Dear Veronica
Congratulations on your venture. My e-mail isn't very positive I'm afraid. I don't want to discourage you but..... There are no valid research studies that show that eating the placenta has any beneficial effects. There are a few anecdotal studies which refer to its beneficial effects but in terms of evidence based midwifery there is nothing useful in the literature. So, if you have to do a literature review for your research proposal it will be awfully thin. However, there are a few women who eat it and swear by it but it'd be awfully hard to prove. So, my advice is to find something that others have done so you'll have lots to talk about in the proposal. Alternatively you could set up a randomised controlled trial to see if it has an effect in reducing the incidence of PND. But that would be awfully hard to do and you'd probably need a couple of thousand women who are prepared to eat their placentas and then match them with a couple of thousand who don't. It all sounds too hard to me! Anyway good luck and have fun.
Carol
Visiting Midwifery Scholar
School of Nursing and Midwifery
Flinders University, Adelaide, 5001
Telephone: 08 8201 3924
Fax: 08 8201 3410
