On August 4, British DJ and producer Calvin Harris published photos announcing the birth of his son on Instagram. We see him with her newborn, the mother Vick Hope in a swimming pool and, also, in close-up, they are placenta.
That we see you cut into pieces and arranged in what looks like a pressure cooker. The last photo of the series shows a box filled with capsule, the placenta would therefore have been encapsulated. Before, imagine, to be consumed.
Ingestion of the placenta was popularized by several stars, including Kim Kardashian in 2015.
“Whenever I take a tablet, I feel a boost of energy and I really feel healthy, well in my skin. I highly recommend it to all those who plan to try! “, she then wrote on her blog.
What is it?
The placenta is a temporary organ that forms from the week following fertilization. Established in the wall of the uterus, it is connected to the fetus by the umbilical cord.
“For nine months, it provides multiple functions essential to the development of a fetus: supply of oxygen and nutrients, evacuation of” waste “(such as carbon dioxide from breathing and metabolic waste), protection against pathogens, certain toxic substances or even the maternal immune system (for which the fetus is an intruder!). It also leads to the production of hormones and other factors necessary for the birth of a healthy child ”, details the Inserm.
The placenta is this gigantic network of exchanges (several tens of kilometers of blood vessels), which must be expelled after childbirth.
And some then advocate to consume it, it is the Placentophagie, which has experienced growing interest in recent years, especially in the United States.
Does Placentophagia have an interest?
For the placeophages, The placenta can be eaten raw, cooked, roast, smoothie, or in capsule. The encapsulation, after cooking with a vapor and dehydration, appears to be the most popular technique.
For what interests? The followers of this practice maintain that the placenta is full of hormones, vitamins and beneficial nutrients.
The fact that a large majority of mammals consumes it constitutes, for them, an additional argument.
Consuming human placements would prevent postpartum depression, would improve iron levels, energy, milk production. And would strengthen the links between mother and child.
If surveys and testimonies report the benefits of placenta consumption, no serious study is going in this direction.
“We have noted that there is no scientific evidence of any clinical benefit of the placentophagy in humans, and that no nutrient or any placental hormone is kept in sufficient quantity after placental encapsulation to be potentially useful to the mother after childbirth”, concludes a study published in 2018 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
No proof of profits but risks since encapsulation does not eliminate the risk of infection, for women and newborn according to this same study.
An infant was hospitalized in Oregon in September 2016 for an infection caused by the placenta contaminated at Streptococcal B, which her mother had ingested while she was breastfeeding.
THE American disease prevention and control centers (CDC) had then recommended to avoid the consumption of placenta capsules, the encapsulation not being adequate to kill any trace of bacterial or viral contamination.
What does French law say?
In France, when it is not used at therapeutic and scientific end, the placenta enters the category of infectional risk care waste (DASRI) in accordance with article R.1335-1 of the public health code.
This is all waste from diagnostic, monitoring and preventive, curative or palliative treatment activities, in the fields of human and veterinary medicine.
The only two methods of eliminating this waste are incineration or pre -treatment by disinfection, before being treated as common waste.
The placenta belongs neither to the mother, to the father, nor to the child. According to article 16-1 of the civil code, “The human body, its elements and its products cannot be the subject of a heritage law”.
In 2012, while companies with commercial purposes approached women to obtain their placenta or umbilical cord, France expressed A circular prohibiting “The parturients to recover their placenta after childbirth or to entrust the placenta and/or the cord to organisms which are not allowed to prepare, keep them and distribute them in any form (drug or cellular product)”.