Placenta Essay

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Common Questions 1. Why do women consume their placentas? There are many different reasons that lead women to make the decision to consume their placentas. For many women it is the first-hand accounts they hear from friends or recommendations made by their Doulas, Midwives, or Doctors. They have heard other moms talk about how consuming their placenta has been a positive experience for them. Many moms report that they believed it helped with their postpartum experience, stopped their bleeding, reduced their pain, and increased their milk supply. For some women, this is a cultural and spiritual practice. Many cultures hold the placenta in high regards and they may even honor it by other means. http://womensenews.org/2013/07/placenta-spiritually-revered-not-in-the-west/ 2. How can the placenta be prepared? There are two main different methods out there: TCM and Raw. The Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) method involves cleaning the placenta, gently steaming the placenta with lemon, cayenne pepper and fresh ginger. Then your placenta is ground into a fine powder and placed in capsules. Because of the …show more content…

Association of Placenta Preparation Arts board member Nikole Keller says, “the placenta is often referred to as a filter; this isn’t an ideal term for the placenta considering its function in the body… A more suitable way of looking at it would be as a gate keeper between the mother and the fetus. The placenta’s job is to keep the maternal and fetal blood separate, at the same time allowing nutrients to pass to the fetus, gas exchange to occur, and allowing waste from the fetus to pass through the mother, . The placenta does prevent some toxins from passing through to the fetus but they are not stored in the placenta. Toxins in the body and waste from the fetus are processed by the mother’s liver and kidneys for elimination”

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