Would you eat your own placenta?

Posted: 02.28.2011 at 9:22 PM

Updated: 03.01.2011 at 7:55 AM

Placenta in a pill / FOX21: Chad Skinner

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- It's a procedure that's been around for centuries in China. In America, it's considered a newer alternative medical practice.

Self-proclaimed women from every range of life, choosing to eat their afterbirth, for multiple reasons. While some 'nature mommas' are eating their placenta for its nutrients, some new-age moms are ingesting it to avoid post-partum depression.

According to placenta encapsulation specialist Serena Logue, the placenta is full of iron, vitamins, minerals and female hormones.

"The idea is when a mom gives birth, she gets depleted of these things and her hormone levels drop so rapidly, that that's probably the cause of baby blues," Logue said. "Taking back in that placenta that's full of all that she's now depleted of kind of makes sense."

But 40 years into his studies on ingesting placenta, Professor Mark Kristal of the University of Buffalo said the only way of renourishing the body with the placenta is to be very malnourished during pregnancy. Because he believes most women aren't and there haven't been many studies on placentophagy, Kristal doesn't support or condone the practice.

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"It might be harmful to a small amount of women. There's no proof of that, but there's nothing that says it's safe for every woman," Kristal said, stating there's not enough scientific evidence to vouch otherwise. "That's a large reason I don't recommend it."

But for Logue, who had two children before becoming a specialist and encapsulating her own placenta for her third child, the pregnancies were very different.

"My second postpartum experience, I can remember just crying at the drop of the hat and feeling overwhelmed, like the whole world was against me," Logue recalls. "With my third baby, I realized, I did have the baby blues [with my first two children]; I just wanted to do whatever I could do to not go through that again. The results were phenomenal. I just felt a lot more balanced a lot quicker. I felt normal."

When asked if Kristal thought of this as evidence, he said that often with age or multiple pregnancies, women don't get the same side effects and symptoms. For LeAnn Carpenter, a mother of a 2-year-old and 1-month-old, she was willing to try whatever it took if it meant avoiding postpartum depression for her second pregnancy.

"In my mind, I was like, 'I'm a strong person, it's not going to affect me. I got this.' I didn't even read about it," Carpenter said. "I was thinking that's for a weak-minded person or something, and lo and behold, it struck me. And I'm far and away not a weak-minded person."

Just three months after feeling 'normal,' Carpenter became pregnant again. After suffering through a year of severe postpartum depression with her first child, Carpenter became, what she calls, proactive in her search to avoid it, and willing to try almost anything.

"It sounds gross and crazy and out of this world to ingest your placenta, but it's in pill form. It's not like it's in a smoothie or like I'm eating it or drinking it, because I probably wouldn't have done that," Carpenter said. "Now, I just take it with my other pills- prenatal and calcium. It's not a big deal."

For Carpenter, who said there were different factors like therapy, environmental settings, and her mind set for her second pregnancy, she's just happy to have been able to avoid another bout of postpartum this time around.

"It could've been the capsules. It could've been that I just didn't go through it this time, or it could've been everything coupled together," Carpenter said. "Who knows? Whatever it is, I'm just so very blessed that I haven't gotten it yet or I'm not going to get it."

For her, it was worth the $150 to $250 Logue charges all of her clients, whether it was the reason she's avoided depression for this pregnancy aftermath.

"To me, it doesn't matter if you believe in it or not. If you've known someone whose gone through [postpartum depression], they should try it because you do not want someone to suffer like that again," Carpenter said.

Logue, who has been trained and certified, stresses the need to go to a specialist because of the need to clean and sterilize the placenta.

If you're interested in encapsulating your placenta, you can contact Logue at serena@placentabenefits.info.