Why This 'Girls' Star Made Smoothies With Her Placenta

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While you might be revving your blender in an effort to simply squeeze more fruits and veggies into your diet, Girls star (and new mom) Gaby Hoffmann has been adding a surprising "super" ingredient to her own blended concoctions: bits of her placenta.
Yes, that placenta. As in the bodily organ that attaches to the umbilical cord in the womb.

Hoffmann told People on Monday night, “Placenta, placenta, placenta. Just eat that sh– up, and it does a girl good!” The actress, who gave birth to daughter Rosemary on November 19, said she made the placenta smoothies for three weeks to bounce back after labor. She said it boosted her milk supply and gave her more energy.

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“I had a home birth, so my midwife and my doula took [the placenta] and cut it up into 20 pieces and froze it, and every day, I put it in a blender with strawberries and blueberries and guava juice and a banana, and I drank that sh– up,” she added.

Some believe that eating placenta can help you slim down faster after pregnancy and fight off postpartum depression, but there’s no scientific evidence to support any health claims, Rachel Vreeman, MD, assistant professor at Indiana University School of Medicine and co-author of Don't Swallow Your Gum ($11, amazon.com) once explained to Health. For every woman who says it helped, there are others who say that downing their own afterbirth—in pill form, at least—worsened their post-pregnancy symptoms.

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Hoffmann isn’t the first celebrity mom to vouch for the pros of placenta-eating: Mad Men's January Jones popped dehydrated placenta pills after giving birth to her son in 2011. “It’s a very civilized thing that can help women with depression or fatigue. I was never depressed or sad or down after the baby was born, so I’d highly suggest it to any pregnant woman,” she told Glamour UK in 2013. The problem? Dehydrating or cooking placenta negates any potentially beneficial chemicals or hormones, Dr. Vreeman says.

All that said, there aren't any signs that downing your placenta (via smoothies or otherwise) can hurt you. So…to each her own, we guess?

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