Eating your placenta not a good idea, study says

More than 200 millennia of human civilization and two centuries of modern medicine have brought us to this recent admonition by scientific researchers:

It’s probably a bad idea to eat your placenta.

The 11-page, medical jargon-filled article published in October in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology notes that over the past decade, interest in natural childbirth has led some mothers to question whether doctors have it all wrong when they place a placenta in a biohazard bag and toss it out.

For many mammals, the consumption of placentas has been going on for as long as there have been placentas. But is the practice beneficial? Is it safe?

The placenta is an organ shared by a pregnant mother and her growing fetus, functioning as the lungs, gastrointestinal system, liver and kidneys of the developing child. During birth, the organ is expelled along with the baby, and most hospitals discard it as medical waste.

Proponents have said eating placenta reduces pain, improves mood and energy level, increases milk production and may even have anti-aging properties.

Positive placenta-eating anecdotes have flourished, and so have companies that charge hundreds to prepare a placenta for consumption, dehydrated like beef jerky or processed into smoothies or pills.

According to the research paper, more than half of obstetricians and gynecologists said they were uninformed about the risks and benefits of the practice.

That vacuum of sound medical advice by family doctors has been filled by celebrities and reality TV stars.

January Jones told People Magazine that placenta consumption is “not witchcrafty” and that the capsules helped her get back to a grueling Mad Men shooting schedule after her son was born. She ingested placenta pills every day.

“Your placenta gets dehydrated and made into vitamins,” she told the magazine.

Kim Kardashian West tweeted about eating her placenta in a bid to get people to download an app. Her sister, Kourtney, fed some placenta to her family as a prank.

So there’s no question that some people are eating placentas, but is anything good happening afterward?

The researchers’ answer: Nope.

They acknowledge the claims made by proponents, but analyzed any scientific studies they could get their hands on — and found them lacking. Many were unscientific or were surveys taken by people who’ve self-selected to participate, raising questions about bias.

In June, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a warning about placenta eating. A new mother in Oregon passed on a potentially deadly blood infection to her breast-feeding baby. The cause: capsules of the placenta the mother had been ingesting since giving birth.

The study sought to debunk claims made by ardent proponents of placenta ingestion.

The organ does contain small amounts of Oxytocin, a drug that causes “the smooth muscles around the mammary cells to contract and eject milk,” the study says, but there’s no indication that Oxytocin or other hormones can be absorbed from eating a placenta.