Yes, you read that correctly: placenta pills. Encapsulated placenta, to be more exact.
A trend that is gaining hold among new mothers is to save the placenta released after birth and to transform them into consumable pills. Many claim that if taken once a day, these encapsulated placentas increase energy and breast-milk supply as well as prevent postpartum depression and aging.
Well, that is until one considers where these pills actually come from. The placenta is an organ that connects the fetus to its mother’s uterine wall. Through the placenta, a fetus attains nutrients, exchanges gases, and eliminates waste. It has a similar appearance to a human liver outside the body, and is about 9 inches long and one inch thick. Not the most aesthetically pleasing sight.
The question then becomes whether there is scientific evidence that consuming placenta pills really contain all of these benefits. Critics maintain that the pills just create a placebo effect; a phenomenon in which a medically ineffectual treatment contains a perceived improvement in medical condition. Placenta pills have never been tested against a placebo, and encapsulated placenta has yet to be studied extensively. Some say that due to the rigorous processing that the placenta undergoes to become encapsulated; few hormones or nutrients are left in the pills. In order to become encapsulated, the placenta is steamed, cut, dried out, and then ground and put into capsules.
Users of the pills claim they work magic. According to the Independent Placenta Encapsulation Network, there are studies that have shown an increase in breast-milk to capsule consumers. The website states, “Consuming the placenta after birth using placenta encapsulation or other placenta remedies nourishes the mother of lost nutrients and hormones and may entirely prevent ‘baby blues’ and/or post-natal depression.”
The effects of the placenta are something that has been known in traditional Chinese medicine for hundreds of years. Consumption of the placenta is a popular treatment for wasting diseases, infertility, and other conditions.
Historically, humans probably copied the idea of eating their placentas from animals. One possible reason for placentophagy is for animals to hide from their predators that they have given birth. Another possible reason for this practice is to restore the animal’s body to normal and ease birth stress due to the high levels of prostaglandin and oxytocin contained in the placenta. Prostaglandins are a group of lipid compounds that are derived enzymatically from fatty acids and mediate strong physiological effects, such as regulating the contraction and relaxation of smooth muscle tissue. Oxytocin, commonly referred to as the “happy hormone,” is a mammalian neurohypophysial hormone secreted by the pituitary gland that acts as a neuromodulator in the brain. Oxytocin plays an important role in reproduction, childbirth, maternal bonding, and lactation; recent studies have also uncovered oxytocin’s role in various behaviors, such as social recognition and anxiety. Therefore, the positive effects of encapsulated placenta consumption hold ground if adequate levels of prostaglandins and oxytocin are present in processed placenta pills.