People save placentas for reasons that range from evidence-based medical examination to spiritual ritual to largely unproven wellness trends. The strongest clinical reason is pathological analysis, where a trained specialist examines the tissue under a microscope to understand what went wrong (or right) during pregnancy. Beyond that, the amniotic membrane has well-established surgical applications, donated cord blood can be banked for future stem cell therapies, and researchers use placental tissue to study drug transfer and environmental contamination. Then there is a whole separate category of personal or cultural reasons, from burial ceremonies to encapsulation for consumption, where the evidence is far thinner than the marketing suggests.
Pathology Examination After Complicated Pregnancies
The most broadly endorsed medical reason to save a placenta is to send it to a pathology lab. When a pregnancy involves preeclampsia, unexplained preterm birth, growth restriction, stillbirth, or certain infections, examining the placental tissue can reveal what went wrong. Specific patterns of injury visible under a microscope help clinicians classify the underlying biology of obstetrical disease, which can inform care in future pregnancies.1PubMed Central. Placental pathology is necessary to understand common pregnancy complications and achieve an improved taxonomy of obstetrical disease A placenta that looks normal on the outside can harbor signs of restricted blood flow, chronic inflammation, or clotting problems that would never be caught otherwise.
Not every birth requires a placental exam. In uncomplicated, full-term deliveries with healthy outcomes, hospitals typically treat the placenta as clinical waste. But when something unexpected happens, pathology can be the difference between a shrug and a diagnosis. For parents who have experienced a pregnancy loss, this information can be especially meaningful, sometimes revealing a treatable condition like antiphospholipid syndrome that changes the management of the next pregnancy entirely.
Surgical and Therapeutic Uses of Amniotic Membrane
The amniotic membrane, the thin inner lining of the placental sac, has real and well-documented uses in surgery. It has become a standard graft material in ophthalmology, used to reconstruct damaged eye surfaces after chemical burns, infections, and various corneal diseases. The technique has become widespread because the membrane is relatively easy to process, convenient to use, and produces consistently high success rates.2PubMed. Amniotic membrane transplantation for ocular surface reconstruction It also serves as a substrate for growing epithelial stem cells outside the body, which can then be transplanted back to patients with severe eye injuries.
Beyond eye surgery, amniotic membrane grafts are used in wound care, burn treatment, and some dental and orthopedic procedures. The membrane’s natural anti-inflammatory and anti-scarring properties make it useful wherever delicate tissue repair is needed. These applications rely on donated tissue processed by regulated tissue banks, not on a parent keeping their own placenta in a cooler. The distinction matters: clinical-grade amniotic membrane goes through screening, sterilization, and quality control that home preservation cannot replicate.
Cord Blood Banking and the Delayed Clamping Tradeoff
Cord blood, collected from the umbilical cord and placenta after birth, contains stem cells that can treat certain blood cancers, immune disorders, and metabolic diseases. Public cord blood banks accept donations for anyone who needs a match, while private banks store a family’s cord blood for potential personal use later. The medical value of publicly banked cord blood is well established. Private banking is more contentious because the odds of a child actually needing their own stored cord blood are very low, and the cells may not even be usable for many conditions since they carry the same genetic mutations that caused the disease.
A practical tension has emerged between cord blood collection and delayed cord clamping, which is now recommended by most obstetric guidelines because it gives the newborn extra blood volume and iron stores. Delaying the clamp by even 30 to 60 seconds reduces the volume of blood left in the cord for collection.3PubMed Central. Efficiency assessment of cord blood banking and compatibility with delayed cord clamping Waiting more than two minutes is even more significant: the proportion of cord blood units with enough cells to be useful for transplant drops sharply compared to immediate clamping.4PubMed. Delayed clamping of the umbilical cord after delivery and implications for public cord blood banking Parents considering cord blood banking should know that prioritizing the baby’s immediate benefit from delayed clamping may reduce the quality of the banked sample. For most families, the guaranteed benefit of delayed clamping outweighs the speculative benefit of private cord blood storage.
Eating the Placenta and What the Research Actually Shows
Placentophagy, the practice of consuming one’s own placenta after birth, has become a visible wellness trend, especially in the form of dehydrated, encapsulated pills. Advocates claim it prevents postpartum depression, boosts energy, improves milk supply, and replenishes iron. These claims have been shaped far more by social media and celebrity endorsement than by clinical evidence.5International Journal Of Community Medicine And Public Health. Human placentophagy: an appraisal of benefits, risks and beliefs When researchers have actually tested these claims in controlled studies, the results are disappointing for proponents.
A randomized, double-blind pilot trial comparing placenta capsules to a beef placebo found no significant differences in mood, bonding, or fatigue between the two groups.6PubMed. Placentophagy’s effects on mood, bonding, and fatigue: A pilot trial, part 2 The study did note some hints of reduced depressive symptoms in the placenta group at individual time points, but these did not reach statistical significance, meaning they could easily be due to chance. A much larger observational study of over 6,000 women found something arguably worse: after controlling for more than 90 variables including prior mental health history, women who ate their placentas had a 15 to 20 percent higher risk of screening positive for postpartum depression compared to those who did not.7PubMed Central. Comparison of placenta consumers’ and non-consumers’ postpartum depression screening results using EPDS in US community birth settings (n=6038): a propensity score analysis That finding does not prove eating the placenta causes depression, since women who choose placentophagy may differ from those who do not in ways the study could not capture. But it certainly does not support the claim that the practice prevents it.
The Iron Question
One of the more plausible-sounding claims is that placenta capsules help restore iron levels after the blood loss of childbirth. Placental tissue does contain more iron than beef, and encapsulated placenta had roughly seven times the iron concentration of a beef placebo in one study. But at the maximum daily dose participants took, the capsules provided only about a quarter of the recommended daily iron intake for a lactating woman. The result was predictable: no measurable difference in hemoglobin, ferritin, or transferrin levels between the placenta group and the placebo group.8PubMed. Effects of Human Maternal Placentophagy on Maternal Postpartum Iron Status: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Pilot Study You would get more iron from a standard supplement or a serving of fortified cereal.
What Happens to Hormones During Processing
Another assumption behind placentophagy is that the hormones in the placenta survive the preparation process and are delivered to the mother in meaningful amounts. The placenta does contain estrogen, progesterone, and other hormones during pregnancy. But the steaming and dehydration steps used to make capsules significantly reduce hormone concentrations.9PubMed. Human placentophagy: Effects of dehydration and steaming on hormones, metals and bacteria in placental tissue What remains in the finished capsule is a fraction of what was in the raw tissue, and it is far from clear that those residual amounts would have any physiological effect when taken orally. The processing essentially undermines the theoretical basis for the practice.
Why Major Medical Organizations Advise Against Placentophagy
Both the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have advised against consuming the placenta. Their concern is twofold: the claimed benefits are unproven, and the production of placenta capsules is completely unregulated.10PubMed Central. Placentophagia in Tribal and Modern Societies: Navigating the Thin Line Between Risk and Benefit There is no standardized preparation method, no required testing for bacterial contamination, and no quality oversight. The CDC’s specific warning was prompted in part by a 2016 case in which a newborn developed a serious Group B streptococcus infection linked to the mother’s contaminated placenta capsules.
People sometimes point to the fact that most other mammals eat their placentas after birth as evidence that humans should too. The comparison is weaker than it sounds. Other mammals eat the placenta raw and immediately, likely for reasons related to predator avoidance, caloric recovery, and nest-cleaning rather than postpartum mood regulation. Humans process the placenta days later, after steaming and dehydrating it, which changes its composition substantially. The evolutionary argument does not translate cleanly to encapsulated pills shipped in the mail.11PubMed Central. Consumption of Maternal Placenta in Humans and Nonhuman Mammals: Beneficial and Adverse Effects
Cultural and Spiritual Traditions
Long before the wellness industry discovered the placenta, cultures around the world treated it as something more than clinical waste. Many indigenous traditions involve burying the placenta beneath a chosen plant or at a specific site, with the belief that the burial location influences the child’s future, protects them from harm, or ensures continued fertility for the family.12PubMed Central. The Disposal of Placenta among Indigenous Groups Globally: An Integrative Literature Review In some Pacific Island, Māori, and Southeast Asian traditions, the placenta is considered the baby’s spiritual twin or companion, and its respectful treatment is a matter of cultural obligation.
Among Australian home-birthing women, documented placenta rituals include burial beneath a specifically chosen plant, consumption, and lotus birth, in which the umbilical cord is left attached and allowed to dry and separate naturally rather than being clamped and cut.13PubMed Central. More than clinical waste? Placenta rituals among Australian home-birthing women These practices are not about clinical benefit in the way a Western medical framework would measure it. They represent a deliberate choice to treat birth as a spiritual event rather than purely a medical one. Hospitals that want to respect cultural competence increasingly accommodate requests to release the placenta to the family, though policies vary widely and some institutions require patients to sign a release acknowledging the tissue is no longer under medical oversight.
Research Applications
Donated placentas serve an important role in biomedical research that most people never hear about. One longstanding use is the ex vivo perfusion model, where researchers keep a delivered placenta alive in the lab by pumping fluid through its blood vessels. This setup allows scientists to study how drugs, nutrients, infections, and toxic substances cross from mother to fetus without any risk to an actual pregnancy.14PubMed Central. A review of ex vivo placental perfusion models: an underutilized but promising method to study maternal-fetal interactions The model is considered underutilized despite its potential, partly because fresh placentas need to be processed within hours of delivery, which creates logistical challenges.
Placental tissue has also become a window into environmental contamination. A 2020 study examining six placentas from women with normal pregnancies found microplastic fragments in four of them, distributed across the fetal side, the maternal side, and the membranes in between.15PubMed. Plasticenta: First evidence of microplastics in human placenta The particles ranged from 5 to 10 micrometers and included various plastic types. The study was small and its health implications are still unclear, but it demonstrated that the placenta is not the impenetrable barrier it was once assumed to be. For environmental health researchers, preserved placental samples function as a biological record of what a pregnant person was exposed to.
Placental Extracts in Skin Care
Outside the postpartum context entirely, placental extracts have a long history in the cosmetics and skincare industry, particularly in East Asian markets. These products use processed extracts from human or animal placentas as active ingredients in serums, creams, and injectable treatments. Laboratory research has found that human placental extract can stimulate collagen production in skin cells. One study showed that treated skin cells produced roughly 1.4 times more of a key collagen gene’s product compared to untreated cells, with the effect increasing at higher concentrations.16Nature / Scientific Reports. Human placental extract activates a wide array of gene expressions related to skin functions
That said, a lab finding in cultured cells does not automatically translate to visible results on your face. The cosmetics industry has a long track record of citing cell-culture studies as proof that a product works, when the concentration, delivery method, and biological context in a petri dish bear little resemblance to rubbing a cream on skin. Placental extract skincare products are commercially available and legal in most markets, but their clinical efficacy for anti-aging purposes in humans has not been rigorously demonstrated in the kind of large, controlled trials that would settle the question. If you encounter a placenta-based serum at a beauty counter, treat the claims with the same skepticism you would apply to any ingredient with in-vitro data but limited clinical proof.
Practical Considerations If You Want to Keep Your Placenta
If you plan to take your placenta home after a hospital birth, start the conversation with your provider well before delivery day. Hospital policies differ: some release the placenta readily with a signed form, others require approval from an infection-control committee, and a few refuse outright. In cases where pathological examination is medically indicated, the hospital may need to retain the tissue first and release it afterward, which can take days. If you are delivering at a birth center or at home, keeping the placenta is logistically simpler but you still need a plan for transport and storage. Placental tissue is a biological material that begins to decompose quickly. If you intend to use it for anything other than immediate burial, it needs to be refrigerated within hours and frozen if the intended use is more than a day or two away.
For parents considering encapsulation, it is worth knowing that the people who process placentas into capsules are not licensed or regulated by any health authority. There are no mandatory hygiene standards, no required testing for pathogens like Group B strep or hepatitis, and no consistency in how the tissue is heated or dried. You are trusting an unregulated service provider with a biological product you plan to ingest. Some families make an informed decision to proceed anyway, and that is their right, but the framing of encapsulation as a normal postpartum health practice overstates the evidence and understates the risks.