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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve

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Camray. It's ready. Are you welcome

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to stop? Mom? Never told you? From

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house top works dot com.

0:16

Hey, welcome to the podcast. This is Molly and I'm

0:19

Kristen. Kristen. Do you remember the year

0:21

two thousand six? Vaguely?

0:24

It's only four years ago. Um,

0:26

two thousand six was kind

0:28

of a magical time, I think because the world was

0:30

awaiting the birth of one Surrey Cruise

0:34

and really, sorry, Cruise deserves a lot of podcasts.

0:37

I mean, we could talk about people's fascination

0:40

with celebrity children wearing

0:42

high heels when you're three. By

0:44

Surrey Cruise. You're referring to the offspring

0:46

of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise. Correct,

0:48

Yes, Um, Wikipedia your first her

0:50

as Tom Kitten there

0:53

Tom cat right. Um. Anyway,

0:55

the thing I was thinking about when I was thinking about

0:57

Surry Cruise is I frequently do apparently.

1:00

Um, it's back in old two

1:02

thousand six when Tom Cruise announced he was going

1:04

to eat her placenta.

1:08

Remember this, you know, I don't remember

1:10

that. The only thing I remember from that whole fiasco

1:12

was him jumping up on Oprah's couch

1:15

screaming I love her. If

1:18

only we had a couch and could re enact that moment

1:21

to be special. Well, in two thousand

1:23

and six, when old Tom Kinton was on the way,

1:25

Tom Cruise said I'm gonna I'm gonna eat the placenta

1:29

and a guard headlines because like the couch

1:31

jumping, everyone was like, that's sort of weird, Tom,

1:34

why are you doing that? Well? And usually isn't the

1:36

mother the one who eats it?

1:38

If the placenta is eating,

1:41

isn't it usually by the mom not the dad.

1:44

Well, that's that was the question that didn't even really

1:46

come up, just because everyone was still kind of blown

1:48

away by by the

1:50

option of eating a placenta. But I

1:53

mean, lots of cultures have really

1:55

interesting rituals surrounding

1:57

this organ that nourishes a

1:59

child when it is in the womb. Yeah. We found

2:01

a very informative article by Sarah J. Buckley

2:04

entitled Placenta Rituals in Folklore

2:06

from around the World. And uh, and you're right,

2:09

moll. I mean they're all all sorts of things that

2:11

folks do. In Cambodia,

2:14

the baby's placenta, which

2:16

is called quote the globe

2:18

of the origin of the soul has

2:20

to be buried in the right location

2:23

in order to to protect the baby after

2:26

birth. One of my favorite um rituals

2:28

comes from Turkey, where the placenta is known

2:30

as the friend or comrade of the baby and

2:32

it must be wrapped in a clean cloth and buried.

2:35

But the cord from the placenta,

2:37

UM, you have to if you want your kid to be well

2:40

educated. For example, you throw it over schoolyard

2:42

wall. Can you imagine being playing

2:44

in the school yard and all of a sudden cord

2:47

comes You're flying over felt

2:50

it in the face by a placenta.

2:52

UM. What are some other ones we liked well

2:54

in in Malaysia? When a baby

2:57

smiles unexpectedly here she's

2:59

said to be playing with the older sibling

3:02

a k a. The placenta. Just

3:04

kind of sweet. I like how a lot of these um

3:07

relaying around that the senter being a companion

3:09

for the child in the roomba. I

3:12

mean, you're second there for nine months. You gotta do something.

3:14

Yeah, uh spooky. But let's

3:17

see what else. For Navajo children,

3:19

their placenta will be buried at

3:22

four corners of the reservation to ensure

3:24

that they will always be connected to the land and

3:26

will return home at some point after

3:28

they grew up. That's very sweet. And Transylvania,

3:31

if you desire no more children, then

3:33

you will burn the baby's placenta and

3:35

mix it with ashes, and then the husband would

3:38

drink this to render himself infertile.

3:40

So maybe Tom Cruise was

3:42

saying we should have read between the lines here. Okay,

3:45

maybe Tom was saying by wanting

3:47

to eat the placenta that he wanted

3:49

to eat and done with kids.

3:52

It's possible. If I ever meet Tom Cruise,

3:54

I'm going to ask him about that. Yes, ask what he knows

3:56

about Transylvanian placenta

3:58

more. It's

4:01

the best pickup line I've ever heard. Um.

4:05

But an ancient Chinese medicine

4:08

that's sort of where the whole idea of eating the placenta

4:11

comes from. It also comes from the Old Animal

4:13

Kingdom. Yeah, because a lot of

4:15

lower order mammals will eat their

4:17

placed well, the mothers obviously will eat

4:20

their placenta during childbirth

4:23

and this is thought to reduce

4:26

pain and has anti inflammatory effects

4:28

for for the for the mama. And so

4:30

they're saying that if you The belief

4:32

is that if you consume the placenta

4:34

in some form, and there are a few forms that it

4:36

can take. Some women have it dried out and made

4:39

into pills. Some women just go

4:41

ahead and make a meal out of it, and we found several

4:43

recipes for things like placenta

4:45

pizza, placenta, lasagna, placenta,

4:48

cocktails, placent We

4:51

could really go on. Um. Yeah,

4:53

unfortunately, and don't look at the pictures

4:55

that are associated with it and just try

4:57

and think of it as a ingredient.

5:00

Yeah, probably not a good Google image search not

5:02

around lunch found that out the hard way.

5:05

Um. But the belief is that the if the mother

5:07

consumes it, it can it can

5:09

relieve pain in the form of postpartum

5:12

depression. And a lot of women take

5:14

this pretty seriously and anecdotally,

5:16

you know, they say that they don't have depression.

5:18

Isn't the placenta placebo? As

5:21

Kristen called her earlier this morning, I don't

5:23

know. There's not a whole lot of studies on it. In fact, they've

5:25

done studies and animals where they'll deprive the

5:27

animal of the placenta and

5:29

they don't seem to suffer any form of postpartum

5:31

depression. UM and

5:34

Mark Crystal, who has studied uh placenta

5:36

eating in animals a lot,

5:39

says that it's really probably pain relief during

5:41

the delivery that they kind of while they're

5:43

delivering the kid kind

5:45

of lick at the area to get at the placenta

5:47

juices, And there was

5:50

a sentence I never thought I'd say, they're

5:52

just kind of trying to bypassa.

5:54

The Royal College of Obstetrians

5:57

and Gynecologists in the UK also

6:00

amount with a pretty formal statement that said that if

6:02

mothers are already well nourished,

6:04

then there's really no health

6:07

benefit from eating the

6:09

placenta. Based on an article

6:11

that I read um from ABC News,

6:13

though, it seems like more and more moms in the United

6:15

States are interested in doing something with the

6:17

placenta. I mean, you read about

6:20

how people use the placenta all around, um

6:23

the world, and it seems like in the United States

6:25

it comes out and it's pretty much just deposited.

6:27

It's considered medical waste. In fact,

6:29

there have been women who have wanted to keep their placenta

6:32

for some purpose and they've had to go to court to

6:34

say, you know, that's mine. It's like giving

6:36

me the tonsils that you took out or whatever.

6:39

Yeah, And in Hawaii it's been more of a problem

6:42

because Native Hawaiians

6:44

will plant the placenta

6:47

with a tree to grow as

6:49

the child grows, and it's referred to as

6:51

there, you know, placenta tree to

6:53

kind of chart their their growth as a as

6:55

a person. And so there have been a

6:57

lot of legal problems with some hospitals

7:00

not allowing the moms to to take a posten to

7:02

home. So the thought is that even after

7:04

exits the body, the placenta, which has been

7:06

providing nutrients to the baby all along,

7:08

does not all of a sudden lose all

7:10

the hormones, growth factors, immune

7:12

molecules, lipids, at

7:15

nucleic acids, all these things that were

7:17

good for the baby, they're still present as

7:19

good for the earth, good for the

7:22

mother even after um

7:25

earth, and maybe even good for other people.

7:28

Yeah, because we found an article

7:30

in Slate that talked about

7:32

dropping by on your lunch ower and

7:35

getting a placental transfusion. Right

7:37

now, since the late nineteen

7:40

fifties, placental extract has

7:42

been available in Japan, and

7:44

even today there are some

7:47

clinics that will allow you to

7:49

go in and actually get an ivy drip

7:51

of these of this placental extract

7:55

so that you can supposedly

7:57

benefit from all of those rich

7:59

compounds and nutrients that are in found

8:02

in placentas. Yeah, they all. They don't

8:04

have a lot of data on any

8:06

of this eating it, infusing it, UM.

8:09

There's really no data on it. There. There was

8:12

one small study that um slate

8:14

found from Korea where they injected

8:16

women UM between the ages forty

8:18

and sixty four with placental

8:21

extract and the women did report that they had

8:23

UM significantly lower menopausal symptoms

8:27

than the ones who were just the control group,

8:29

and they had decreased fatigue, and

8:31

they had UM improved immune

8:33

systems. But it's a very small study,

8:35

it's not considered definitive. But that's

8:38

the one thing they found that suggests that maybe

8:40

these compounds are still good and can still work

8:43

their magic after they've exited the womb.

8:45

Well, and I thought it was interesting to the Japan's

8:47

National Health insurance will cover placental

8:50

treatments for liver disease and UM

8:52

these symptoms of menopause, and some

8:54

people will actually just pay out of

8:56

pocket to UM have these injections

8:59

for treat and a fatigue, insomnia,

9:01

and uh to uh combat aging.

9:04

Speaking of combating aging, Kristen, you

9:07

can buy face cream that has placental

9:09

extract, either from a human or from a

9:11

cow. Yeah, placental

9:13

extract became a pretty popular cosmetic

9:17

ingredient in the nineteen

9:19

forties in the US because they

9:21

claimed that it would remove

9:23

wrinkles and stimulate tissue

9:25

growth. However, the FDA

9:28

hasn't really been on

9:30

board with all of these placental skin

9:33

claims. Yeah, thatsly came in and said,

9:35

you can't promise you're gonna make people look younger,

9:37

and so I think now they just don't promise

9:40

it, but you'll find in the ingredients. Hey,

9:42

you've got placenta in here. It's the fountain of youth.

9:44

I mean, you know, babies, youth

9:47

ties together well. And evidently in the seventies

9:50

I thought this was kind of funny. A lot

9:52

of shampoos and conditioners

9:54

where marketed as having placental extract

9:57

in them as well, to make your hair

10:00

grow long and strong and healthy.

10:02

And now that's kind of a fallen by the wayside

10:05

if babies are known for their strong and healthy

10:07

hair um.

10:10

But you know what, I kind of wonder if it's just extract,

10:13

can it really have all these nutrients? I mean, like

10:16

Mark Crystal, the guy who was for Time about earlier,

10:18

who's studied in animals, it's basically said, if you

10:20

cook it, you're going to destroy all the proteins.

10:22

If you dry it out, you're destroying other things.

10:25

I mean, if you're just taking extracts,

10:27

does a really still pack a punch?

10:30

And that's what really no study can tell us so far.

10:32

Yeah, and so far in terms of it's

10:35

used in skin care products, uh,

10:37

they've only been able to say that, yes, it can

10:39

protect your skin and help hydrate

10:42

it, but it's no better than you

10:44

know, any other kind of additives

10:47

that are something like every moisturizer,

10:49

right, And in terms of wound healing,

10:52

that's one of the claims that

10:55

you know, Polson extract will stimulate all

10:57

this cell regrowth and will help

10:59

with heling. But it's also been found to be

11:01

no more effective than any

11:04

an asseptic. But

11:06

you know what, I do think one way that I

11:09

found when we were researching this topic where placentis

11:11

can be really effective, what

11:14

when you make teddy bears out of them. I

11:16

was worried you were going to go there. Kristen

11:19

did not like the placenta teddy bear as much as

11:21

I did. But basically, um, this

11:23

guy from London, Alex Green, he's a designer,

11:26

took a placenta and wanted

11:29

to kind of shake up how people

11:31

thought of it. You know, he probably

11:33

read the same things we did where it's used around the world

11:35

for various things, and he knew

11:37

that in the United Kingdom and the United States

11:40

it's sort of just considered medical waste. Um.

11:43

He said that he read the ancient Egyptians

11:45

revered the revered the pharaoh's

11:47

placentis so much that they put it on a pole

11:49

like a flag for public display. So

11:52

he had all that in his mind, and so he took a placenta.

11:56

He cured it was salt to kill the bacteria

11:58

and remove the water, and so then he's got kind of

12:00

like a dried placental

12:02

skin. And then he

12:04

fills it with a mixture of eggs

12:07

and tannins and so is it filled

12:09

with brown white rice. And if you, I mean, you can

12:11

Google Plus sent a Teddy Barrens

12:13

an image of It's not the cutest teddy

12:15

bear ever, but I mean it

12:17

does kind of look like a brown mother teddy bear. Yeah.

12:20

I mean, if what's going to be more special

12:22

to a kid a

12:24

teddy bear made of its own placenta, I

12:27

can think of a lot of things, Molly.

12:30

If you're given the choice between a

12:32

cuddly fake teddy bear and a placenta

12:34

teddy bear, I take

12:37

the cutly one. Yeah. Yeah, but

12:39

you do have to kind of admire the fact

12:41

that he's going to take something that we consider waste

12:44

and try and make it into something that's art.

12:46

Sure, in placenta art isn't all that uncommon

12:49

either. Women will, you know, use their

12:51

placenta and integrated into um

12:54

kind of ritualistic art

12:57

art projects. Now it's

13:00

I think it's fairly well known that neither Kristen nor

13:02

I have given birth, so we actually

13:04

haven't. Act I haven't seen a

13:06

placenta up close, have you, Kristen?

13:09

Uh No, not that I can remember.

13:13

So we are I

13:16

am willing to admit right here that maybe we

13:18

would have a different opinion if we had seen one

13:20

up close. Yeah, which is

13:22

said anecdotally. Some of some of these women

13:24

will swear by the healing

13:27

properties of placenta

13:29

phagi, are you eating eating placenta?

13:32

So admitting that we haven't seen one. We want

13:34

to hear from you women out there who have

13:37

and men. Right, so when it came out where

13:39

you like, there's my

13:41

kids, teddy bear, were you at

13:43

all interested in eating it? Were

13:46

you all interested in smearing it on your face via

13:48

a moisturizer. I have a hunch that

13:50

you know, probably going into the birth

13:53

women will have decided long

13:55

before then whether or not they're going to want to keep their placenta.

13:57

It doesn't seem like it's kind of a

14:01

operate delivery room saying where you're

14:03

like, yes, give me the placenta,

14:05

let's take it home. You're probably more distracted

14:07

by the fact that you all had a baby. Yes. So,

14:10

since Molly and I have never had to personally

14:13

make a placenta related decision

14:15

at this juncture in our lives, we want

14:17

to hear from you guys about, uh,

14:20

if you have had to do it, what you know, if

14:22

you just did away

14:24

with the placenta, or if you said, hey, why don't we

14:26

why don't we cook up sim placenta lasagna?

14:29

There's no harm and try and no harm,

14:31

no foul because so far our

14:33

research, you know, doesn't

14:35

exactly back up all of these health benefits.

14:38

But but you know, why

14:40

would it come out if we weren't supposed to do something with it? Exactly?

14:43

Why would so many people be doing this for so long

14:46

if maybe there there wasn't something

14:48

behind it. So give us your perspective

14:50

and we will. Let's close out by saying that

14:53

you and the tom Cruise gained all those headlines

14:55

for saying it was going to eat it. He kind of then later

14:57

recanted, and we actually have no idea whether

15:00

Sorry cruises placenta ever went

15:02

into anyone's stomach. Mhm.

15:05

On that note, listener mail the listener

15:07

mail. So

15:12

we've got an email here speaking of birthing.

15:15

We've got an email here from Diana about birth order

15:18

from our podcast about whether or not birth order

15:20

influences your personality. She

15:22

said, I thought it was interesting because as a firstborn,

15:25

I had a lot of the characteristics the author gave

15:27

a first borns, and I could see that my brother,

15:29

who was nine years younger, was sharing the qualities of the

15:31

second born and youngest children. I recently

15:34

read the Birth Order Book by Dr Kevin Lehman,

15:36

and he breaks down birth order and all the exceptions.

15:39

You guys didn't talk about all the characteristics

15:41

of people in different places in a family.

15:43

For example, in my experience, class clowns

15:45

are the youngest children. All of my past

15:48

boyfriends except one were youngest children,

15:50

and they were all class or

15:52

work clowns. Lehman says that

15:54

it's because youngest children do it for the attention

15:57

when they're older siblings are getting attention by

16:00

in academics or sports. Oh,

16:02

it's the youngest child. And I don't

16:06

entirely agree with h. Lehman's

16:08

just keep bringing okay. John

16:11

Stewart, Jim Carrey, Ellen de Jenners, and Eddie Murphy

16:13

are all youngest children, including your

16:15

Shirley Christ and Congress that will soon be added

16:18

to the list, you know, as I reach global fame. I

16:20

was recently promoted to a position at my job

16:22

that requires excellent organizational

16:24

and communication skills, and I was sent to corporate headquarters

16:26

for training with about twenty others from around the country.

16:29

After a day or so, out of curiosity, I asked

16:31

everyone their birth order. Everyone was

16:33

a first or only child, except to interesting

16:36

one of which was a class clown and another was

16:39

in what Lehman calls a role reverse family.

16:41

She was the youngest, but her parents were divorced and her

16:43

mother held her responsible for her older

16:45

sister, so she has traits that normally the older

16:48

oldest child would have. Parents definitely

16:50

determine how children will turn out, and

16:52

every family is different, but I think there's something

16:54

to it. Okay, thank you, Diana. I'll

16:56

read another one on the same topic from Katie, who

16:59

writes as a first on myself. I know I'm

17:01

biased, but I have some opinions about the birth order podcast.

17:03

I am two years older than my brother, and I live in an upper

17:05

middle class neighborhood and go to a great school.

17:08

I've always felt that he got the better end of the deal, but

17:10

I suspect that I'd feel the same way if the roles were reversed.

17:12

It's probably a grass that's always greener on the other side

17:15

situation, and brother does benefit

17:17

from much more relaxed rules and more privileges

17:19

than me. I was the last one of my friends to get

17:21

my own cell phone in eighth grade, whereas he received one

17:23

at the end of fifth grade. He's rewarded

17:25

monetarily for good grades when I am not. My

17:27

parents also let him do things at his age that I

17:30

was never allowed to do. This could either be because

17:32

my parents realized they could let a child out on a longer

17:34

leash and the child would still survive, or be

17:36

because he's a boy. Either way, it's infuriating.

17:39

I also happened to be friends with almost all oldest

17:41

siblings. We all feel that we're stuck

17:43

doing much more work than our younger siblings. If

17:45

a younger sibling doesn't want to do something, we always have

17:48

to do the test for them. Additionally,

17:50

younger siblings at our school have a much easier

17:52

time. They have friends where they come into the school

17:54

because they know all the older siblings friends. They

17:56

also have tips from older siblings on specific

17:58

teachers, and always have home help from someone who

18:00

took the class a little more recently than

18:03

parents. All of the uper geeks

18:05

are also younger siblings because they have older

18:07

siblings who taught them higher level skills.

18:09

I'm still at the top of my class without a big brother sister,

18:12

although I'm certain things would be different if

18:14

I had fun. So as for the overall

18:16

question of podcast this birth order to tremind your personality,

18:19

I think the answer is yes. Family,

18:22

I would like to point out something I think we've gotten

18:24

more email about this from oldest siblings

18:27

in the younger core, driven to write

18:29

in yes, we're just off clown

18:31

and around the youngest siblings can't be

18:33

bothered. UM.

18:36

Well, if you've got an opinion on birth, order, placenta

18:38

or anything else, we would love to hear from you. Our email

18:41

is Mom's Stuff at how stuff works

18:43

dot com. We've also got a lot of things like

18:45

our blog is called how to

18:47

stuff, and we've got articles

18:50

on everything related to childbirth,

18:53

including probably some stuff on placenta's if

18:55

you're at all interested. And again,

18:57

all of that is located at how stuff works

18:59

that um for

19:03

more on this and thousands of other topics, does

19:05

it how staff works dot com.

19:08

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