Health Wanted: The Pill

The Episode

Everybody put on your party hats and grab a slice of cake: It’s a birthday party for the births that never were. This week on Health Wanted, we’re celebrating a very merry un-birthday in the truest sense, because May 9 was the 66th anniversary of the FDA approving the first oral birth control pill, a divisive medication people still love to hate.

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The Listener Questions

Is mushroom coffee good for gastrointestinal issues?

It’s true that mushrooms are good for you. They are low fat and high fiber, and medicinal mushrooms have all sorts of nice compounds in them that have been shown to have anti-inflammatory, anticancer, antioxidant, immune supporting, and antibacterial properties. 

But pretty much all the beneficial things we see mushrooms do have been observed in animal studies or petri dishes. not in humans. There haven’t been studies to show the benefits outside of nutritional value are applicable to people, and certainly no studies showing that mushrooms retain their value when processed into coffee.

Some people’s stomachs also have a bad reaction to medicinal mushrooms, and some might even increase the risk of kidney stones if you take too much.

So, if we’re asking if there are benefits to mushroom coffee, there might be. But if we’re asking if there’s science to support that mushroom coffee is beneficial, the answer is “not at this point.”

Should I take supplements to get more fiber in my diet?

A complete fiber replacement supplement that gives all of the same benefits of fiber from whole foods does not exist (to our knowledge). 

So, it's better to think about what obvious issues your lack of fiber is causing and choose a supplement that helps with that. Regularity is the most common one, and fiber is great for helping keep things moving.

There are also some ways to increase your whole fiber sneakily. You could eat things like bean burritos, fruit smoothies, or add green peas in your mac and cheese, or blending up lentils into pasta sauce. These tips also work great for kids!

Catch all the listener questions and Laurel’s answers on the full episode of Health Wanted by:

• Streaming at wabe.org or the WABE app
• Subscribing on Apple or Spotify
• Watching on WABE's YouTube channel