Hello and welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast. I'm your host Monica Reinagle.

A Nutrition Diva listener recently wrote to me worried that she might be eating too much fiber.

I have a really high fiber diet, she wrote, because I found it difficult to eat less than 30 grams

of fiber a day when I'm eating whole non-processed foods.

I haven't gotten my period in several months and no she writes I'm not pregnant I take birth control pills but my dietitian sent me a study about the

effects of a high-fiber diet on menstruation and I would love for you to do a

podcast episode on how fiber intake may influence menstruation in women of child-bearing age.

The study that she forwarded was actually somewhat surprising.

It found that women eating even the recommended amount of fiber each day

had an increased risk of an ovulation and what that means is that they experienced a menstrual cycle in which the egg did not mature.

Now the failure to ovulate may or may not lead to a missed period,

but it definitely means that you cannot get pregnant.

So this study could be really important to women who are trying to conceive.

However, these findings would actually not apply to the listener who sent it to me.

Birth control pills by design prevent ovulation,

no matter how much fiber you eat.

If you're taking birth control pills,

then your menstrual cycle, such as it is, is being controlled by external hormones,

not your diet.

And it is somewhat common for women taking birth control pills

to stop menstruating,

but again, this usually has nothing to do with diet. If you're

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