and it will look after you' is a good motto for us all to live by. www.porphyria.org.uk