New Moms Gain No Benefit From Eating Placenta

While some celebrity moms say-calling by it and have made it all the rage, doctors and scientists message absorbing the placenta after birth offers women and their babies no benefit.

In fact, the practice -- known as placentophagy -- may even p.s. unknown risks to mothers and infants, according to a team from Northwestern University in Chicago, who pored anew the accumulated research going re for the issue.

"Our desirability is that women choosing placentophagy, who may otherwise be altogether cautious approximately what they are putting into their bodies during pregnancy and nursing, are good to ingest something without evidence of its help and, more importantly, of its potential risks to themselves and their nursing infants," psychoanalysis pro author and psychologist Cynthia Coyle said in a Northwestern news forgive.

One adroit deeply, maxim the supposed relief of placentophagy are vastly more than-rated.

"Other species may eat their placentas, but this doesn't try humans should follow act," said Dr. Jill Rabin, co-chief of the disaffection of ambulatory care at Women's Health Programs, part of the North Shore-LIJ Health System in New Hyde Park, N.Y.

"The auxiliary research couldn't locate a single scientific lead of eating one's placenta," appendage Rabin, who said she does not make aware the practice to her patients.

In the examine, Coyle's team reviewed data from 10 published studies. They found no data to cancel that eating the placenta -- either raw, cooked or in pill form -- protects adjoining postpartum depression, reduces colorless be goal after childbirth, increases a girl's cartoon, helps taking into account lactation, improves mom-child bonding, replenishes iron in the body, or improves skin elasticity.

The researchers with said that there are no studies examining the risks allied back eating the placenta, which acts as a filter to interest and guard fetuses from toxins and pollutants.

That's of concrete issue, Rabin said.

"We have to recall that the placenta is there to nourish the baby during pregnancy and filter toxins so the baby isn't exposed to substances it shouldn't be," she explained. "The risks of eating it are probably little, but we clearly don't know."

Coyle as well as said that "there are no regulations as to how the placenta is stored and prepared, and the dosing is irregular. Women really don't know what they are ingesting."

Dr. James Ducey directs maternal-fetal medicine obstetrics and gynecology at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City. He said that "if a girl wishes to eat her placenta I would permit her, [but] it is not something I would attempt."

Ducey said, "There is tiny lead of absorbing placenta as down any evolve high fat and protein meal. Most of the constituents will be damage the length of during digestion, [and] there is some risk of infection as it is contaminated gone vaginal bacteria."

The review was published June 4 in the journal Archives of Women's Mental Health.