No Thanks, not for me.
Originally posted: May 31, 2007
Mom wants to eat placenta
Mother goats do it. Rats do it.
But when Nevada’s Anne Swanson, 30, wanted to eat her child’s placenta after giving birth, the hospital refused to return the organ on the grounds that it contains blood and might carry infectious disease, according to a news brief in The Week.
Though mammals ingest the placenta, the disposable sac that transfers oxygen and nutrients from the mother to the baby and removes waste, humans are a bit more discriminating.
Those who do eat it generally believe it has medicinal properties such as helping with postpartum depression or other pregnancy complications. In Chinese Medicine, the placenta is known as a great life force. Last year, Hawaii became the first state to pass a law allowing hospitals to release placentas for spiritual reasons.
Swanson, who experienced postpartum depression with her first child, and planned to have it dried, ground into a powder and packed into capsules, believes she has the right to her own body part.
“To me, it was a big deal to have it, whether I was using it for medicinal reason or planting it,” she told Annette Wells in a story in the Las Vegas Review Journal.
After a baby is born, a woman’s hormonal level plunges, a situation that can lead to a serious mood crash. The belief is that the nutrient-rich placenta, which contains the hormones progesterone and estrogen, can help alleviate symptoms of depression. The problem is that like any other body part, placentas contain a lot of blood which can carry infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis.
My own doctor, Northwestern’s Abbie Roth, wasn’t wild about placenta pills or placenta pie.
“Holy Cow. Don't ever eat the placenta!!! She wrote in an e-mail. “It is horribly contaminated. I've heard of people requesting it to bury it as part of religious practice, but never to eat it! Just say no!!!”
I’m not the least bit tempted.
But I do think if you want your placenta, for whatever reason, you should be able to have it. There are no laws barring hospitals from providing placentas to patients and if she doesn’t have HIV or hepatitis, what’s the risk? Meanwhile, we let people put more troubling things in their mouths every day, including cigarettes and hot dogs.
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Originally Posted by Brody's Mum
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