REVOLTING REMEDIES

Disgusting treatments. this week: Placenta pills ChrIssy Teigen, wife of singer John Legend, said recently that she believes eating the placenta after giving birth for the second time helped prevent post natal depression. And this is not just a celebrity fad.

Consuming the placenta has become ‘increasingly popular among middle-class women in western societies,’ according to a 2015 report in the Journal of Midwifery and women’s health. Typically it is taken in the form of pills (the placenta is sent to companies which dry it and make it into capsules). Placentophagy, as the practice is called, supposedly boosts a new mother’s mood, helping them recover faster and increasing milk production. But last year, a review in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology concluded ‘there is no scientific evidence of any clinical benefit of placentophagy’.