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“Hi Vanessa, first, allow me to thank you for creating such a valuable source of information for pregnant woman. I discovered your podcast at the beginning of my second trimester when looking for pregnancy resources for my husband and I to listen to during our babymoon road trip and I was immediately hooked. Since then I’ve listened to practically every episode and I feel so much more prepared for birth thanks to you! There’s one topic I recently stumbled upon and wondered if you might have any info is the following: rheumatoid arthritis and placenta encapsulation. I’ve listened to your podcast on placenta encapsulation and realize that there’s little data that supports this, but I wonder if there might be any evidence in regards to helping treat the effects of symptoms from autoimmune conditions such as RA. RA patients often go into remission from their symptoms during pregnancy (myself included) thanks to the cocktail of hormones flowing through our bodies, but this relief is often followed by post-partum flares as the hormones leave us. I hear these can be quite severe, and often cause women to need to increase medication which soon prevents them from breastfeeding. As I’m now 33 weeks pregnant, I’m trying to figure out if there’s anything at all that can be done to help prevent or lessen these flares so that I’ll be able to care for my newborn. My understanding is that placenta encapsulation is a way to continue consuming the hormones we benefited from during pregnancy, so I have to wonder if there’s any evidence that it may help treat RA. Also, in my recent searches on the topic I found a few articles which mentioned that the CDC recommends against placenta encapsulation; is this true?” – Karine

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