Lab 041: Out of Control

Last week, the Supreme Court started hearing the case about abortion access in Mississippi. And this all started because Mississippi put a law in place that said you couldn't terminate your pregnancy after fifteen weeks.

Well, that's in direct contradiction with Roe v. Wade, right, which says you can terminate a pregnancy up until twenty four weeks, which is considered the point of viability, or when a fetus can survive outside the womb.

Right.

And this is so monumental because this is the first time since nineteen seventy three. So when Roe versus Wad happened that the Supreme Court is hearing a case that questions if it's constitutional to ban abortion before viability.

This feels like a lot is on the line.

Yeah, this could change everything, And it seems like we are in a time machine because I never thought that in my lifetime that we would go back to this way of thinking and have to go through court systems again about women's reproductive rights.

Yes, and you know, I've seen a lot of chatter, you know, I like to scan the way. I've seen a lot of chatter about like, oh, well, you don't have to worry about abortion if you are taking birth control and this and that, but baby, we need to talk about birth control.

Absolutely, because not all that glitters is gold. It's not some magic pill that works for everybody the exact same way.

So we have to talk about this.

Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore science, pop culture, and a healthy dosa friendship.

Reproductive rights have been under attack in the United States and with the recent abortion legislation in Texas.

Right, it's not just Mississippi.

Texas has also put some laws in place, so they have the Texas Heartbeat Act. And in this act, it says that you can't terminate a pregnancy after six weeks, So you only have six weeks to terminate your pregnancy.

And that six weeks is not from when you know that you're pregnant. We need to be really clear. It is tricky because the six weeks is from the date of your last minstral cycle, so a lot of people don't even know that they're pregnant six weeks out.

That's right.

So this week we're talking all about birth control specifically. We wanted to understand how it works to prevent pregnancy. Some of the issues or side effects around birth control and how people can be empowered to find the best option for them.

Let's get into the recitation. Okay, so what do we know?

Well, we know not all.

Birth control is created equal, right, you know there's a lot of different types.

Yes, me and all my friends have all had a different one and have different thoughts about each of those things.

Yeah, the pill, the ring shot, iud's condoms, even spermicide seems like that's making a comeback.

I recently saw ad for that.

Do you remember that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine was talking about the sponge. I had no idea what that was when I was watching Seinfeld as a kid, but it was birth control and she was trying to get her hands on her favorite type of birth control, and it.

Was like she was looking for drug. Really, it was very funny.

Now I'm gonna have to go back and look bit it. What else do we know?

We know that birth control is an important topic because half the population is looking for ways to decide.

Or control when they get pregnant.

Or if or if so.

What this boils down to is that birth control is affecting a lot of the population.

Yeah, so many people just think of birth control as something that people with uteruses are thinking about, when really it can be partners that are thinking about it. So it really does affect way more than just the person with the uterus. Yes, but it seems like a lot of people that don't have a uterus are making decisions about it, sticking the non uterus in our business and telling us what we should be doing with our uterus.

We also know there isn't a birth control pill for men right now, so what's going on with that? So what do we want to know?

I think for me, it kind of starts at the base and I'm a little bit embarrassed.

This is a safe space.

I don't really know how birth control works. You're just counting on it to work.

I think I kind of understand how the ring and the pill work, but iud's I know there's different types, and I think that's the part that I'm like, chemically, what is going on with these contraptions that we could possibly be putting inside of our bodies.

That's a good question.

And then just as deserving of conversation is what are some of the side effects?

Right?

What are some of the issues that come along with adding these things to your body? You know absolutely, because we already know that there are side effects.

I think we've all heard. I just want to know what are all of them?

Yeah, and piggybacking off what you just said, we know there are tons of issues, and the issues are different for different types of birth control. So how our doctors to who gets what and when? And is the birth control you got back in the day the same birth control you should be using later, like people in birth control for a long time.

Yeah, and our bodies are changing. We know that, right, isn't one size fits all. Sometimes I feel like you're going to the doctor and they just got the birth control in a candy jar and they're just like here, now go halfway. And then I think another really good question is what is the future of birth control? I can't imagine that we all gonna just be doing the same thing.

I hope forever.

I hope that there's some advances in the technology so that there aren't these issues that we're gonna be talking about that persist with people whoever uterus.

Right, I feel like this is ripe for disruption.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely, all right, let's jump into the dissection.

Our guest for today's lab is doctor Elizabeth Rousseau.

I am Elizabeth Rousseau.

I am founder of AIDA, and I got my PhD in human genetics at Duke University.

So me and Zakiah both went to Duke with Elizabeth. Not just all we were there at the same time and we might have met each other.

No, we actually know Elizabeth, yes, very very well. We graduated from the same program. All right, we have the same degree. So I am really excited to talk to her today. Yes, and she's one of our very very smart friends. So buck Lynn, so you can know you hear us say, Elizabeth is doctor Ruzzo. Yes, put some respect on her name. Let's start with the basics. So first, there's ovulation. That's the release of an egg from your ovary down the fallopian tube. So when that egg is fertilized,

We know that birth control is a really important part of reproductive health for so many people, and we know it prevents pregnancy, but how exactly does it work.

The highly effective methods work by either preventing ovulation or by preventing the sperm from successfully fertilizing the egg, which is usually via thickening of the cervical mucus.

So, with the exception of the.

Copper IUD, they all work by adding low levels of exogenous hormones. And these are specifically synthetic forms of either estrogen or progesterone.

All right, so let's break that down.

Okay, good, because there are some words in there. I don't I'm not sure.

So Elizabeth said that all of these, except for the copper IUDs, work by adding exogenous hormones. XO means outside in genous. You know, word genus is the origin, so originating from outside the body.

My girl speak Latin. She speaks Latin, y'all.

And so all we think about it, we're saying, like progestin, that's just a synthetic version of progesterone. Hormones are chemical messengers, and they're like long range chemical messengers. They can travel

It sounds like a symphony, like those strings come in at the right time to drown out those woodwind instruments.

There you go.

So some of the hormones that these different breath controls add in are estrogen and progestin. Let's start with estrogen. This is something that's pretty cyclical. It follows the menstrual cycle. Estrogen thickens the lining of your uterus. That's saying, hey, get thick there's an egg that might get fertilized and it needs to be implanted into the side of here, right.

It's trying to make that environment right for the fertilization, Yes, the fertilization right, okay.

Right, And so hormonal birth control can prevent pregnancy by preventing ovulation. And that's just simply humpty dumpty coming tumbling down. That's an egg tumbling down through the uterus. Right, and so you can prevent ovulation or you can say, all right, in the cervix. You know, if we're thinking about what reproduction is, what fertilization of an egg is, You're gonna have to have sperm that can move through the mucus

It's like quicksand for the sperm.

Yeah, the sperm is just not strong enough. Or another way is to thin the lining of the uterus to prevent the egg from even attaching to it. So slipping slide records no egg attaching to the uterine lining, right, if you want to remember it.

Those are different ways.

Okay, that was a beautiful breakdown of how all this works. Doctor Russeau also mentioned the copper iud, which is a non hormonal type of birth control.

So how does that method.

Work that one releases copper ions into the uterus and makes it inhospitable for sperm and can potentially also prevent implantation of the egg.

So, like we said before, there are so many types of birth control. The pill, the patch, the shot, the implant. Those are all hormonal types of birth control.

Non hormonal types include the copper ud using condoms in the Fertility Awareness method also known as FAM, or the rhythm method. This involves tracking changes during the menstrual cycle to predict when you ovulate.

And the ways to use the different methods also vary, so for the pill you take it daily at the same time every day, whereas with the patch that's every week you're applying a new patch.

So birth control has proved to be extremely effective at preventing the fertilization or implantation of an egg in the uterus, but it also has some reproductive health benefits beyond preventing pregnancy.

I think the point we really need to make clear is that just having a uterus makes you susceptible to all kinds of things.

Yes, like uterine fibroids, pcos PMDD, endometriosis.

Yes, And so I think it's easy to think of birth control as just providing agency about when you will or will not have a fertilized egg, but it's also medicine for those other conditions that come along with having a uterus.

Right.

Birth control can't cure these issues, but they do help alleviate some of the symptoms that come with them.

It's also used as medicine to treat chronic reproductive disorders in women, everything from menstrual cramps to fibroids to pcos.

Yeah, I've known people who are having issues with their period. I knew someone that had their period consistently for like six months, and so the prescribed medication to help regulate it was birth control, And they had to go kind of like back and forth with their doctors trying to figure out the right dosage and things like that. But eventually they got to a solution, which they were really happy about.

I'm glad it worked out for them. There has been so much conversation about fibroids, and these are not just one off issues, right. So uterine fibroids, which are like growths on the uterus. By the age of fifty, almost two thirds of all women will have experienced uterine fibroids.

Right.

And then, even when we know how many women are going to have fibroids, there are still disparities within those groups. So for black women, between the age of eighteen and thirty, about a quarter of them will experience uterine fibroids, compared to six percent of white women in that same age range.

And then PCOS, which is polycystic ovarian syndrome.

That's a condition where your ovaries produce.

An abnormal amount of androgens, which is male sex hormones that are usually present in women in only small amounts. Having more of those hormones, it starts to produce little cysts on your ovaries.

And so endometriosis something that we often hear about and the difficulties related to this. When you're pregnant, that's when that uterine lining that we talked about earlier grows outside of the uterus. Oh my gosh, okay, and so that can be really painful.

And then PMDD is pre menstrual dysphork disorder and it's a lot more severe than what we call PMS.

So now that we have a solid understanding of first how birth control works, second the different types of birth control, and third the additional health benefits of birth control, let's talk about how you actually get it, how is it prescribed? So first things first, how many different brands or versions of birth control do you think are currently on the market?

TT okay, I feel like there's probably more than I think, maybe more than fifty, but less than a thousand. I'm just gonna give a wide range. I like that very easy, Thank you.

Yes, I mean it's hard when you really think about it, because it feels like there's a lot of different categories and it has to be more than one brand in each of those categories, right.

Yeah, Because you know, when you go into any drug store, you got talent all, then you got ibuprofen, and then you got the CVS brand, you got this other brand and children's brand, all these different types of things. So I'm like, is birth control like that?

All?

Right?

So how many are there on the market.

It's one hundred and eighty one, so the vast majority of those are in the category of pill. But even within pill, there's multiple different kinds. So for example, some have both estrogen and progestines and some are progestin only or commonly called the mini pill.

I feel like your guess was good.

It definitely fell within the range that I had said. Thank you.

I appreciate that, and you're right, I mean, it's not quite a set of menifit, but birth control that includes you know, brand names as well as the generic options too that might be more affordable.

Yeah, and the mini pill, which is progestin only, is typically given the people who are breastfeeding or at risk for blood clot And all of these methods have different levels of effectiveness. After abstinence and sterilization, the implants and id's are the most effective methods of birth control, all about ninety nine percent effective or better.

And that makes sense because both of those have a lot less room for human error. Once it's in, it's in well for the most part. Methods like the pill of the patch. Now that's going to require you to stick to a regular schedule and to always remember to take whatever your method is or to apply your method, and that is way more susceptible to human error.

There is one time I forgot to put my own shoes on when I was leaving my apartment in grad school, and I didn't realize until I turned on my car and stepped on the break.

You put your foot to the pedal because.

It's like, this does not feel right, hm, So you already know things are getting for god Ton.

So that gets us to the question of which method is best?

For real, the best method is one that fits your lifestyle, right, But I don't know if doctors are asking those specific lifestyle questions like are.

You a forgetful person?

Right?

Have you ever gotten to your car without your shoes? You know what I mean?

Because that is crazy levels of forgetfulness to me, right, yeah, and something that even if you are forgetful person, you might not even consider it because it's your day to.

Day life that might not feel forgetful to you.

I mean, yes, no shoes, but like oh man, where you're having to say like did I turn off the stove?

Did I turn off to this?

You know? Right?

And maybe taking something every day and you set your alarm on your phone and it's easy for you and so it's no problem at all. But some people want to be able to take breaks, like with the pill and the patch.

Yeah, that makes complete sense.

Some people might be sensitive to hormonal changes, so they don't want to opt for birth control that will change their homeowned levels, so then they opt for you know, things like condoms, the rhythm method or the copper UD.

So when you consider all this stuff, there's so many options to pick from. One hundred and eighty one different ones.

It seems.

How are doctors deciding who gets which type of birth control?

It's complicated, right.

The average contraceptive counseling appointment in the US is thirteen minutes thirteen minutes, and so doctors kind of prescribe based on what they're comfortable with, what they've seen work in their practice, and anecdotally a lot of them are like, you know, I kind of have a couple favors. I start with those. If they don't work, we go back to it. And so this creates this process of women and their doctors going through potentially years of trial and error.

So you heard that, right, Years years just to figure out the right birth control. A lot can happen in a year, and imagine having to go through that.

That's so frustrating.

Certain ones have different pros and cons right, Like, some of them are also known to and have FDA approval for being used in the treatment of acne. Some are great at managing heavy menstrual bleeding, and others aren't. If a patient comes in with like a this is my main complaint or issue or concern on top of preventing pregnancy. Then yes, doctors kind of know which of the bins to pull from.

Doctor Russeau told us about the US Medical Eligibility Criteria or US MECH for contraceptive Use, which lists out some dangerous combinations of birth control and patient criteria.

So, for example, if you're a smoker over thirty five, you should avoid combined oral contraceptives because they increase your risk of blood clot and stroke things like that.

But even with that said, it's really a crapshoot and there's no way to predict the possibility of unwanted side effects.

Yeah, cause, I mean I feel like most people are walking into the doctor and just saying, hey, I need birth control, and you might not even necessarily know to think about some other things that might affect your reaction to a certain type of birth control. I know I didn't. I just said, hey, looking for the birth control. You got some here.

So when we talk about these side effects, they really span the total range of something that feels inconvenient like a headache or nausea, to full blown migraines, changes in period weight gain, changes in your mood, or sex drive,

Yeah, all those things I listened in there.

They're like depression, suicidal thoughts, and I'm like, wow, uh what you know.

It's just crazy.

He's my only options?

Why why is this happening?

So I think this is the tricky part, right, This feels like a catch twenty two t T Yeah, because on one hand, we have birth control that you're taking to alleviate certain symptoms and feelings that you have, so migrains or changes in period mood.

Yeah.

But on the other hand, if you don't have.

The right combination of birth control, or if the birth control you have isn't right for you, you can then get these exact same.

Side effects from the birth control.

Yes, it's like a mixed bag, like hmm, maybe it's a treat, maybe it's a trick.

I don't know, honestly. In twenty fourteen, Mark and Call, the company behind the new which is a hormonal form.

Of birth control.

They settled at a court for one hundred million dollars after facing thousands of lawsuits alleging injury and death from serious side effects like blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks from folks that were using maneuvering.

And that's the part that makes it really terrible. Right overall, you think of birth control as this thing that gives you more agency and control over your body and your health, right, but then it's coming along with these really serious side effects, and some of them, like we said, are not just one off, right, these are long term side effects.

So that's where I think we really could use improvements and just take this big data approach that we're taking to try to understand, Okay, this group of people were on the same birth control, half of them felt great and half of them felt miserable. What is different about their underlying biology? And can we save that group of people who felt miserable from going on the wrong one in the first place.

So that really makes me think, like, why is it so complicated? It seems like drug companies and healthcare providers could be doing a better job with this? Is there funding going into R and D for better birth control?

This is a stat I heard recently that blew my mind. So a typical drug, fifty percent of the profits from that go back into R and D for improving that drug, right, because you can always.

Lower that blood pressure a little bit more. Birth control two percent goes back to R and D two percent.

Now, why are we getting the short end as the stick.

I can think of one very large reason.

I feel like just because the method is effective at preventing pregnancy, like, that's not it. We still can work on some of these other things over here. We just rattled that list off very fast on the commercial.

For real, And I mean that's what's being done with other drugs. Like Elizabeth was saying, when you think about blood pressure medication and all these different types of drugs, I feel like they're constantly getting better. They're always trying to make sure that your blood pressure is going to get even lower, even lower with each iteration. But it doesn't seem like the same type of energy is being brought to birth control.

Right.

And like Elizabeth said, if people are getting off of birth control because of the side effects, that means the birth control isn't effective because they're not taking it right.

That's introducing more gaps.

Come on, folks, what's not clicking Steven?

And we said at the top, where's the disruption? This is your mama's birth control? Like this feels like the same birth control over and over. Where's a new birth control?

Right? We got retro birth control.

Yes, there are people trying to work on male contraceptives.

For example, some of those clinical trials.

Were stopped pretty early because men were complaining of waking, acne and mood changes, So imagine that. Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of the other things where if you look at you know, prostate cancer versus breast cancer research dollars, turns out sexism and it's reflected in all aspects of our government and budgets.

It's just wild to me that men are complaining of these side effects, you know, gain mood changes, acne, when these are the exact same side effects that everybody else has been dealing with taking birth control.

Right, It's like, oh, you don't like that, neither do I?

You know, Like, have you seen the TikTok where the girlfriends are showing the birth control pamphlet? Yes, their partners are reading through the birth control and they're like, what the heck.

Is all this stuff?

They are shocked.

They cannot believe how many side effects come along with taking birth control.

If you've seen a birth control pamphlet, you know that it is the size of a city block and the type is very, very tiny, and it has all of the chemicals, how to take the birth control, all of the side effects, and everyone's blown away. And then the men they're complaining about these things, and I'm just like, wow, but it's okay for.

Us to go through all of that. Hmm. That's that's very interesting.

Mm hmm.

Let's take a break and when we come back, we're gonna talk all about how Elizabeth and her company Aiden are shaping the future of birth control.

We're back, and before we dive back into our dissection with doctor Elizabeth Russeau, what are we going to be dissecting next week?

Next week, we're talking about HIV. It's been around for decades, but recently there's been huge strides in developing an HIV vaccine, and we're gonna get into it with doctor Christine Daniels.

Also, starting next week, Dope Labs is going to be exclusive to Spotify, So if you're listening to us from somewhere else, go ahead and sign up for free on Spotify and follow us there so you can make sure you catch next week's episode plus all the other stuff we have in the pipeline this semester.

You don't want to miss it. So what are you waiting for? Just do it? Just do it.

Let's get back to today's lab. So we're talking to doctor Russeau, and this is all about birth control. In the first half of the dissection, we focused on what's not working with current birth control methods. Sure, if taken correctly, they can be effective at preventing unwanted pregnancy, but they also introduce a host of unwanted side effects to the patients. Many patients have to go through a cycle of trial and error, leading to a really frustrating experience trying to

For medication that is as old as my parents. At least they should be doing way better than that.

In twenty nineteen, Elizabeth founded Aiden, a company on a quest to revolutionize how birth control is evaluated and prescribed.

People have very passionate opinions around birth control, right. They either think it's great and they need it and they're so glad we're trying to solve something that hasn't been addressed before, or they've had a bad experience, or they're in that unfortunate category of struggling with fertility and they're really angry and they're like, my birth control is the devil, right,

Standard of care.

Aiden uses an approach that's called precision or personalized medicine. So our first question about Aiden is what is precision medicine?

Precision medicine or personalized medicine at its most basic level, is just accepting something that I think we all know, which is that one size does not fit all.

Right. We are complicated, we are different.

Why would you think our insights would respond the same to different drugs?

Exactly?

Different medication affects people differently, and it shouldn't be one size fits all.

So understanding what AIDEN is designed to do, how does it work, what does it look like? What is the ideal AIDEN workflow that would lead to better birth control experiences?

How it works is you get a test kit sent to your home and you spit into a tube for saliva that we used to extract your DNA, and you also provide a drop of blood from your finger that we use to analyze the hormone levels of these six different hormones.

Doctor Ruzo gave us two examples about how the data collected from the kits will improve health outcomes for people who use birth control.

The first is that we're looking at genetic risk for experiencing blood clot. So there are a couple of well known sites in the genome that, if you have them, increase your risk for experiencing blood clot five to twelve fold,

That's a huge risk, and quite frankly, I'm shocked that they're not checking for this.

Honestly, why isn't this part of it.

If I have to go to the doctor to get a prescription to get the birth control, why are they doing this to figure out if I'm at risk for any of these things.

It just seems like it should be pretty natural, right. Doctor Riso gives us another example. The second example looks at risk for depression.

Which, as you probably all know, is a complex disease, meaning it's not just about a single site in the genome or just about your genetics. It can also be about environment. But there's been a lot of great work

Could you imagine if everyone could have a personalized birth control method that was safe and effective without the risk of side effects, without that trial and error process.

That would be ideal. That would be ideal.

I mean, honestly, our mission is really to make scientific discovery more inclusive and to be the world's most patient centric precision medicine company. So even though we're starting with birth control, I really see us as doing precision medicine in an area that hasn't been well studied before, which

ADA analyses six hundred thousand sites in the genome and six different hormone levels to find the best birth control.

By adding hormone analysis to this process, AIDEN is able to get a more precise picture of someone's medical chart and predisposition to certain side effects. They're also able to continue analyzing hormone levels over.

Time because we know that these hormones change, not just throughout the course of a cycling month, but throughout somebody's lifetime, as you move from puberty to menopause, they look quite different. And we also know that there are sort of these broad reference ranges that don't take into account things like weight and age and ethnicity that we all know play into what somebody's.

Quote unquote normal is.

So our goal is to help make those more personalized in a way that would also unlock our ability to be predictive about what somebody's disease state might look like.

The other mission for AIDEN is just broadening the research that's currently available when it comes to birth control, which up until now has been underfunded, which we talked about a little bit earlier, and is just generally lacking.

And to your question about you know, what's the data that's out there, what does it look like, it is lacking.

It is severely lacking.

So a lot of our preliminary data, you know, we are standing on the shoulders of other scientists who have cared to focus on this, who have done work to show, for example, that certain kinds of birth control are more associated with depression, and that certain kinds of birth control

What are the patterns that we see?

And that also means including everyone in the research, including women and people of color.

I think as of twenty eighteen, it was something like eighty percent of genome wide association studies were done only on individuals of European descent, which just limits our power to understand the biology in everyone.

We're hurting everyone by the way that we're approaching this.

So I think part of our mission is, like I said, to make scientific discovery more inclusive. And that's not just about paying attention to women, although we really need to do that because women weren't required to be included in clinical trials until nineteen ninety three, which has led to this massive medical research gender gap. But it's also about making sure that we have diverse representation in the samples that are there to continue to make discoveries that actually benefit everyone.

Women weren't required to be in clinical trials until nineteen ninety three.

That's very recent.

What that means is that you could have whole trials go through and the people that are doing the research know the effects that it has on men, but they don't know the effects that it has on women, and then they end up being prescribed to everybody, so then it could possibly be negatively affecting women and they have no idea.

Yeah, Doctor Russell mentioned that birth control is really just the first step for Aiden. We wanted to know, wes Nix, what does the future of Aiden look like?

The short term step is for birth control. We get more and more specific about how we can make recommendations. So I'm not out here saying on day one for every single person, I'm going to get you on the right birth control of the first time, because we just do not have that data. We're going to try our best, but we're also going to learn as we go and

It feels like this was really illuminating.

You know, there are things that just get taken for granted or that become the status quo and it's just like, ah, just leave it like it is. And this is a place where we don't need to leave it like it is. Yeah, somebody needs shake the.

Table, honestly, and there's a lot of people doing a lot of really important work to make sure that that happens, and that the laws that are put in place are put in place to give women more agency and more freedom to make a choice with their own bodies. And so when we do have that freedom, a company like Aiden is giving us the ability to get those medications and have it work to our benefit and not to our detriment. In the background, another good point that Elizabeth

You know.

Yeah, my body lotion that I was using at that age would not It's changed. Okay, I need pure vasiline, Okay, some mut tourize this crusty body. I can only imagine what's going on on the inside.

I think something that's so important that Aiden is doing is collecting stories from people, yes that made it really real, and it made me think back on my own experiences. How many things just get pushed under the rug or dismissed because it's not the experience of the majority.

Yeah, and so with her collecting these stories, she might even be able to shine the light on something that might be a shared experience between a lot of different women and they just had no idea it was linked to their birth control. This type of research is definitely going to improve the quality of life of so many.

People birth control odysseies, we're calling them.

So if you go to our website, you can go to our stories and submit your own birth control odyssey to help destigmatize, help people feel less alone in their experience. I've learned so much from these stories. I'm blown away by how no two story are the same.

All Right, it's time for our one thing. What's your one thing this week? Ze?

My one thing this week is actually an app. It's called to doist TODT. I found this app while reading about digital productivity. Because if you're like me, you have a notebook and maybe another smaller notebook and a series of sticky notes and a calendar you're trying to keep in emails and bookmarks and read it later and it was too much stuff and so to do this is a place where I can kind of consolidate all of my things and keep my day on track.

I love that.

So my one thing is a food item, and it's probably my favorite comfort food right now, and it's a breakfast bagel from this place called Call your Mother. If you live in the DC metro area, you all know about it. You may not have been there, but if you are in the area, or if you're planning on being in the DC metro area, you should definitely look for or Call your Mother location. I think they have like four or five locations now. They just opened one near my house and it is a gift and a curse.

That's it for Lab forty one. What did you think about today's lab? Do you still have questions? Call us at two zero two five six seven seven zero two eight and tell us what you thought, or give us an idea for another lab. We could do this semester. We like to hear from you. That's two zero two five six seven seven zero two eight.

And don't forget. There's so much more for you to dig into. On our website. There'll be a cheat sheet for today's lab, additional links and resources in the show notes. Plus, you can sign up for our newsletter check it out at Dope labspodcast dot com. Special thanks to today's guest expert, doctor Elizabeth Russo, founder of Aiden.

You can follow her on Twitter at sequin Lab coaked. If you want to sign up for early access to Aiden's birth control tests, you can learn more about Aiden science at Aiden dot com a d y n dot com.

Aiden is on Twitter and Instagram at Aiden Health. So that's at a d y n h e a l t h. Dope Labs is a Spotify original production from Mega Own Media Group.

Our producers are Jenny Ratlitmast and Lydia Smith of WaveRunner Studios.

Editing in sound design by Rob Smerciak.

Mixing by Hannes Brown.

Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugier from Spotify.

Our executive producer is Gina Delvack and Creative producers are Baron Farmer and Candace Manriquez Rinn.

Special thanks to Shirley ramos yasmin of Fife, camu Elolia, Till krat Key and Brian Marquis. Executive producers from Mega Own Media Group are Us T T Show, Dia and zik Ll Watley. But sometimes you know what happens to me, My brain switches up urethra and uterus.

And are not the same.

No, you pee out of you urethra.

Yeah, I know, not saying you know, I never can.

I'm like, I just pull a U word down when I'm talking, just not umbrolla