What are the benefits of eating the placenta?

We often hear many reports saying that after giving birth, the placenta should be kept for the mother to eat, which is good for physical recovery. The placenta does have this nutritional value, because a good placenta is rich in nutritional value. After eating it, it can help increase milk production, dredge qi and blood, and regulate the body. However, it is best to eat your own placenta, and try not to buy placenta extract or placenta capsules from the market. Even if you want to eat it, you can process it yourself.

What is the use of human placenta: How to eat human placenta

The claim that placenta can beautify and even prolong life has long been proven to be a scam. However, even though information dissemination is so convenient today, there are still many people who firmly believe in it.

Recently, some media outlets have delved into the black market for human placentas in Beijing, once again exposing the "placenta industry chain" entrenched in major hospitals. It was revealed that the "placenta capsules" that cost thousands of yuan on the market were actually only crudely processed in rented houses.

Is the human placenta that has "fascinated" the Chinese people really as miraculous as rumored? Let's read on.

Placenta Benefits

The human placenta is scientifically called "placenta" in traditional Chinese medicine.

Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica records: "When a child is in the womb, the navel is attached to the mother, and the fetus is attached to the mother's spine. It is protected by the mother, and is formed by the father's sperm and the mother's blood. Although it has an acquired shape, it actually has innate energy, which is obviously incomparable to other metals, stones, plants, and trees. Its nourishing effect is extremely important. Long-term use will make your hearing and eyes clear, your hair and beard black, and your life span prolonged."

It is recorded in "Compendium of Materia Medica" written by Wang Ang in the Ming Dynasty that placenta is "produced from the blood and qi of the human body, so it can greatly replenish qi and blood, and treat all kinds of exhaustion and extreme damage." In short, placenta can treat "five damages and six extremes."

But from the perspective of modern medicine, using human placenta as medicine does more harm than good. To this day, the side effects of eating the placenta remain unpredictable.

In addition, the medicinal effects of "placenta" are not irreplaceable. From the analysis of nature, flavor, meridians and effects, the effects of ginseng, deer antler, etc. are similar to those of placenta.

In the new edition of the "Chinese Pharmacopoeia" in 2015, placenta, a traditional Chinese medicinal material, and Chinese patent medicines formulated with placenta, such as Shengxue Pills, Ankun Zanyu Pills, and Bushen Guchi Pills, have been kicked out of the list of included varieties.

"The placenta of a healthy pregnant woman is processed into a Chinese medicine called placenta. According to the Chinese Medicine Pharmocopoeia, the main functions of placenta are warming the kidney and replenishing essence, invigorating qi and nourishing blood. It can treat deficiency, emaciation, fatigue, heat and bone steaming, cough and asthma, hemoptysis, night sweats, spermatorrhea, impotence, lack of blood and qi in women, infertility or lack of milk. And we also have a saying in the old days that 'a woman is like a ball of fire before giving birth and like a piece of ice after giving birth'. It seems that it is good for women to eat the placenta after giving birth." Director Zhang said.

However, Chinese medicine emphasizes syndrome differentiation and treatment, and the right medicine should be prescribed according to each person's different physical constitution. Theoretically, for pregnant women with kidney yang deficiency, eating the placenta can help warm and replenish the kidney yang. However, for people with other physical conditions, eating the placenta may have little effect, or even be counterproductive. For example, for those who are already sweating and getting hot after giving birth, eating the placenta is like adding fuel to the fire. They will become irritable and even their milk supply will decrease.

In Director Zhang's opinion, people nowadays have a better nutritional basis. There are more people with excessive fire than those with weak yang. The placenta really cannot be eaten casually. If you eat it improperly, the gain will outweigh the loss.

In addition, as a traditional Chinese medicine, doctors have strict control over how to take the processed placenta, and the general daily dose is 3 to 6 grams. The placenta can be large or small, but generally weighs around 100 grams. If you cook it and eat it within a day or two like many people do, that would be an obvious overdose.

Therefore, Director Zhang repeatedly emphasized in the interview: "Placenta is a medicine. Don't take it casually as a tonic. If you are willing to take it, you need to be guided by a doctor, such as how to take it and how much to take a day."

Head Nurse of Obstetrics Department:

There is a strict supervision process for the placenta

Because people have heard all kinds of stories about the placenta's tonic and therapeutic effects, they often go to the obstetrics departments of various hospitals in search of placens. At that time, the nurses and doctors in the obstetrics department become their main targets for help. However, this situation will never be allowed to happen again in the future.