- As most of you know,
I have a love/hate relationship with TikTok,
and currently, I hate it.
It's all hate,
because I fell down the rabbit hole of placentophagy TikTok,
which is exactly what it sounds like.
Get ready.
Despite finding the placenta, as I have stated many times,
to be the best organ that we have for a variety of reasons,
this is not one of them.
So put away the snacks and prep your eyeballs
for something you will never be able to unsee,
and let's jump into it.
(upbeat music)
This is the video that prompted my spiral
into placenta TikTok, some of which are great TikToks,
by the way.
None of those am I showing you today.
But I think one of y'all sent me this, so...
I can't remember who it was and I'm sorry,
but you probably should be thankful because I'm blaming you
and all of these people will be, too.
- [Woman] Huh?
- Oh, my son was just born like five minutes ago,
I can't stop crying, and I'm about to eat raw placenta.
(man laughs)
(baby crying)
Oh my God. That's good.
Do I just swallow it whole?
- [Woman] Eat it all.
- Okay, check it out. (baby crying)
Oh, there it is.
It's raw placenta with honey
from my newborn son that was just born.
He can't stop crying.
I'm gonna do it.
Do I just swallow the whole thing?
- [Woman] Go ahead and kick it back.
Sorry. But I'm in the kitchen.
- I'm chewing it.
- [Woman] I have to console him a little bit.
- [Woman] I think it'd be useful.
- [Woman] He'll get used to it, okay?
(baby crying)
- Ah!
TesticleKing out. (baby crying)
- The process that I went through watching that video
was just all over the place.
You have this happiness and joy that you can feel,
like the raw emotion of this brand-new baby who's crying
in the background, a very classic newborn cry,
and then the way that this person is talking,
and then the words that they're saying.
Why the honey?
I have other questions, too, like why, why, why?
Yeah, actually, that's...
"Why?" is the only question that I have.
I watched that one, and then it just took me down a spiral,
and I was just more and more like this the whole time.
So here's the next one.
It's just as good.
- I ate my wife's placenta.
I don't know if you did this when your kids were born, like-
- I just have to stop it right there
because of how casually this person is like,
"I don't know if you did that, Joe,
when your kids were born."
I wish I could see Joe's face
because that is not a normal thing to ask people.
This is not ubiquitous.
You can't phrase it like that.
You can't come at this like that.
You can do it.
You can talk about it.
But that's not...
Not like that!
- There's cultures that eat the placenta.
- Okay, hold on.
This is not entirely, entirely true.
Although the placenta is spiritually significant
in many cultures, particularly in many indigenous cultures,
the idea that placentophagy was common
or culturally practiced in many places or in many cultures
is a bit of a stretch.
As far as the person who delivered the baby
eating the placenta, there is no recording
of this being a cultural practice at all,
at least according to the 19-page research article
that I found, which I will link below.
There are a handful of instances in some cultures,
in very specific circumstances,
people who did not deliver the baby consuming the placenta,
but even in those cultures where it sometimes happened
in specific circumstances,
this was not a ubiquitous practice.
- Any of my friends whose wives get pregnant, I go,
"Hey, if you guys are gonna throw it out, I'll take it."
I have a freezer full of human placenta.
(Joe laughs)
- That is next level.
You are keeping other people's?
Not just...
I mean why? Why?
I just am so confused.
Oh my gosh. I'm so confused.
Are we all on the same page here
that the placenta functions as a filter, basically,
to keep bad things away from the fetus?
So I just, yeah.
I wouldn't be eating my own,
and I certainly wouldn't be eating somebody else's.
- A smoothie that I'm having every morning has placenta,
human placenta- - Geez!
- Two eggs, shell on, not washed.
- No! - Banana, sticker on.
- Shell on, not washed? - Shell on.
- How is that what he responds to?
After everything that was just said,
that is what Joe Rogan responded to.
- Shell on, not washed.
- Shell on, not washed? - Shell on.
I saw Arnold Schwartzenegger do it, so-
- [Joe] Yeah, ah ah.
- You know, of course.
If Arnold Schwarzenegger does it, the rest of us should.
- The whole bitter melon, the manuka honey,
Siberian pine oil.
Like the most disgusting shake ever.
It tastes like shit, and I just down it.
- Really? - Yeah, I'm like dying.
- It sounds like it would taste horrible.
Why? Why are you doing that?
Oh my gosh. I'm so confused.
Help.
- [Narrator] Trigger warning. Showing a placenta and blood.
I was going to encapsulate it, but I didn't.
Now, she can put it in her smoothie or food.
She says she couldn't taste it.
Ingesting your placenta can help prevent anemia,
boost milk supply, balance hormones,
and can lower your chances of having postpartum depression.
- I specifically included this one
because of the claims being made on this slide,
and they are not made up by this person.
They are commonly repeated amongst people
who talk about placentophagy.
But there is no good evidence that consuming your placenta
actually helps with any of these things,
and in fact, there is specifically good evidence
in the way of randomized controlled trials
that refutes the idea that consuming your placenta
would act as an iron supplement or prevention for anemia.
This is not true,
and this is also, the postpartum depression one,
the most common reason that people do this.
It's not backed up by any science.
Now, that doesn't necessarily mean anything,
except that it's neutral unless there are harms,
and we do have some idea
that there could be potential harms here.
There have been cases where placenta encapsulates
were found to be contaminated with GBS, Group B Strep,
which can cause neonatal meningitis,
and actually, in one situation,
potentially linked to a case of neonatal meningitis,
specifically with consuming it raw.
But even with dehydration and putting it into capsules,
a lot of times, these heat levels are not high enough
or for long enough to destroy things
like HIV or hepatitis or norovirus, rotavirus.
All of these things have been found in placentas
and wouldn't be destroyed necessarily by that process.
None of the people who do this encapsulation process
or dehydration process have oversight,
so nobody's coming through and making sure
that they are doing it in sterile conditions
or appropriately cleaning the stuff
that they use between people.
The cross-contamination risk is certainly high.
I just...
It makes me really uncomfortable.
So given the fact that we know,
we don't currently have any evidence
that this is beneficial in any way,
and there is potential harm,
as well as just concerns with the process
of how it gets done, I just,
I don't think that this is something
that I would ever recommend.
(upbeat music)
Like that Magic Bullet?
How do you...
You can't clean that effectively enough.
At the hospital, we sterilize things, right?
But you can't sterilize that between uses.
Just the cross-contamination here is...
I just...
- There he is! - What is that?
- It's the placenta.
- [Kathy] Look!
- Ugh!
- We keep the cord and placenta attached
until it falls away naturally.
- Ugh!
- And we're gonna use it to make some soup.
- Ech!
- Just throwing that in for a little lightening of the mood,
a little comedic relief.
- [Narrator] We decided to do a lotus birth
for our daughter.
(upbeat music)
Here is what we did with the placenta after.
An apple tree that will grow with her.
- So I find this endearing,
and again, in many, many cultures,
the placenta is highly revered and often kept or planted
like they have here.
I think that that is really sweet, personally,
and I think, if you want your placenta,
that you should be able to keep it.
I don't even care what you're using it for.
You should be able to keep it. It's yours.
The idea of lotus birth is something
we should talk about a little bit.
The umbilical cord, it is just allowed to dry off
while it is attached to a baby after birth,
which can take anywhere from a week to 10 days.
This is something that has been more common in recent years,
but it's still relatively uncommon.
Unfortunately, it has already,
despite being a relatively uncommon practice, been linked
in case reports to some really significant problems,
including neonatal hepatitis, sepsis, endocarditis,
including a baby that was admitted to the hospital
because of this at just a couple of days old
and ended up having to stay for six weeks
for IV antibiotics.
There are risks with this,
and that certainly is not something
I would medically recommend.
But I just wanted to put this in here
because I am not against placenta being taken, planted.
Even as weird as some people find it,
I think even the little placenta art things
that people do are quite cute.
I am a sentimental person,
and I think the placenta is super cool,
so I hope that this video isn't misinterpreted
as me thinking all placenta liking is weird.
I love placentas.
I think they're super cool,
but I just think consumption is just a bit too far
and too close to cannibalism for me.
I didn't put this in the video,
but I did actually find someone on religious TikTok
that was saying consuming the placenta
is actually against the Bible for some verse in Deuteronomy.
I don't know, but I thought it was interesting regardless.
Anyway, I've said my piece. Let's move on.
(goat eating)
- [Narrator] Yes, almost all animals eat their placentas.
Google placentophagy.
There are many theories as to why.
- This is true.
Most animals do eat their placenta,
and the theories as to why typically revolve around hunger
or needing that because there's not food around.
There are some theories on pain tolerance and pain control
and then preventing predation or other animals
being able to smell them out because that's out in the open.
All of those things are valid reasons
for animals to eat their placentas,
but I think humans probably do a much better job
of addressing all of those things
with human ways of addressing them, so yeah.
I think we can address, generally,
hunger and pain and animal predation
with things that aren't eating our own organs or organs
we once shared with a baby that we now love.
- I love working in reproductive health.
I have been processing placenta samples all month in my lab,
which has been amazing,
'cause I never have to pack a lunch.
(Danielle laughs)
- That one is just thrown in for comedic relief,
because honestly I need it at this point.
Anyway, I just, I think what shocked me about this
is that I knew there were people
who consumed their placentas,
and that was something actually I've talked about
on this channel a couple of times in the past,
just in like Q&As.
But I had no idea there were male partners eating placentas
and other people's placentas.
This just took it to a whole new level for me of,
what the (beeps)?
I just, that's so...
I just, I don't know.
I just, especially raw, but even cooked, I don't know.
Okay, that's all.
I hope you've suffered happily along with me, and I'm sorry.
That's all I have to say.
If you liked this video,
I don't know if anybody liked this video,
but you can subscribe, and I promise I'll never,
no, I can't promise that, but it's unlikely
that I will soon make another video about placentophagy.
So yeah, you can come back safely, I promise.
I'll see you next Monday.