“What is gastroparesis?”

While it’s not the answer to last night’s Final Jeopardy! question, the chances you would bet a single cent after hearing a single clue about what’s essentially stomach paralysis is only slightly higher than you suffering from the disease. In fact, when the National Institutes of Health reviewed more than 43 million medical records for evidence of it, they found fewer than 70,000 cases.

Which means you have a 0.16 percent of having gastroparesis. By the way, your chance of having two other stomach disorders, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, are both less than a single percent, too.

Now let’s put you on “Jeopardy!” and in the lead as the host reads the six clues for the Final Jeopardy! question, which are those three aforementioned ailments along with preparing for a colonoscopy, recovering from stomach surgery, and receiving radiation treatment. You draw a blank, wager no money, and lose.

Should you feel bad about that? Probably not.

Except for gastroenterologists, who would know those are the six times when you need to limit dietary fiber intake?

What you should feel bad about, though, is limiting your dietary fiber intake at any other time. In other words, eating like a typical American.

In last week’s article, you learned the average American falls about halfway short of meeting the Food and Drug Administration’s Daily Value for fiber: 28 grams for every 2,000 calories consumed. As well as that given amount is not necessarily optimal, only what’s needed to prevent fiber insufficiency.

What there is no insufficiency of, however, are health benefits to eating more fiber. And if further studies substantiate the results of a recent one, another important benefit will be added to that list.

That study suggests that ingesting more fiber could mitigate a new health concern: the prevalence and potential danger of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

PFAS are synthetic chemicals often used in nonstick coatings on pots and pans; fast food wrappers and containers; stain- and water-resistant carpeting, and other fabrics; and heat-resistant protective gear, paints, and sealants. Their use has been linked to the disruption of hormone function and a number of health problems.

These include weight gain in children, obesity in adults, liver, thyroid, and metabolic disorders, including diabetes and particularly gestational diabetes, the type that can occur during pregnancy.

PFAS are often called “forever chemicals” and for good reason — and not only because they resist nature’s attempts to decompose them. According to a 2024 Business Insider article, it takes five hours for your body to filter out half the caffeine and alcohol in your blood system; for arsenic, it’s 10 hours.

The shortest half-life of any PFAS, however, is 3.5 years, and the longest is more than seven years.

And similar to another relatively new health concern, microplastics, PFAS are ubiquitous.They are now in the air, much of our drinking water, and, according to a 2020 review published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, in the blood of over 98 percent of U.S. adults.

While the degree to which this affects our health is still under investigation, those investigations have led the Environmental Protection Agency to institute stricter limits on six forever chemicals in public drinking water, limits that will fully be in place by 2029. Meanwhile, research on PFAS continues in every imaginable way.

Including a study led by Jennifer Schlezinger that was a product of her imagination. While the professor of environmental health at Boston University, was successfully personally experimenting with consuming gel-forming fibers as a way to reduce the amount of bad cholesterol in her blood, she wondered — since forever chemicals are similar to the bile acids in your body — if fiber might have the same effect on forever chemicals.

So Schlezinger and colleagues took 72 adult men whose blood was found to contain PFAS and had 42 of them supplement their diet three times a day with a soluble, gel-forming fiber found in the endosperm of oat kernels, beta-glucan. The other 30 men consumed a rice-based control supplement.

Four weeks later, blood tests found those who took the oat-based fiber supplement had an 8 percent decrease in two forever chemicals dangerous enough that the U.S. no longer allows them to be used in any phase of food production.

In an article about this study for Health, “‘Forever Chemicals’ Are Lurking Inside of You —Can Eating More Fiber Flush Them Out?,” Bradley Lampe, the principal research toxicologist at the U.S. National Science Foundation, MPH, DABT, says what any expert has to say about any single study’s results. They need to be replicated to be seriously considered.

But he also says the link between fiber ingestion and lower PFAS levels “makes sense.”

What also makes even more sense is for you to gradually increase your consumption of dietary fiber. That’s because there have been enough replicated studies to say doing so does the following.

Serves as a food source for the good bacteria in the gut.

Promotes regular bowel movements. Keeps you feeling fuller longer.

Lessens blood sugar spikes. Helps balance cholesterol levels.

Reduces the incidence of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and colorectal cancer.