Woo or True?: Placenta Consumption for Prevention of Post-Partum Depression

This is something I’m experimenting on. I’ve thus far taken a very long creative break from blogging. I have a long list of ideas that I need to actually work out, but this one is my favorite. I call it “Woo or True?”
 

In “Woo or True?” I will discuss a parenting topic I see debated and discussed often and whether or not it is scientifically sound. As per usual, I source as much as I can, and my source list can be found at the very end of this blog. I welcome any and all suggestions for topics. These posts will also be attempted to be kept as a somewhat light read.

I do personally apologize for the LONG break of posts here on Back From Nature. Enjoy!

♥ Maranda

An often underestimated topic in the natural parenting community is placenta consumption. It’s a topic I saw more often than almost any other, and yet it is also one I almost never see discussed on science-based parenting blogs, websites, or groups. I, myself, had wanted to consume mine. I can still recall reading placenta pot roast recipes online. 

“I ate my placenta with some fava beans and a nice chianti”

In fact, there are people with entire careers based on placental encapsulation (the act of steaming, dehydrating and grinding the placenta before putting it into a pill) for new mothers. Mothers, doulas, and midwives of various backgrounds can be found promoting consumption either by cooking it as any other meat, raw, encapsulated, or in smoothies. But where’s the proof? What does placentophagy (the consumption of placenta) supposedly even do? Does it completely prevent the PPD or just alleviate it?

 

What they say it does:

“I truly felt better shortly after taking them--on mornings when I felt sluggish or anxious, I could feel a change in my body after taking the pills.” [1]

“The difference between my first two postpartum periods and the third was simply amazing! Instead of about five days of crying and feeling totally overwhelmed, even paranoid, I experienced one afternoon of teariness and then I was able to recognize that my feelings were related to hormones. I felt more in control than I had with my first babies and so much happier.” [2]

“The placenta is thought to be rich in nutrients that the mother needs to recover more readily from childbirth. . . . Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) conducted a study that focused on CRH (Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone). . . . They concluded that the placenta secreted so much CRH that the hypothalamus stopped producing it. Once the placenta was born, it took some time for the hypothalamus to get the signal that the CRH levels were low, and to begin producing it again.” [3]*

           Proof that it’s true:

Well, not much.  Like a lot of things in the world of woo, I seemed to find that most of the “proof” of the benefits of placental consumption came from moms all boasting about it to eachother. If you find this to count as evidence, I wish to direct you here.

Listed in my third source above, was a few studies. Now, I had to google it, as their source link was dead, but I did find the 1995 Discover study on CRH and PPD. [4]

Human placenta is also used in traditional Chinese medicine.

Proof that it’s woo:

           Firstly, I’d like to point out that nowhere in the study on CRH and PPD was placental consumption ever discussed or brought up or researched. Not once. Consumption was not part of the study. The conclusion was made, clearly, in the part of the author of the post as well as other placental consumption advocates, who made the conclusion that “If I lose this and get depressed, then when I eat it it’ll make me not depressed.” 

Placental encapsulation businesses are also held to absolutely no standards, guidelines, or rules. There is no body that sets regulations for how a placenta must be handled when encapsulated. As a result, the dangers of having someone take your placenta and encapsulate it are many. They could be throwing your placenta in the toilet, they could be throwing it in the garbage and giving you ground up hair. Dramatic, but truly the risk of strangers without training or mandation on encapsulation.

 “Well,” you may be saying “I’m not having someone else encapsulate my placenta! I will be handling it all on my own!”

In 2012, Michelle Beacock of Edge Hill university conducted a study published in the British Journal of Midwifery that found that evidence of proof behind anecdotes about placental consumption is limited, dated, and ultimately inconclusive. [5]

In 2015, Northwestern University in Illinois conducted a review published in Archives of Women’s Mental Health. The review looked at placenta-consumption related research since 1950 and could not find any data to support the claims that eating the placenta raw, cooked, or in pill form carried any health benefits. Also in the review, was the fact that there are no studies which look at the actual risks of placental consumption. [6]

And do I really have to debunk traditional Chinese medicine?

           So, is it woo or true?

           SURVEY SAYS….. WOO!

           There is nothing current, detailed, and conclusive that supports this idea that placental consumption will prevent PPD. The closest thing to that evidence is anecdote, which as you know, simply is not enough. There are also no studies that address the potential risks.

           Back From Nature, and science, firmly recommend that you do NOT eat your placenta for any reason.

           You wouldn’t eat poop. You wouldn’t eat vomit. You wouldn’t eat your liver. Please, don’t eat your placenta.

SOURCES:

[1]          Milioto, Biba (October 22, 2013)                                http://www.xojane.com/healthy/why-placenta-encapsulation-is-the-smartest-post-partum-decision-i-could-have-made “Why Placenta Encapsulation Is The Smartest Post-Partum Decision I Could Have Made”

 

[2]          Sarah     http://placentabenefits.info/testimonials.asp

[3]          Selander, Jodi                                                    http://placentabenefits.info/medicinal.asp “Placenta for Healing”

* A fun note on this source. While this post discusses the benefits of placenta for healing, including stopping hemorrhaging, preventing PPD, promoting breast milk production, enhancing pain tolerance, etc, there is a disclaimer at the bottom that says: “This site is for informational purposes only. It does not intend to treat, cure, or prevent any disease.” I found this particularly interesting because, while this legal disclaimer claims this is not intended to treat a disease, it seems fairly obvious that is exactly what the intention is. This is one of many examples of truly sneaky practices made by woo-promoters in order to provide bogus health advice without getting sued when it doesn't work.

[4]          Ilona S. Yim, PhD, Laura M. Glynn, PhD, Christine Dunkel Schetter, PhD, Calvin J. Hobel, MD, Aleksandra Chicz-DeMet, PhD, and Curt A. Sandman, PhD (1995)                     http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2768579/ “Elevated Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone in Human Pregnancy Increases the Risk of Postpartum Depressive Symptoms”

[5]          Beacock, Michelle (July 1, 2012)                 http://www.magonlinelibrary.com/doi/abs/10.12968/bjom.2012.20.7.464 “Does eating placenta offer postpartum health benefits?”

[6]          Cynthia W. Coyle, Kathryn E. Hulse, Katherine L. Wisner, Kara E. Driscoll, Crystal T. Clark (October 2015)                Archives of Women’s Mental Health, Volume 18, Issue 5, pp 673-680 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00737-015-0538-8 (Placentophagy: therapeutic miracle or myth?)  --OR-- http://www.bbc.com/news/health-33006384

 

10 Strangest Medical Conspiracy Theories

Over half of Americans believe in medical conspiracy theories. Some are only a little strange. Others are outright bizarre.

Seven years ago, I was working at a heath food store and heavily pregnant with my first child, when I was approached by a regular customer. I knew she was eccentric-- she had thirteen children and was looking for fertility-boosting herbs so she could have more-- but I didn't know just how eccentric she was until she urged me to avoid having my child tested for PKU in the hospital.

"When they draw the blood, they don't actually test for diseases," she informed me quietly, "The nurses actually steal the blood and sell it to witches to use in spells."

I wasn't sure at first if she was joking.

"Newborn baby blood is very valuable on the black market," she added.

Well, I consented to having my kids' blood drawn by those evil witches at the hospital, yet, to date, neither of them have fallen victim to a mysterious curse.

That conspiracy theory is pretty far out there, but it's not too different from the many bizarre conspiracy theories you can find just by poking around on the internet for a few minutes. Here are some of the others I've encountered.

1. The Government is Hiding the Cure for Cancer

This one is everywhere. Over a third of people believe it. It's launched tens of thousands of articles, hundreds of websites, and dozens of books-- and it's no truer now than it was a hundred years ago, when it first popped up. You'd think that the cancer-related deaths of people who believed this conspiracy, such as The Cure for All Cancers author Hulda Clark , might be a red flag for these conspiracy theorists, but the belief persists.

2. "They" Are Lying About Ebola

There were a few dozen variations of this conspiracy theory. One of the more popular claims was that ebola is a manufactured virus deliberately given to people for "population control" or other purposes. The claims echo similar legends in the 1980s about HIV. Another common rumor was that ebola doesn't exist at all, or that the government was hiding a cure until it spread to the industrialized world. An unintentionally hilarious conspiracy theory even speculated that The Simpsons were in on it.

"Is there something we are not being told? Is it by pure chance & coincidence that the Simpsons would do predictive programming? There has been numerous predictions from The Simpsons which revealed futuristic events which came to pass. What of the Ebola recurrence in 2014? Is it planned or is it just by natural means? Ebola was not in the 90's, but it happened long ago in the mid 70's... But The Simpsons reveal in late 90's Ebola virus... Interesting right?" 

3.  Products You Use Every Day Contain Dead Babies

If you go to pretty much any anti-vaccine website, you'll encounter this one. Some writers go so far as to claim that pregnancies are aborted for the sole purpose of using the fetuses to manufacture food, cosmetics, and medicine, even though no pregnancy has ever been aborted for such purpose and no approved foods or vaccines have ever contained fetal cells. This conspiracy theory was so prevalent that it actually led to a lawmaker pushing to ban fetuses in food. Glad our tax dollars are going to such good use.

4. You're Full of Worms

Conspiracy theorists love to blame medical problems on parasites that "they" are trying to hide. The cult of parents who treat autism with bleach enemas claim that rope worms-- chunks of intestine that come out when they fill their kids with bleach-- are behind autism, even though there is no such parasite. Assorted quacks on the internet, from Natural News to Organic Olivia to Modern Alternative Mama, give all sorts of advice amounting to, "You're full of parasites and they're causing all of your diseases." The idea can be traced to Hulda Clark... you know, the one mentioned above, who thought all cancer was caused by worms and then died of cancer.

5. The Government's Hiding a Scary Skin Disease

Delusional parsitosis-- the delusional belief that you are infested with parasites that aren't there-- is a condition that may be as old as humanity itself. Sure enough, it's the reason behind medical conspiracy #4. But its newest form, dubbed Morgellons disease, is a bit less known. Natural News and other conspiracy theorist websites claim that the condition, which involves feeling like you're covered in bugs, scratching yourself up, and getting little fibers from Band-Aids, blankets, and clothing in the scratches, say that it's a parasitic infection caused by GMOs and chemtrails, and that the CDC was involved in a cover-up to conclude that it was psychological.

6. Antidepressants Are Designed to Make You a Mass Murderer

One common medical conspiracy posits that SSRIs are a "gateway drug" designed to turn patients into violent monsters, either as part of a depopulation measure or to somehow churn more profits for Big Pharma. The evidence they give is that some murderers were taking antidepressants. You'd think that with all that money and research, Big Pharma would have done a better job coming up with pills to create killers. More than one in ten Americans takes an antidepressant, yet very few of us end up committing mass murder.

7. Mental Illness Doesn't Exist and They're Trying to Poison You

The sad reality behind this is that mentally ill people are by far the most likely people to fall for conspiracy theories and by far the most likely to be harmed by them.Take, for example, this conspiracy theorist, who says that bipolar disorder isn't real and that it was invented to push drugs on children. Or this one, who says the same thing about oppositional defiant disorder. Or the hundreds who have said it about ADHD. Or this guy, who says that he is the messiah and that his diagnosis of schizophrenia is part of a conspiracy to hide that. Need I say more?

8. Jews Are Killing and Experimenting On You

I touched on this a bit in Antisemitism in the Anti-Vaccine Movement, but the conspiracy theory runs much deeper and wider than the anti-vax movement itself. For example, conspiracy theorists often claim that routine infant circumcision is part of a Jewish conspiracy (strange, since Judaism doesn't command circumcising anyone besides Jews). They often blame specific Jewish families, like the Rothschilds and Goldman-Sachs, for all the world's ails. Failing that, they'll point to the State of Israel. One prominent medical conspiracy theorist blames pretty much every possible conspiracy on Jews, who he says worship Satan, poison dissenters with odorless gas, and control the medical industry through "biomedical terrorism."

9. The World is Being Depopulated

Supposedly, we are all being subjected to a "slow kill" to depopulate the Earth. This involves a number of intricate and intertwined conspiracies, from chemicals dumped out of airplanes to fluoride in our drinking water to birth control in our food. Some go so far as to claim that "they" are putting chemicals in our food to make people gay, thereby limiting birth rates. You'd think that all the world's leading scientists working together could do a better job: birth rates continue to climb worldwide, with no sign of a population crash any time soon.

10. Everyone's Getting a Tracking Device
This one started circulating decades ago, when microchips and GPS first came into existence. It picked up even more steam when the Affordable Care Act rolled out, leading many people to accuse President Obama of mandating microscopic tracking devices on all American citizens. This led to reignited fears of immunization, with many anti-vaxxers claiming that flu shots contain GPS trackers also used in war and even secret mind-control computers. Don't worry, though: other conspiracy theorists have plenty of suggestions for nullifying the effects of these tiny computers.

Start Here.