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IT’S eaten raw, cooked, roasted and dehydrated and drunk in smoothies and tinctures but is it safe?

Health authorities have raised concerns about a growing movement promoting the consumption of human placenta as a way to boost health.

With influencers including the Kardashians promoting the practice and social media inundated with positive anecdotes from women (and men), the practice appears to be gaining favour.

But you might have to overcome the yuck factor if you want to give it a try.

Numerous new mums and dads have taken to YouTube to share their placenta cooking tips.

By far though, most people prefer taking placenta in capsule form and there are many websites, including Perth-based companies, promoting their services.

For between $200-$550 you can arrange for your placenta to be collected from the hospital and cleaned, cooked and encapsulated and delivered back to you.

It’s claimed the practice of ingesting your placenta, known as placentophagy, boosts milk supply and reduces the risk of the baby blues in the days post-birth but evidence that it works is scant.

Most non-human mammals eat their placentas but there is no consensus on why they do this.

Some think it may be to deter predators from detecting the presence of a newborn.

Placentophagy supporters say it is because the placenta contains beneficial nutrients and hormones and so humans should eat theirs too.

Camera Icon Health authorities have warned against ingesting human placenta. Credit: Pixabay

Pure Placentas spokeswoman Mel Johnson, a midwife, said demand for placenta encapsulation services in WA was growing rapidly. Last year her company encapsulated between 150-200 placentas.

She employs a team of health professionals including midwives and nurses who help organise the transfer of placentas to a lab to be cleaned, steamed at a high temperature and encapsulated.

Ms Johnson said she individually tailors the dose in the capsules to meet the needs of the mother and they were usually taken over a six to eight week period.

“The placenta itself is actually an endocrine organ, it produces all its own hormones and that is helpful in sustaining pregnancy but when it is expelled from the body it still contains all those hormones and nutrients in very high amounts,” she said.

Ms Johnson said while some people chose to cook and eat their placentas, encapsulation was a better process.

“Some women may want to go and make a placenta lasagne and if that’s what they want to do with their placenta and they are doing it in a safe way then that’s fantastic,” she said.

“I actually think the benefits of doing it with the placenta capsules will be better because you are not eating it all in one go, you are lasting it over six to eight weeks so it will balance your hormones over that time.”

Camera Icon Staff collect the placenta from the hospital and return it in capsule form to the mother within 48 hours. Credit: Pure Placentas

The idea that most women should expect to get a dose of the baby blues a few days post-birth was wrong, Ms Johnson said.

“You look at the mammals and when they are new mums, they don’t have all the baby blues and depressive symptoms that humans have, that’s strictly a human phenomenon that we are seeing.

“When you give birth you are on that birth high, your hormones are sky high. On day one to two they come plummeting down to below pre-pregnancy — from about 90 per cent to about 10 per cent.

“If we can get the placenta and all of its hormones, in capsule form, back into that body before that 48 hour mark ... we are actually preventing that huge dive in hormones, we are catching it before it is getting to the level where you see symptoms.”

Ms Johnson said 93 per cent of the women she had helped did not experience baby blues and milk supply was superior for women who took encapsulated placenta.

Milk production often started a day earlier and was better quality and quantity, she said.

Bryony McNeill, a lecturer in Reproductive and Developmental Biology at Deakin University writing for The Conversation, said two hormones produced by the placenta — prostaglandin and oxytocin – had been identified as potential active ingredients in placenta capsules.

But no studies had determined if the concentrations of these hormones found in placenta capsules were enough to be beneficial.

There were also concerns ingesting placenta could be harmful with possibly high concentrations of toxins and bacterial contamination.

Earlier this year the Therapeutic Goods Administration issued a warning to expectant mothers about the potential health and legal risks of human placenta ingestion.

It stated there was no evidence to support the claims of health benefits associated with consuming human placenta, and the broader risks were unknown.

“Human placenta is a biological material and is capable of containing and transmitting infectious agents, including bacteria and viruses. In addition preparation may inadvertently introduce infectious agents,” it said.

“The risk of transmission may be even greater if your placenta is ingested by another person or you ingest another person’s placenta.”

The TGA said any claims made about placenta products, including those in capsules, providing a therapeutic benefit such as improving mood, energy levels or milk production ran the risk of bringing the products under the regulations that cover ‘biologicals’.

“Under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, it is an offence to make therapeutic biological products without holding the appropriate license.”

The laws contain substantial penalties, including criminal sanctions, for people making or supplying unapproved biological products, and bans advertising biological products to the public.

“Depending on the circumstances and the claims made in relation to the product, these laws could also apply to the midwife, doula or even the mother involved.”

Last year in the US the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the intake of placenta capsules should be avoided after a newborn developed neonatal group B Streptococcus sepsis after its mother ingested contaminated placenta capsules.

The centre recommended people avoid placenta capsules because the encapsulation process did not necessarily eradicate infectious pathogens.

David Forbes, WA Health acting chief medical officer, said clinicians did not advise or give information about placentophagy because “there is no evidence-based research on the consumption of placentas”.

“Women who do request to take placentas home with them following childbirth must sign a form for authorisation and release of human tissues which includes information on the safe handling and disposal of tissue,” Professor Forbes said.

“While data on the release of placentas is not collated, as it is recorded individually on a patient’s medical record, anecdotal evidence suggests a low percentage of women claim their placenta (approximately 300 per year).”

A St John of God Hospital spokeswoman confirmed the number of women claiming their placenta after birth was similarly low in the private sector.

Ms Johnson said she would welcome better regulation of placenta encapsulation because currently there was no way of knowing who was doing it or what process they were using.

“We need to regulate the industry and have this done in the placenta labs, like we do it. We are trained healthcare professionals,” she said.

“We need to make sure that women are given the option to do this safely because at the end of the day they will do it anyway.”