Placenta encapsulation is the process of dehydrating a mother’s placenta after birth, grinding it into a powder, and placing it into pill-sized capsules for her to swallow during the postpartum period. Proponents claim it boosts energy, improves mood, increases milk supply, and replenishes iron stores. However, no clinical trial has found measurable benefits from the practice, and major medical organizations actively discourage it due to safety concerns.
How the Process Works
After delivery, the placenta is refrigerated or placed on ice and transported to either a home kitchen or a dedicated preparation space. The encapsulation process typically follows one of two methods. In the “raw” method, the placenta is sliced and dehydrated without any prior cooking. In the “traditional” method, often inspired by Traditional Chinese Medicine, the placenta is first steamed (sometimes with herbs like ginger or lemon) before being sliced and dehydrated.
Dehydration temperatures generally range from 115°F to 160°F (46°C to 71°C). Once fully dried, the tissue is ground into a fine powder and packed into gelatin capsules. A single placenta typically yields between 115 and 200 capsules. The finished pills are stored at room temperature, and common dosing recommendations from birth workers suggest two capsules taken three times daily. The entire process from raw placenta to finished capsules usually takes one to two days.
Encapsulation services generally cost between $170 and $250, depending on whether the provider picks up the placenta from your birth location or you arrange drop-off yourself. Some services ship placentas overnight on ice for mothers who don’t live near a provider.
What Supporters Claim
The list of supposed benefits is long. People who advocate for placenta encapsulation say it can prevent or reduce postpartum depression, ease postpartum bleeding, promote hormonal balance, improve energy and mood, boost breast milk supply, and provide important nutrients like iron. These claims are widespread on birth-worker websites and in online parenting communities, and they’re the primary reason the practice has grown in popularity over the past two decades.
The logic behind the claims sounds intuitive: the placenta produces hormones throughout pregnancy, so consuming it after delivery should help replace those hormones during the abrupt postpartum drop. Placental tissue does contain progesterone, estrogens, oxytocin, and a hormone called placental lactogen that plays a role in milk production. Iron is also present in dehydrated placenta powder at a concentration of about 565 mg per kilogram.
What the Science Actually Shows
When researchers have tested these claims in controlled studies, the results have been consistently underwhelming. A review published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology concluded that no scientific evidence supports any clinical benefit of human placentophagy, and that no placental nutrients or hormones survive the encapsulation process in amounts large enough to help the mother postpartum.
The iron story is a good example. Placenta capsules do contain more iron than a beef placebo (about 0.664 mg per gram versus 0.093 mg per gram), but that amounts to only about 24% of the recommended daily intake. In a randomized trial comparing placenta capsules to beef placebo, researchers found no significant difference in postpartum iron levels between the two groups. The study authors warned that if a woman relied on placenta capsules as her only iron supplement, she could actually develop postpartum iron deficiency.
The hormone concentrations tell a similar story. Dried placenta contains roughly 18.76 micrograms of progesterone-active substances per gram. At the typical recommended dose of one gram three times a day, a woman would consume about 56.3 micrograms of progesterone daily. For context, a standard progesterone supplement prescribed during pregnancy contains 100 to 200 milligrams per dose, thousands of times more than what a day’s worth of capsules provides.
On mood and depression, a controlled trial giving women either placenta capsules or placebo capsules found no significant differences in mood, fatigue levels, or the emotional bond between mother and newborn. The lactation data is equally thin. While a handful of studies from the 1950s and earlier reported increases in breast milk protein and lactose, more recent research found no differences in milk production or newborn weight gain between women who consumed placenta capsules and those who did not.
Safety Risks
Beyond the lack of proven benefit, there are concrete safety concerns. The most well-documented case involved an Oregon newborn in 2016 who developed a serious bloodstream infection caused by Group B Streptococcus (GBS), a bacterium that can colonize the birth canal. The infant was treated with antibiotics, recovered, and then fell ill again five days after treatment ended. Investigators discovered that the mother had been taking encapsulated placenta capsules contaminated with GBS. Genetic testing at the CDC confirmed the bacteria in the capsules were identical to the strain causing the infant’s infections.
The mother had been taking two capsules three times daily starting three days after birth. By ingesting the contaminated capsules, she likely recolonized herself with GBS, which then transferred to the infant through close contact or breastfeeding. After she stopped taking the capsules, the baby recovered.
This case highlighted a fundamental problem: no federal standards exist for processing placenta for human consumption. The placenta is not regulated as a food product or a supplement. Reducing Salmonella to safe levels requires sustained heating at 130°F for over two hours, and the dehydration temperatures used by encapsulation services (often starting as low as 115°F) may not reach or maintain temperatures high enough, or for long enough, to kill dangerous bacteria. The CDC stated plainly that the encapsulation process does not eradicate infectious pathogens.
Heavy Metals in Placental Tissue
The placenta also accumulates environmental contaminants throughout pregnancy. A systematic review of heavy metal concentrations in human placental tissue found measurable levels of mercury, cadmium, and lead across populations worldwide. Mercury tends to concentrate in the placenta at levels higher than those found in the mother’s blood, suggesting the organ actively accumulates this metal during pregnancy. Cadmium concentrations in placental tissue were found to be 10 times higher than in the mother’s blood in one study, and up to 100 times higher than in cord blood in another.
Lead showed the greatest variability across populations, with levels ranging from about 1 nanogram per gram in some regions to 500 nanograms per gram in heavily polluted areas. While these concentrations are generally low, the fact that the placenta serves partly as a filter for toxins means that consuming it reintroduces those filtered substances back into the mother’s body, and potentially into breast milk.
Where Medical Organizations Stand
The medical establishment’s position is clear. A review in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology concluded that physicians have no professional responsibility to offer placentophagy to pregnant women and should actively discourage the practice because it is “potentially harmful with no documented benefit.” The CDC issued a direct warning against placenta capsule ingestion following the Oregon GBS case, particularly for mothers who tested positive for GBS during pregnancy or whose infants had early-onset GBS infection.
No regulatory body in the United States oversees placenta encapsulation. The people who prepare capsules are not required to hold food-handling certifications, follow standardized processing protocols, or test finished capsules for contamination. Quality and safety vary entirely by individual provider, with no mechanism for accountability if something goes wrong.
Why People Still Choose It
Despite the lack of evidence, placenta encapsulation remains popular. Part of the appeal is the framing: it feels natural, it’s presented as an ancient practice, and the postpartum period is a vulnerable time when new mothers are searching for anything that might help. Anecdotal reports from other mothers can feel more persuasive than clinical data, and the placebo effect is real. If someone believes the capsules are helping, they may genuinely feel better, regardless of the capsule’s contents.
It’s also worth noting that the postpartum period naturally improves over time for most people. Hormones stabilize, sleep gradually improves, and the body heals. Attributing that recovery to capsules taken during the same window is a common reasoning error, but an understandable one. The current evidence simply does not support spending $200 or more on a product that delivers negligible amounts of the nutrients and hormones it’s marketed for, while carrying a small but real risk of bacterial contamination.