Eating your placenta (placentophagia) is popular in the United States. Why do women want to eat their placenta? In what form do they consume it? Is it legal to eat your placenta in France? Response elements.

In theory, it is forbidden to keep your placenta in France, whether you give birth in a hospital or at home. The placenta is most often destroyed. It can more rarely be collected for therapeutic or scientific purposes. But not to be preserved to be eaten! Of course, some mothers manage to recover their placenta, thanks to the complicity of midwives or doctors who are not opposed to this practice. Some maternities accept the sampling protocol from foreign laboratories for the production of homeopathic granules from small pieces of duplacenta.

Eating the placenta is first of all symbolic: mothers feed on part of their child, on what fed their baby. This practice is also linked to a desire to return to nature: mammals eat their placenta after giving birth. Why not us ? Then, eating your placenta would have therapeutic benefits. Ancestral medicines such as Chinese medicine recognize the health properties of placentophagy.

The possible virtues

The placenta is said to be very rich in vitamins and minerals (including iron) and hormones. It would thus have virtues to reduce postpartum pain, fight against postpartum fatigue, prevent postnatal depression, stimulate milk production.

But beware, none of these virtues have been scientifically proven. And it is already absolutely not certain that the placenta retains nutritional virtues once removed from the uterus…. Some studies on placentophagy show that there are many nutrients in the encapsulated human placenta but in low concentrations, which raises doubts about a possible therapeutic effect.

In the United States, one of the common methods of allowing women to console their placenta is to make capsules of the placenta. The placenta is dried, crushed and then put into capsules. Health professionals warn mothers who use this technique against the risks of infection. There is indeed a risk of contamination by bacteria. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States recently urged moms to be careful after a case of infection due to the intestine of placenta capsules. The mother contracted an infection from dehydrated placenta capsules and passed the infection on to her breastfeeding baby.

Isotherapy refers to treatment with homeopathic medicines obtained from a biological or other sample provided by the patient. Placental isotherapy consists of making a homeopathic treatment with a sample of the placenta. Giving a baby dilutions of the extract of his own placenta would stimulate the development of his immune response. This homeopathic treatment would also be beneficial for the mother. For its manufacture, you need a sample of the placenta and a few drops of cord blood.

Placental isotherapy is prohibited in France. Some women manage to collect a few small pieces of their placenta (if the midwife present has accepted their request) and send them to Swiss or German laboratories which make homeopathic remedies.