Interesting results.
An increasingly popular trend sees new mother eating their placenta after giving birth. One of the more popular ways is through a tablet. New mothers will pay upwards of €200 for their placenta to be made into capsules.
Now, following a new study, it turns out this practice might not have the benefits it's believe to have.
The new study was conducted with 12 women who took placenta tablets, and 15 who did not. Those who did not were given placebo tablets, to give a non-biased result.
The researchers from Nevada wanted to ascertain whether or not placenta tablets help with a new mother's fatigue and also to ward off postpartum depression.
According to
The Telegraph, the results have shown that the tablets did nothing for either fatigue or depression, but they did show an increase in hormone concentrations. The benefit of this is unclear at this point.
Speaking about the results, senior author Professor Daniel Benyshek said:
"Placentophagy supporters may point to the fact that we did see evidence that many of the hormones detected in the placenta capsules were modestly elevated in the placenta group mums.
Similarly for sceptics, our results might be seen as proof that placentophagy doesn't 'really work' because we did not find the type of clear, robust differences in maternal hormone levels or postpartum mood between the placenta group and placebo group that these types of studies are designed to detect."
