New research from Yale University suggests an often deadly pregnancy disease, pre-eclampsia, stems from a battle in the womb between a father’s biological goal to make the biggest, healthiest baby possible, and the mother’s need to survive giving birth. Nature has it’s wisdom of making a baby big enough to thrive yet [...]

New research has given a better understanding of the placenta’s important role in pregnancy and brain development as Zoe Corbyn writes in Nature. The placenta was once thought of mostly as a passive organ to filter nutrients to the baby. Now the placenta is being recognized as being an active, [...]

The miracle of life, the process of embryo to fetus to baby is deeply mysterious and engaging to ponder for any of us birth, placenta, and baby lovers. The-scientist.com recently published an article by Amy Maxmen, “Embryos Right Genetic Wrongs?” and our lovely placenta was mentioned.  A recent study with [...]

New research published in the journal Nature is showing that the placenta produces seratonin prenatally. This is a new exciting finding, since it was always believed that the baby got the seratonin from the mother. When they discovered that seratonin can not cross the placenta, they started looking for where the seratonin was coming from, [...]

At long last, here is Part 2 of the AAA conference session paper summaries. If you missed it, you can read Part 1 here.
Dr. Daniel Benyshek presented the preliminary data from our intra-placental comparison study, where we look at what my method of preparation does to certain analytes in the placenta. Encouragingly, NONE of [...]

I am recently returned (as of late last night) from the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in New Orleans, LA. I was there to present my paper based on the results of my online survey that I blogged about last month. I have closed the survey for now, since we are going to revamp it before [...]

Thanks to everyone who participated in the first round of the Placenta Survey! We had wonderful data to present at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in New Orleans this past Thursday.
I have temporarily closed the survey so we can edit some of the questions and add some things we would really like to know [...]

Calling all placenta-eaters! Here is an opportunity to contribute to research being done out of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). We need your input! This data is going to be very important in determining whether or not placentophagy is beneficial to postpartum women.
Take the survey now
The official recruitment letter:
Greetings,
This is an invitation [...]

Postpartum Depression has only recently started garnering the proper attention it deserves. Now, after studying it, researchers are finding that mothers are not the only ones who suffer from it; dads get it too.
While women have a major hormonal fluctuation after giving birth, which frequently triggers the Baby Blues (moodiness, irritability, weepiness, anxiety), her [...]

Here’s a shocker: BPA (the chemical component found in plastics) has health risks! Researchers in Canada did testing on placental cells to find out if this chemical, commonly found in most Americans (including pregnant women), and discovered that it does have a detrimental effect on the placenta.
The most worrisome part of this research study [...]