A placenta tincture is made by steeping a small piece of raw or dehydrated placenta in high-proof alcohol for several weeks, then straining and storing the liquid. The process is straightforward, but it carries real safety considerations worth understanding before you begin. Here’s what the preparation involves, how people use the finished product, and what the science says about both benefits and risks.
Getting Your Placenta Home
Before anything else, you need to arrange to take your placenta home from the hospital or birth center. Policies vary by facility and state. In Texas, for example, state law requires mothers to be tested for certain infectious diseases, and a placenta will not be released if results indicate infection with specific conditions. Most facilities require you to sign a release form acknowledging the placenta is for personal use only and cannot be sold.
Once released, the placenta should be sealed in a container, kept cool, and refrigerated as soon as possible. Handle it as you would raw meat: keep it away from food, wash your hands before and after touching it, and clean all surfaces and utensils with warm soapy water. If you aren’t preparing the tincture immediately, refrigerate or freeze the placenta until you’re ready.
What You Need
The supply list is short. You’ll need a clean glass jar with a tight-fitting lid (a mason jar works well), high-proof alcohol, a cutting board, a sharp knife, a strainer or cheesecloth, coffee filters, and a dark glass dropper bottle for the finished tincture.
For the alcohol, most practitioners use 80 to 100 proof vodka or a diluted Everclear mixture. The standard approach in herbal tincture-making is to use alcohol in the range of 40 to 60 percent, which is roughly 80 to 120 proof. Higher proof extracts more thoroughly but also produces a harsher-tasting tincture. Vodka at 80 proof is the most common choice for home preparation.
Step-by-Step Preparation
There are two starting points: using a small piece of raw placenta or using placenta that has been dehydrated first. Most tincture recipes call for a raw piece, set aside before any other processing takes place.
Cut a small portion of placenta, typically about the size of a thumb or a strip roughly one to two inches long. Place it in the bottom of your glass jar. Pour the alcohol over the piece until it is fully submerged and the jar is nearly full. Seal the jar tightly.
If you’re working with dehydrated placenta powder instead, the general ratio used in herbal tincture-making is one part dried material by weight to five parts alcohol by volume. For a raw (fresh) piece, the ratio is closer to one part tissue to two parts alcohol, similar to the standard fresh-plant tincture ratio used commercially.
Store the sealed jar in a cool, dark place, like a cupboard, for six weeks. Some people gently shake the jar every few days during this period to help extraction, though this isn’t strictly necessary. After six weeks, strain the liquid through cheesecloth or a fine mesh strainer, then pass it a second time through a coffee filter to remove any remaining sediment. Pour the strained tincture into a dark glass dropper bottle for easy dosing. Discard the solid material left in the filter.
Raw Versus Steamed Placenta
If you’re also making capsules, you may have heard about two preparation methods. The traditional method, drawn from Traditional Chinese Medicine practices, involves gently steaming the placenta over a bath of fresh ginger and lemon before dehydrating it into powder. The raw method skips steaming entirely and dehydrates the placenta as-is, which takes longer to process.
For a tincture specifically, most preparations use a raw, unsteamed piece of placenta placed directly into alcohol. Proponents of the raw method argue that skipping the heat step preserves more hormones and nutrients. A study analyzing 28 processed placenta samples found detectable concentrations of 16 out of 17 hormones tested, some at levels researchers noted could conceivably yield physiological effects. However, that study examined steamed and dehydrated samples prepared for capsules, not alcohol tinctures, so how much carries over into a tincture is unclear.
Storage and Shelf Life
A properly made alcohol tincture is shelf-stable for years. Keep it sealed in a dark glass bottle in a cool, dark place. It does not need refrigeration. The high alcohol content acts as a preservative, preventing bacterial growth in the finished liquid. Exposure to heat and light will degrade the tincture over time, so a cupboard away from the stove is ideal.
How People Use It
The typical dosage is small. Common recommendations from placenta preparation services suggest 1 to 3 drops placed directly under the tongue, or 5 to 10 drops diluted in water or juice. People who use placenta tinctures generally save them for times of hormonal transition: the return of menstruation postpartum, weaning, periods of high stress, or eventually menopause. Because the tincture lasts for years, a single small bottle can be used sparingly over a long time.
Safety Risks to Understand
The most concrete safety warning comes from a 2016 CDC case report. An infant in Oregon developed a serious bloodstream infection caused by group B Streptococcus (GBS) bacteria. The mother had been consuming placenta capsules, and testing confirmed the capsules contained the same GBS strain found in the baby. Genetic sequencing at the CDC showed no differences between the bacterial strains, pointing to the capsules as the likely source of reinfection.
The core problem is that no standardized processing protocol exists for placenta consumption. The CDC noted that the encapsulation process, which involves heating and dehydrating, does not reliably eradicate infectious pathogens. Temperatures of at least 130°F (54°C) sustained for over two hours are needed just to significantly reduce Salmonella counts, and many home dehydration setups may not maintain those conditions consistently. An alcohol tincture is different from a capsule in that high-proof alcohol does have antimicrobial properties, but no controlled studies have tested whether the maceration process eliminates all pathogens that may be present in placental tissue.
Beyond bacteria, placental tissue can contain heavy metals accumulated during pregnancy. A systematic review of dozens of studies found mercury, cadmium, and lead in placental samples worldwide. Lead showed the widest range, from barely detectable levels to 500 nanograms per gram in heavily polluted areas. Cadmium levels were particularly elevated in samples from the United States, Japan, Bangladesh, and parts of Eastern Europe. While concentrations have generally declined since the 1980s due to environmental regulations, the placenta does function as a filter, and trace amounts of these metals are consistently present.
What the Evidence Says About Benefits
Proponents claim placenta consumption helps with postpartum depression, boosts milk supply, restores energy, and balances hormones. A comprehensive review published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology evaluated the available evidence and found no scientific support for any clinical benefit of placentophagy in humans. The review concluded that the positive effects reported are entirely anecdotal, limited to self-reported surveys rather than controlled studies. The authors also noted that nutrients and hormones are not retained in sufficient amounts after processing to be therapeutically useful to the mother.
This doesn’t mean people who report feeling better are imagining it. Placebo effects are real and measurable, and the postpartum period involves rapid hormonal shifts that naturally stabilize over time regardless of intervention. But the distinction between “I felt better” and “this caused me to feel better” is important when weighing the practice against its risks.