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Interviewer: Eating the placenta, should you or should you not? That's what we will be discussing next on The Scope

Announcer: Medical news and research from University of Utah physicians, and specialists you can use for a happier and healthier life. You're listening to The Scope.

Interviewer: We are in the studio today with Debra Penney. She is a nurse-midwife from the College of Nursing at the University of Utah. Debra, one of the popular things to do now after labor is to eat your placenta. That sounds kind of odd, kind of weird, kind of gross all at once, but from a medical standpoint is that an actual common thing that mothers do after a birth?

Debra: They've looked at the statistics and it's I guess about 3% of women choose to have their placenta processed by boiling and drying, and then they have it encapsulated. So it's kind of an easy way to ingest it. Very few people eat it raw.

Interviewer: So it's like a pill.

Debra: Yeah. After it's processed they ingest it and there's really no [inaudible 00:00:57] or frequency that's common, but you can find this on the internet.

Interviewer: Why do they do it? What's all the hype about?

Debra: Well, it's interesting. I think they read on the internet that it has specific benefits like decreased fatigue, better breast milk, less chance of depression, but none of these factors are verified by any kind of research. So they read this on the internet and they think it's true, and they thought, "Well, yeah," you know, "And I see other animals eating their placenta like herbivores, like horses and cows, so it must be something we should be doing, too," although historically there's very little evidence.

Interviewer: I have read that, again on the internet, the Chinese also eat the placenta after birth and they've had great results. Is it even treating the same symptoms? Is it even for the same illness?

Debra: Chinese medicine has used the placenta, but not for any of the factors that I've just mentioned. They've used it in other potions for other things, but not specifically for anything related to birth or after birth, and that's really only evidence we have of people really eating the placenta. They may have been a tribe of Indians in Mexico that had a ritual of eating it, but overall in the human race, eating the placenta is not a common thing that's even known to anthropologists.

Interviewer: So a straightforward question would be, is it even recommended to eat the placenta?

Debra: Well, we don't recommend it because there's not enough research to even verify any of the claimed benefits of better breast milk, decreased fatigue, and less post-partum depression. So far there's no evidence at all that this works. Secondly, from a medical point of view, when we look at the placenta it's got a lot of estrogen in it. Commonly, we don't give people estrogen post-partum because it does decrease breast milk and increases the woman's chance of having a blood clot like in her leg or her lungs or something, because she's already really ready to clot. That's just nature's way post-partum.

The other thing we haven't really looked at is the placenta is a filter organ and it has potentially a high metal content in it. That also needs to be discovered. If that's the case, then it is a very dangerous thing. So there's some potential concerns about eating it.

Interviewer: So if it's as dangerous as you say, then why are women having "good results" after eating the placenta?

Debra: All of these are anecdotal results, so one woman may feel that. And, you know, anything we take by pill can have a placebo effect where we think it's doing its job because it's supposed to.

Interviewer: Like a mental thing.

Debra: Yeah, when in reality it may just be her thought that it's going to work. But we don't know. I mean, there's research currently being done, and really, we don't even know what doses women get. We don't know what's contained in the capsule as far as how much placenta, how much progesterone and estrogen is in it. We know there's some, because the placenta is full of that. We don't know how many heavy metals are in it. We don't know if it's really free of bacteria after it's processed, either. So there's a lot of question as to what's being ingested and how much. There's some potential risks, so in saying that we don't know, we like to inform women that this is an unresearched area, and you might find really positive things on the internet that really aren't verified.

Interviewer: So it sounds like to me, hospitals and doctors and even yourself as a certified nurse-midwife, you're not really recommending eating the placenta. Where are the women getting these placentas in the form of pills? I've even read somewhere that they ask for the placenta raw so they can put it in their blender and make it into a smoothie. Where are they even this? Does the doctor just say, "Hey, here's your placenta. Have fun. Go at it?

Debra: Well, there are very few states that have any regulation on the placenta, the disposal of it.

Interviewer: Oh, so the mom can just get it.

Debra: So yeah, all she has to do is sign a waiver that it's her placenta and she can take it home and do what she wants with it. Now traditionally, placentas are refrigerated and then carried off and incinerated in the hospital, so she can sign a consent form to get that placenta.

I would highly advise not eating it raw just because it's been in a really dirty location in the birth process, and may have E. coli on it as well as other bacteria. So in my estimation there's not a lot of research out there yet about what really the woman is ingesting, and I would just say really consider the risks and potential risks and benefits of this, and be really cautious about even ingesting it.

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