[Voodoo Vince]

Are placenta treatments safe?
By Sara Ann K, Multimedia Journalist, RazorTV

MORE and more Singaporean women are turning to placenta treatments for beauty and health reasons. The placenta is an organ that lines the uterine wall during pregnancy, and is attached to the baby by the umbilical cord. It is expelled during birth, but increasingly the placenta is being preserved for its nutritional and cosmetic values.

One woman who swears by its benefit is Ms May Kwong, founder and director of Maylande, a spa that uses human placenta as one of its main ingredients in its treatments. Once suffering from liver cirrosis, she was yellowed with jaundice and had to sleep for close to 23 hours a day. But consuming placenta, she claimed, led to a full recovery in 3 months. Now, even her once cynical daughters are advocates of placenta jabs and tonics, which they go to Hong Kong for.

Placenta jabs are not available in Singapore. In fact, famous aesthetician Dr Martin Huang was recently fined for administering sheep placenta jabs into his patients.

According to Ms Kwong, placenta treatments can cost up to over HK$100,000 ($20,000) for first time treatments in Hong Kong. At $5,000 per injection, the price of beauty might still be too much for some to stomach.

However, the placenta treatment has many critics. Dr Tan Siew Buoy, a traditional Chinese practitioner in the Infertility department of Thong Chai Medical Instituition, discouraged human placenta consumption, especially in its raw form. Quick to point out that placenta is rarely prescribed in Singapore, she suggested many other alternative herbs that offered the same health benefits.

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking...ry_457103.html