It amazes me how susceptible people are to quack medicine. While present-day medicine is by no means perfect, it is still massively more dependendable than many "folk" solutions. This isn't to say that naturopathy is not effective. It is to say, though, that a medical doctor is more authoritative on medical matters than some random hippie.
Indeed, if you start ignoring medical science you could end up like this woman spent who massive amounts of time and money so she could obtain her placenta.
A woman has won a court fight to keep the placenta after her daughter's birth. She had planned to grind it up and ingest it as a way to fight postpartum depression, but now plans to bury it...Mother Wins Fight to Retrieve Placenta
Swanson, who was 30 when she gave birth, originally wanted to give her placenta to a friend to be dried, ground into a powder and packed into capsules. She said she now plans to dry, store and eventually bury the organ instead of eating it.
"I hope this brings about a better awareness about the benefits of placenta," she said, citing a theory that placental hormones can help control postpartum blues.
Here I must disagree with SFGate's use of the word "theory". A theory is a reputable explanation for natural seen phenomena. I have yet to hear from a respected medical doctor who believes ingesting placenta will relieve women of post-partem depression.
Actually, I think this mother is acting quite irresponsibly. Placenta, as the article notes, is "human biohazardous waste". That means getting her friend to ingest her placenta is probably the wrong thing to do.
In the woman's defense, she has decided to bury it. Still, no credence should be given to this quackery. The fact that she sought to use this court case as a means to "raise awareness" of her silly ideas only proves she's learned nothing.
To this, I say if she really wants to make a case for placenta-ingesting, and it really is so important that she'll make noise in the courts, maybe she should spend her time at medical school and write a peer-reviewed doctoral thesis on it. That is unlikely, though.
6 comments:
Nearly every mammal eats the placenta after giving birth.
This isn't quackery. The placenta is chock-full of iron, micronutrients, enzymes, amino acids - many of which are neurotransmitter precursors.
Brain function - or dysfunction, notably depression - is most often dietary in origin.
So, yes. What you eat can help cure depression - or cause it, if you're eating the wrong food.
So, why the placenta and not, say, a handful of vitamin pills?
Because the micronutrients, enzymes, and even the bacterial flora in the placenta are already tuned for the birthing mother's body - her body created and built it, it's already filled with very specific stored nutrients.
Is it gross? Maybe. But try putting your personal squeamishness aside before dictating what's right for others.
Worst case scenario? She's crazy, and it's pointless, right? But really, it's none of your business.
Worst-worst case scenario? Your own ignorance, taboos or misinformation further limits the rights of others to decide what to do with their bodies.
And that's a hell of a lot more disgusting than someone eating a placenta.
I will say to you what I've already said in my post. It is quackery until a medical doctor proves otherwise.
And until you provide me with credentials showing that you are a medical doctor, you too are just a quack. No amount of pseudo-science is going to change the fact that you are a quack until you provide me with a peer reviewed thesis detailing why eating placenta cures depression.
She wasn't giving it to her friend to eat, her friend was preparing the capsules. The mother intended, originally, to take the capsules.
All of which is beside the point, which is that it's her body - why on earth does she need someone else's permission to eat a part of herself?!
Think about that next time you bite your fingernails...
You miss my point. She can eat herself till the cows come home. I don't care. What I do care about is that this woman seeks to use the court system to validate her quack medicine. And just who do you think is footing the court costs?
If she really thinks she is right, let me say it again: she should go to medical school and write a thesis.
Now put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Wait...I'm sorry, when did the woman say she was a doctor? If she didn't make any claims to be one, then she's not a quack. She's just a person who happens to know a fact that some people don't.yourself included, it seems.
Yes, it's dumb that she went to court over this, but everything loquacious wrote about the placenta was true. Your bizarrely hostile reaction to your commenters is totally unwarranted.
The Placenta belonged to the mother, you are right that she should not have had to go to court. The hospital should have just given it to her. It is hers! All that benifits stated about eating the placenta are true. I am not a doctor, but who made a doctor God? I have seen many doctors and other medical professionals not know an answer to a question, or do the wrong thing sometimes resulting in the death of a patient. We are in charge of our bodies and what we put into it, not you, and surly not a doctor. I think it is great that this woman was so intune with herself that she knew what to do with this valuable organ. The fact that she did not eat it is probably only due to having to go to court for it and the time had lapsed too far to have the same benifits. Anyway I hope that we can all learn that even medical professionals are not god and are often wrong. Inform yourself and don't trust just anyone.
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