February 1, 2010 • 19 mins
For some people, placenta isn't just a byproduct of birth to be disposed of. They use it in a variety of ways, including consumption. In this episode, Molly and Cristen ponder the ways women use placenta after giving birth -- and why.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stop? Mom? Never told you?
From house top works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen. Do you remember
(00:20):
the year two thousand six? Vaguely? It's only four years ago. Um,
two thousand six was kind of a magical time, I
think because the world was awaiting the birth of one
Surrey Cruise and really, sorry, Cruise deserves a lot of podcasts.
I mean, we could talk about people's fascination with celebrity
(00:40):
children wearing high heels when you're three. By Surrey Cruise.
You're referring to the offspring of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise. Correct, Yes, Um,
Wikipedia your first her as Tom Kitten there Tom cat right. Um. Anyway,
the thing I was thinking about when I was thinking
about Surry Cruise is I frequently do apparently. Um, it's
(01:01):
back in old two thousand six when Tom Cruise announced
he was going to eat her placenta. Remember this, you know,
I don't remember that. The only thing I remember from
that whole fiasco was him jumping up on Oprah's couch
screaming I love her. If only we had a couch
and could re enact that moment to be special. Well,
(01:22):
in two thousand and six, when old Tom Kinton was
on the way, Tom Cruise said I'm gonna I'm gonna
eat the placenta and a guard headlines because like the
couch jumping, everyone was like, that's sort of weird, Tom,
why are you doing that? Well? And usually isn't the
mother the one who eats it? If the placenta is eating,
isn't it usually by the mom not the dad. Well,
(01:44):
that's that was the question that didn't even really come up,
just because everyone was still kind of blown away by
by the option of eating a placenta. But I mean,
lots of cultures have really interesting rituals surrounding this organ
that nourishes a child when it is in the womb. Yeah.
We found a very informative article by Sarah J. Buckley
(02:04):
entitled Placenta Rituals in Folklore from around the World. And uh,
and you're right, moll. I mean they're all all sorts
of things that folks do. In Cambodia, the baby's placenta,
which is called quote the globe of the origin of
the soul has to be buried in the right location
in order to to protect the baby after birth. One
(02:26):
of my favorite um rituals comes from Turkey, where the
placenta is known as the friend or comrade of the
baby and it must be wrapped in a clean cloth
and buried. But the cord from the placenta, UM, you
have to if you want your kid to be well educated.
For example, you throw it over schoolyard wall. Can you
imagine being playing in the school yard and all of
a sudden cord comes You're flying over felt it in
(02:50):
the face by a placenta. UM. What are some other
ones we liked well in in Malaysia? When a baby
smiles unexpectedly here she's said to be playing with the
older sibling a k a. The placenta. Just kind of sweet.
I like how a lot of these um relaying around
that the senter being a companion for the child in
(03:10):
the roomba. I mean, you're second there for nine months.
You gotta do something. Yeah, uh spooky. But let's see
what else. For Navajo children, their placenta will be buried
at four corners of the reservation to ensure that they
will always be connected to the land and will return
home at some point after they grew up. That's very sweet.
And Transylvania, if you desire no more children, then you
(03:33):
will burn the baby's placenta and mix it with ashes,
and then the husband would drink this to render himself infertile.
So maybe Tom Cruise was saying we should have read
between the lines here. Okay, maybe Tom was saying by
wanting to eat the placenta that he wanted to eat
and done with kids. It's possible. If I ever meet
(03:53):
Tom Cruise, I'm going to ask him about that. Yes,
ask what he knows about Transylvanian placenta more. It's the
best pickup line I've ever heard. Um. But an ancient
Chinese medicine that's sort of where the whole idea of
eating the placenta comes from. It also comes from the
Old Animal Kingdom. Yeah, because a lot of lower order
(04:16):
mammals will eat their placed well, the mothers obviously will
eat their placenta during childbirth and this is thought to
reduce pain and has anti inflammatory effects for for the
for the mama. And so they're saying that if you
The belief is that if you consume the placenta in
some form, and there are a few forms that it
(04:36):
can take. Some women have it dried out and made
into pills. Some women just go ahead and make a
meal out of it, and we found several recipes for
things like placenta pizza, placenta, lasagna, placenta, cocktails, placent We
could really go on. Um. Yeah, unfortunately, and don't look
at the pictures that are associated with it and just
(04:57):
try and think of it as a ingredient. Yeah, probably
not a good Google image search not around lunch found
that out the hard way. Um. But the belief is
that the if the mother consumes it, it can it
can relieve pain in the form of postpartum depression. And
a lot of women take this pretty seriously and anecdotally,
you know, they say that they don't have depression. Isn't
(05:19):
the placenta placebo? As Kristen called her earlier this morning,
I don't know. There's not a whole lot of studies
on it. In fact, they've done studies and animals where
they'll deprive the animal of the placenta and they don't
seem to suffer any form of postpartum depression. UM and
Mark Crystal, who has studied uh placenta eating in animals
a lot, says that it's really probably pain relief during
(05:41):
the delivery that they kind of while they're delivering the
kid kind of lick at the area to get at
the placenta juices, And there was a sentence I never
thought I'd say, they're just kind of trying to bypassa.
The Royal College of Obstetrians and Gynecologists in the UK
also amount with a pretty formal statement that said that
(06:02):
if mothers are already well nourished, then there's really no
health benefit from eating the placenta. Based on an article
that I read um from ABC News, though, it seems
like more and more moms in the United States are
interested in doing something with the placenta. I mean, you
read about how people use the placenta all around, um
(06:23):
the world, and it seems like in the United States
it comes out and it's pretty much just deposited. It's
considered medical waste. In fact, there have been women who
have wanted to keep their placenta for some purpose and
they've had to go to court to say, you know,
that's mine. It's like giving me the tonsils that you
took out or whatever. Yeah, And in Hawaii it's been
more of a problem because Native Hawaiians will plant the
(06:46):
placenta with a tree to grow as the child grows,
and it's referred to as there, you know, placenta tree
to kind of chart their their growth as a as
a person. And so there have been a lot of
legal problems with some hospitals not allowing the moms to
to take a posten to home. So the thought is
that even after exits the body, the placenta, which has
(07:06):
been providing nutrients to the baby all along, does not
all of a sudden lose all the hormones, growth factors,
immune molecules, lipids, at nucleic acids, all these things that
were good for the baby, they're still present as good
for the earth, good for the mother even after um earth,
and maybe even good for other people. Yeah, because we
(07:29):
found an article in Slate that talked about dropping by
on your lunch ower and getting a placental transfusion. Right now,
since the late nineteen fifties, placental extract has been available
in Japan, and even today there are some clinics that
will allow you to go in and actually get an
(07:50):
ivy drip of these of this placental extract so that
you can supposedly benefit from all of those rich compounds
and nutrients that are in found in placentas. Yeah, they all.
They don't have a lot of data on any of
this eating it, infusing it, UM. There's really no data
(08:10):
on it. There. There was one small study that um
slate found from Korea where they injected women UM between
the ages forty and sixty four with placental extract and
the women did report that they had UM significantly lower
menopausal symptoms than the ones who were just the control group,
and they had decreased fatigue, and they had UM improved
(08:33):
immune systems. But it's a very small study, it's not
considered definitive. But that's the one thing they found that
suggests that maybe these compounds are still good and can
still work their magic after they've exited the womb. Well,
and I thought it was interesting to the Japan's National
Health insurance will cover placental treatments for liver disease and
UM these symptoms of menopause, and some people will actually
(08:56):
just pay out of pocket to UM have these injections
for treat and a fatigue, insomnia, and uh to uh
combat aging. Speaking of combating aging, Kristen, you can buy
face cream that has placental extract, either from a human
or from a cow. Yeah, placental extract became a pretty
popular cosmetic ingredient in the nineteen forties in the US
(09:20):
because they claimed that it would remove wrinkles and stimulate
tissue growth. However, the FDA hasn't really been on board
with all of these placental skin claims. Yeah, thatsly came
in and said, you can't promise you're gonna make people
look younger, and so I think now they just don't
promise it, but you'll find in the ingredients. Hey, you've
(09:42):
got placenta in here. It's the fountain of youth. I mean,
you know, babies, youth ties together well. And evidently in
the seventies I thought this was kind of funny. A
lot of shampoos and conditioners where marketed as having placental
extract in them as well, to make your hair grow
long and strong and healthy. And now that's kind of
(10:04):
a fallen by the wayside if babies are known for
their strong and healthy hair um. But you know what,
I kind of wonder if it's just extract, can it
really have all these nutrients? I mean, like Mark Crystal,
the guy who was for Time about earlier, who's studied
in animals, it's basically said, if you cook it, you're
going to destroy all the proteins. If you dry it out,
you're destroying other things. I mean, if you're just taking extracts,
(10:27):
does a really still pack a punch? And that's what
really no study can tell us so far. Yeah, and
so far in terms of it's used in skin care products, uh,
they've only been able to say that, yes, it can
protect your skin and help hydrate it, but it's no
better than you know, any other kind of additives that
are something like every moisturizer, right, And in terms of
(10:51):
wound healing, that's one of the claims that you know,
Polson extract will stimulate all this cell regrowth and will
help with heling. But it's also been found to be
no more effective than any an asseptic. But you know what,
I do think one way that I found when we
were researching this topic where placentis can be really effective,
(11:13):
what when you make teddy bears out of them. I
was worried you were going to go there. Kristen did
not like the placenta teddy bear as much as I did.
But basically, um, this guy from London, Alex Green, he's
a designer, took a placenta and wanted to kind of
shake up how people thought of it. You know, he
probably read the same things we did where it's used
(11:35):
around the world for various things, and he knew that
in the United Kingdom and the United States it's sort
of just considered medical waste. Um. He said that he
read the ancient Egyptians revered the revered the pharaoh's placentis
so much that they put it on a pole like
a flag for public display. So he had all that
in his mind, and so he took a placenta. He
(11:56):
cured it was salt to kill the bacteria and remove
the water, and so then he's got kind of like
a dried placental skin. And then he fills it with
a mixture of eggs and tannins and so is it
filled with brown white rice. And if you, I mean,
you can Google Plus sent a Teddy Barrens an image
of It's not the cutest teddy bear ever, but I
(12:17):
mean it does kind of look like a brown mother
teddy bear. Yeah. I mean, if what's going to be
more special to a kid a teddy bear made of
its own placenta, I can think of a lot of things, Molly.
If you're given the choice between a cuddly fake teddy
bear and a placenta teddy bear, I take the cutly one. Yeah. Yeah,
(12:39):
but you do have to kind of admire the fact
that he's going to take something that we consider waste
and try and make it into something that's art. Sure,
in placenta art isn't all that uncommon either. Women will,
you know, use their placenta and integrated into um kind
of ritualistic art art projects. Now it's I think it's
(13:00):
fairly well known that neither Kristen nor I have given birth,
so we actually haven't. Act I haven't seen a placenta
up close, have you, Kristen? Uh No, not that I
can remember. So we are I am willing to admit
right here that maybe we would have a different opinion
if we had seen one up close. Yeah, which is
(13:22):
said anecdotally. Some of some of these women will swear
by the healing properties of placenta phagi, are you eating
eating placenta? So admitting that we haven't seen one. We
want to hear from you women out there who have
and men. Right, so when it came out where you like,
there's my kids, teddy bear, were you at all interested
(13:44):
in eating it? Were you all interested in smearing it
on your face via a moisturizer. I have a hunch
that you know, probably going into the birth women will
have decided long before then whether or not they're going
to want to keep their placenta. It doesn't seem like
it's kind of a operate delivery room saying where you're like, yes,
give me the placenta, let's take it home. You're probably
(14:07):
more distracted by the fact that you all had a baby. Yes. So,
since Molly and I have never had to personally make
a placenta related decision at this juncture in our lives,
we want to hear from you guys about, uh, if
you have had to do it, what you know, if
you just did away with the placenta, or if you said, hey,
why don't we why don't we cook up sim placenta lasagna?
(14:29):
There's no harm and try and no harm, no foul
because so far our research, you know, doesn't exactly back
up all of these health benefits. But but you know,
why would it come out if we weren't supposed to
do something with it? Exactly? Why would so many people
be doing this for so long if maybe there there
wasn't something behind it. So give us your perspective and
(14:51):
we will. Let's close out by saying that you and
the tom Cruise gained all those headlines for saying it
was going to eat it. He kind of then later recanted,
and we actually have no idea whether Sorry cruises placenta
ever went into anyone's stomach. Mhm. On that note, listener
mail the listener mail. So we've got an email here
(15:13):
speaking of birthing. We've got an email here from Diana
about birth order from our podcast about whether or not
birth order influences your personality. She said, I thought it
was interesting because as a firstborn, I had a lot
of the characteristics the author gave a first borns, and
I could see that my brother, who was nine years younger,
was sharing the qualities of the second born and youngest children.
(15:33):
I recently read the Birth Order Book by Dr Kevin Lehman,
and he breaks down birth order and all the exceptions.
You guys didn't talk about all the characteristics of people
in different places in a family. For example, in my experience,
class clowns are the youngest children. All of my past
boyfriends except one were youngest children, and they were all
class or work clowns. Lehman says that it's because youngest
(15:55):
children do it for the attention when they're older siblings
are getting attention by in academics or sports. Oh, it's
the youngest child. And I don't entirely agree with h.
Lehman's just keep bringing okay. John Stewart, Jim Carrey, Ellen
de Jenners, and Eddie Murphy are all youngest children, including
your Shirley Christ and Congress that will soon be added
(16:18):
to the list, you know, as I reach global fame.
I was recently promoted to a position at my job
that requires excellent organizational and communication skills, and I was
sent to corporate headquarters for training with about twenty others
from around the country. After a day or so, out
of curiosity, I asked everyone their birth order. Everyone was
a first or only child, except to interesting one of
which was a class clown and another was in what
(16:39):
Lehman calls a role reverse family. She was the youngest,
but her parents were divorced and her mother held her
responsible for her older sister, so she has traits that
normally the older oldest child would have. Parents definitely determine
how children will turn out, and every family is different,
but I think there's something to it. Okay, thank you, Diana.
I'll read another one on the same topic from Katie,
who writes as a first on myself. I know I'm biased,
(17:01):
but I have some opinions about the birth order podcast.
I am two years older than my brother, and I
live in an upper middle class neighborhood and go to
a great school. I've always felt that he got the
better end of the deal, but I suspect that I'd
feel the same way if the roles were reversed. It's
probably a grass that's always greener on the other side situation,
and brother does benefit from much more relaxed rules and
more privileges than me. I was the last one of
my friends to get my own cell phone in eighth grade,
(17:22):
whereas he received one at the end of fifth grade.
He's rewarded monetarily for good grades when I am not.
My parents also let him do things at his age
that I was never allowed to do. This could either
be because my parents realized they could let a child
out on a longer leash and the child would still survive,
or be because he's a boy. Either way, it's infuriating.
I also happened to be friends with almost all oldest siblings.
(17:42):
We all feel that we're stuck doing much more work
than our younger siblings. If a younger sibling doesn't want
to do something, we always have to do the test
for them. Additionally, younger siblings at our school have a
much easier time. They have friends where they come into
the school because they know all the older siblings friends.
They also have tips from older siblings on specific teachers,
and always have home help from someone who took the
class a little more recently than parents. All of the
(18:04):
uper geeks are also younger siblings because they have older
siblings who taught them higher level skills. I'm still at
the top of my class without a big brother sister,
although I'm certain things would be different if I had fun.
So as for the overall question of podcast this birth
order to tremind your personality, I think the answer is yes. Family,
I would like to point out something I think we've
gotten more email about this from oldest siblings in the
(18:27):
younger core, driven to write in yes, we're just off
clown and around the youngest siblings can't be bothered. UM. Well,
if you've got an opinion on birth, order, placenta or
anything else, we would love to hear from you. Our
email is Mom's Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
We've also got a lot of things like our blog
is called how to stuff, and we've got articles on
(18:51):
everything related to childbirth, including probably some stuff on placenta's
if you're at all interested. And again, all of that
is located at how stuff works that um for more
on this and thousands of other topics, does it how
staff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check
out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com
(19:12):
home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stop? Mom? Never told you?
From house top works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen. Do you remember
(00:20):
the year two thousand six? Vaguely? It's only four years ago. Um,
two thousand six was kind of a magical time, I
think because the world was awaiting the birth of one
Surrey Cruise and really, sorry, Cruise deserves a lot of podcasts.
I mean, we could talk about people's fascination with celebrity
(00:40):
children wearing high heels when you're three. By Surrey Cruise.
You're referring to the offspring of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise. Correct, Yes, Um,
Wikipedia your first her as Tom Kitten there Tom cat right. Um. Anyway,
the thing I was thinking about when I was thinking
about Surry Cruise is I frequently do apparently. Um, it's
(01:01):
back in old two thousand six when Tom Cruise announced
he was going to eat her placenta. Remember this, you know,
I don't remember that. The only thing I remember from
that whole fiasco was him jumping up on Oprah's couch
screaming I love her. If only we had a couch
and could re enact that moment to be special. Well,
(01:22):
in two thousand and six, when old Tom Kinton was
on the way, Tom Cruise said I'm gonna I'm gonna
eat the placenta and a guard headlines because like the
couch jumping, everyone was like, that's sort of weird, Tom,
why are you doing that? Well? And usually isn't the
mother the one who eats it? If the placenta is eating,
isn't it usually by the mom not the dad. Well,
(01:44):
that's that was the question that didn't even really come up,
just because everyone was still kind of blown away by
by the option of eating a placenta. But I mean,
lots of cultures have really interesting rituals surrounding this organ
that nourishes a child when it is in the womb. Yeah.
We found a very informative article by Sarah J. Buckley
(02:04):
entitled Placenta Rituals in Folklore from around the World. And uh,
and you're right, moll. I mean they're all all sorts
of things that folks do. In Cambodia, the baby's placenta,
which is called quote the globe of the origin of
the soul has to be buried in the right location
in order to to protect the baby after birth. One
(02:26):
of my favorite um rituals comes from Turkey, where the
placenta is known as the friend or comrade of the
baby and it must be wrapped in a clean cloth
and buried. But the cord from the placenta, UM, you
have to if you want your kid to be well educated.
For example, you throw it over schoolyard wall. Can you
imagine being playing in the school yard and all of
a sudden cord comes You're flying over felt it in
(02:50):
the face by a placenta. UM. What are some other
ones we liked well in in Malaysia? When a baby
smiles unexpectedly here she's said to be playing with the
older sibling a k a. The placenta. Just kind of sweet.
I like how a lot of these um relaying around
that the senter being a companion for the child in
(03:10):
the roomba. I mean, you're second there for nine months.
You gotta do something. Yeah, uh spooky. But let's see
what else. For Navajo children, their placenta will be buried
at four corners of the reservation to ensure that they
will always be connected to the land and will return
home at some point after they grew up. That's very sweet.
And Transylvania, if you desire no more children, then you
(03:33):
will burn the baby's placenta and mix it with ashes,
and then the husband would drink this to render himself infertile.
So maybe Tom Cruise was saying we should have read
between the lines here. Okay, maybe Tom was saying by
wanting to eat the placenta that he wanted to eat
and done with kids. It's possible. If I ever meet
(03:53):
Tom Cruise, I'm going to ask him about that. Yes,
ask what he knows about Transylvanian placenta more. It's the
best pickup line I've ever heard. Um. But an ancient
Chinese medicine that's sort of where the whole idea of
eating the placenta comes from. It also comes from the
Old Animal Kingdom. Yeah, because a lot of lower order
(04:16):
mammals will eat their placed well, the mothers obviously will
eat their placenta during childbirth and this is thought to
reduce pain and has anti inflammatory effects for for the
for the mama. And so they're saying that if you
The belief is that if you consume the placenta in
some form, and there are a few forms that it
(04:36):
can take. Some women have it dried out and made
into pills. Some women just go ahead and make a
meal out of it, and we found several recipes for
things like placenta pizza, placenta, lasagna, placenta, cocktails, placent We
could really go on. Um. Yeah, unfortunately, and don't look
at the pictures that are associated with it and just
(04:57):
try and think of it as a ingredient. Yeah, probably
not a good Google image search not around lunch found
that out the hard way. Um. But the belief is
that the if the mother consumes it, it can it
can relieve pain in the form of postpartum depression. And
a lot of women take this pretty seriously and anecdotally,
you know, they say that they don't have depression. Isn't
(05:19):
the placenta placebo? As Kristen called her earlier this morning,
I don't know. There's not a whole lot of studies
on it. In fact, they've done studies and animals where
they'll deprive the animal of the placenta and they don't
seem to suffer any form of postpartum depression. UM and
Mark Crystal, who has studied uh placenta eating in animals
a lot, says that it's really probably pain relief during
(05:41):
the delivery that they kind of while they're delivering the
kid kind of lick at the area to get at
the placenta juices, And there was a sentence I never
thought I'd say, they're just kind of trying to bypassa.
The Royal College of Obstetrians and Gynecologists in the UK
also amount with a pretty formal statement that said that
(06:02):
if mothers are already well nourished, then there's really no
health benefit from eating the placenta. Based on an article
that I read um from ABC News, though, it seems
like more and more moms in the United States are
interested in doing something with the placenta. I mean, you
read about how people use the placenta all around, um
(06:23):
the world, and it seems like in the United States
it comes out and it's pretty much just deposited. It's
considered medical waste. In fact, there have been women who
have wanted to keep their placenta for some purpose and
they've had to go to court to say, you know,
that's mine. It's like giving me the tonsils that you
took out or whatever. Yeah, And in Hawaii it's been
more of a problem because Native Hawaiians will plant the
(06:46):
placenta with a tree to grow as the child grows,
and it's referred to as there, you know, placenta tree
to kind of chart their their growth as a as
a person. And so there have been a lot of
legal problems with some hospitals not allowing the moms to
to take a posten to home. So the thought is
that even after exits the body, the placenta, which has
(07:06):
been providing nutrients to the baby all along, does not
all of a sudden lose all the hormones, growth factors,
immune molecules, lipids, at nucleic acids, all these things that
were good for the baby, they're still present as good
for the earth, good for the mother even after um earth,
and maybe even good for other people. Yeah, because we
(07:29):
found an article in Slate that talked about dropping by
on your lunch ower and getting a placental transfusion. Right now,
since the late nineteen fifties, placental extract has been available
in Japan, and even today there are some clinics that
will allow you to go in and actually get an
(07:50):
ivy drip of these of this placental extract so that
you can supposedly benefit from all of those rich compounds
and nutrients that are in found in placentas. Yeah, they all.
They don't have a lot of data on any of
this eating it, infusing it, UM. There's really no data
(08:10):
on it. There. There was one small study that um
slate found from Korea where they injected women UM between
the ages forty and sixty four with placental extract and
the women did report that they had UM significantly lower
menopausal symptoms than the ones who were just the control group,
and they had decreased fatigue, and they had UM improved
(08:33):
immune systems. But it's a very small study, it's not
considered definitive. But that's the one thing they found that
suggests that maybe these compounds are still good and can
still work their magic after they've exited the womb. Well,
and I thought it was interesting to the Japan's National
Health insurance will cover placental treatments for liver disease and
UM these symptoms of menopause, and some people will actually
(08:56):
just pay out of pocket to UM have these injections
for treat and a fatigue, insomnia, and uh to uh
combat aging. Speaking of combating aging, Kristen, you can buy
face cream that has placental extract, either from a human
or from a cow. Yeah, placental extract became a pretty
popular cosmetic ingredient in the nineteen forties in the US
(09:20):
because they claimed that it would remove wrinkles and stimulate
tissue growth. However, the FDA hasn't really been on board
with all of these placental skin claims. Yeah, thatsly came
in and said, you can't promise you're gonna make people
look younger, and so I think now they just don't
promise it, but you'll find in the ingredients. Hey, you've
(09:42):
got placenta in here. It's the fountain of youth. I mean,
you know, babies, youth ties together well. And evidently in
the seventies I thought this was kind of funny. A
lot of shampoos and conditioners where marketed as having placental
extract in them as well, to make your hair grow
long and strong and healthy. And now that's kind of
(10:04):
a fallen by the wayside if babies are known for
their strong and healthy hair um. But you know what,
I kind of wonder if it's just extract, can it
really have all these nutrients? I mean, like Mark Crystal,
the guy who was for Time about earlier, who's studied
in animals, it's basically said, if you cook it, you're
going to destroy all the proteins. If you dry it out,
you're destroying other things. I mean, if you're just taking extracts,
(10:27):
does a really still pack a punch? And that's what
really no study can tell us so far. Yeah, and
so far in terms of it's used in skin care products, uh,
they've only been able to say that, yes, it can
protect your skin and help hydrate it, but it's no
better than you know, any other kind of additives that
are something like every moisturizer, right, And in terms of
(10:51):
wound healing, that's one of the claims that you know,
Polson extract will stimulate all this cell regrowth and will
help with heling. But it's also been found to be
no more effective than any an asseptic. But you know what,
I do think one way that I found when we
were researching this topic where placentis can be really effective,
(11:13):
what when you make teddy bears out of them. I
was worried you were going to go there. Kristen did
not like the placenta teddy bear as much as I did.
But basically, um, this guy from London, Alex Green, he's
a designer, took a placenta and wanted to kind of
shake up how people thought of it. You know, he
probably read the same things we did where it's used
(11:35):
around the world for various things, and he knew that
in the United Kingdom and the United States it's sort
of just considered medical waste. Um. He said that he
read the ancient Egyptians revered the revered the pharaoh's placentis
so much that they put it on a pole like
a flag for public display. So he had all that
in his mind, and so he took a placenta. He
(11:56):
cured it was salt to kill the bacteria and remove
the water, and so then he's got kind of like
a dried placental skin. And then he fills it with
a mixture of eggs and tannins and so is it
filled with brown white rice. And if you, I mean,
you can Google Plus sent a Teddy Barrens an image
of It's not the cutest teddy bear ever, but I
(12:17):
mean it does kind of look like a brown mother
teddy bear. Yeah. I mean, if what's going to be
more special to a kid a teddy bear made of
its own placenta, I can think of a lot of things, Molly.
If you're given the choice between a cuddly fake teddy
bear and a placenta teddy bear, I take the cutly one. Yeah. Yeah,
(12:39):
but you do have to kind of admire the fact
that he's going to take something that we consider waste
and try and make it into something that's art. Sure,
in placenta art isn't all that uncommon either. Women will,
you know, use their placenta and integrated into um kind
of ritualistic art art projects. Now it's I think it's
(13:00):
fairly well known that neither Kristen nor I have given birth,
so we actually haven't. Act I haven't seen a placenta
up close, have you, Kristen? Uh No, not that I
can remember. So we are I am willing to admit
right here that maybe we would have a different opinion
if we had seen one up close. Yeah, which is
(13:22):
said anecdotally. Some of some of these women will swear
by the healing properties of placenta phagi, are you eating
eating placenta? So admitting that we haven't seen one. We
want to hear from you women out there who have
and men. Right, so when it came out where you like,
there's my kids, teddy bear, were you at all interested
(13:44):
in eating it? Were you all interested in smearing it
on your face via a moisturizer. I have a hunch
that you know, probably going into the birth women will
have decided long before then whether or not they're going
to want to keep their placenta. It doesn't seem like
it's kind of a operate delivery room saying where you're like, yes,
give me the placenta, let's take it home. You're probably
(14:07):
more distracted by the fact that you all had a baby. Yes. So,
since Molly and I have never had to personally make
a placenta related decision at this juncture in our lives,
we want to hear from you guys about, uh, if
you have had to do it, what you know, if
you just did away with the placenta, or if you said, hey,
why don't we why don't we cook up sim placenta lasagna?
(14:29):
There's no harm and try and no harm, no foul
because so far our research, you know, doesn't exactly back
up all of these health benefits. But but you know,
why would it come out if we weren't supposed to
do something with it? Exactly? Why would so many people
be doing this for so long if maybe there there
wasn't something behind it. So give us your perspective and
(14:51):
we will. Let's close out by saying that you and
the tom Cruise gained all those headlines for saying it
was going to eat it. He kind of then later recanted,
and we actually have no idea whether Sorry cruises placenta
ever went into anyone's stomach. Mhm. On that note, listener
mail the listener mail. So we've got an email here
(15:13):
speaking of birthing. We've got an email here from Diana
about birth order from our podcast about whether or not
birth order influences your personality. She said, I thought it
was interesting because as a firstborn, I had a lot
of the characteristics the author gave a first borns, and
I could see that my brother, who was nine years younger,
was sharing the qualities of the second born and youngest children.
(15:33):
I recently read the Birth Order Book by Dr Kevin Lehman,
and he breaks down birth order and all the exceptions.
You guys didn't talk about all the characteristics of people
in different places in a family. For example, in my experience,
class clowns are the youngest children. All of my past
boyfriends except one were youngest children, and they were all
class or work clowns. Lehman says that it's because youngest
(15:55):
children do it for the attention when they're older siblings
are getting attention by in academics or sports. Oh, it's
the youngest child. And I don't entirely agree with h.
Lehman's just keep bringing okay. John Stewart, Jim Carrey, Ellen
de Jenners, and Eddie Murphy are all youngest children, including
your Shirley Christ and Congress that will soon be added
(16:18):
to the list, you know, as I reach global fame.
I was recently promoted to a position at my job
that requires excellent organizational and communication skills, and I was
sent to corporate headquarters for training with about twenty others
from around the country. After a day or so, out
of curiosity, I asked everyone their birth order. Everyone was
a first or only child, except to interesting one of
which was a class clown and another was in what
(16:39):
Lehman calls a role reverse family. She was the youngest,
but her parents were divorced and her mother held her
responsible for her older sister, so she has traits that
normally the older oldest child would have. Parents definitely determine
how children will turn out, and every family is different,
but I think there's something to it. Okay, thank you, Diana.
I'll read another one on the same topic from Katie,
who writes as a first on myself. I know I'm biased,
(17:01):
but I have some opinions about the birth order podcast.
I am two years older than my brother, and I
live in an upper middle class neighborhood and go to
a great school. I've always felt that he got the
better end of the deal, but I suspect that I'd
feel the same way if the roles were reversed. It's
probably a grass that's always greener on the other side situation,
and brother does benefit from much more relaxed rules and
more privileges than me. I was the last one of
my friends to get my own cell phone in eighth grade,
(17:22):
whereas he received one at the end of fifth grade.
He's rewarded monetarily for good grades when I am not.
My parents also let him do things at his age
that I was never allowed to do. This could either
be because my parents realized they could let a child
out on a longer leash and the child would still survive,
or be because he's a boy. Either way, it's infuriating.
I also happened to be friends with almost all oldest siblings.
(17:42):
We all feel that we're stuck doing much more work
than our younger siblings. If a younger sibling doesn't want
to do something, we always have to do the test
for them. Additionally, younger siblings at our school have a
much easier time. They have friends where they come into
the school because they know all the older siblings friends.
They also have tips from older siblings on specific teachers,
and always have home help from someone who took the
class a little more recently than parents. All of the
(18:04):
uper geeks are also younger siblings because they have older
siblings who taught them higher level skills. I'm still at
the top of my class without a big brother sister,
although I'm certain things would be different if I had fun.
So as for the overall question of podcast this birth
order to tremind your personality, I think the answer is yes. Family,
I would like to point out something I think we've
gotten more email about this from oldest siblings in the
(18:27):
younger core, driven to write in yes, we're just off
clown and around the youngest siblings can't be bothered. UM. Well,
if you've got an opinion on birth, order, placenta or
anything else, we would love to hear from you. Our
email is Mom's Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
We've also got a lot of things like our blog
is called how to stuff, and we've got articles on
(18:51):
everything related to childbirth, including probably some stuff on placenta's
if you're at all interested. And again, all of that
is located at how stuff works that um for more
on this and thousands of other topics, does it how
staff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check
out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com
(19:12):
home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.