What Happens If You Put Placenta In Your Hair?

by Jaya Saxena and Jazmine Hughes

“I just bought all the placenta items they had,” read a text from Jaya yesterday afternoon, and it is easily a contender for text of the year.

For weeks, Jaya and I have been obsessed with the thought of putting placenta in our hair — partially because of the allure of putting something weird in our hair, partially because placenta is supposed to have moisturizing and conditioning properties, and partially because Jaya just happens to live next to a beauty supply store with an abundance of placenta-based products.

Here are the products we used:

Hask Henna ’n’ Placenta with Olive Oil conditioning treatment
Lafier Colageno & Placenta Shampoo
Hask Placenta Leave-In Instant Conditioning Treatment spray
Hask Placenta Leave-In Instant Conditioning Treatment… shot glass?
Queen Helene Placenta Hot Oil Treatment
a special gift from our moms 😉

No, that’s a joke (though Jaya’s mom DID come over and watch Purple Rain with us and it was AWESOME)! It’s important to note that the above products were just animal placenta, which makes things super chill and totally normal. But then Jaya found Formula 707 B, which came in a glass vial that had to BREAK TO OPEN that CONTAINED HUMAN PLACENTA EXTRACT. We do not know whose placenta, or how they get the placenta, or anything except that Googling “Formula 707B placenta” gets you a lot of links to Alibaba.

(Hey did you know that — in a super chill and totally normal way — while America OKs human placenta use in beauty products, other countries don’t? Jaya did some research: “Human-derived ingredients are prohibited from use under the provisions of the European Union cosmetics directive based on concerns about transmission of human spongiform encephalopathies and viral diseases, for example, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).” We sacrificed our bodies and ourselves for science, but you probably shouldn’t. Don’t use human placenta in your hair unless it belongs to you or a trusted friend who is totally willing to let you play around with their vascular tissue, which, like, should be all your friends.)

Here’s how it went.

Jaya’s Treatment:

Washed hair with Lafier Colageno & Placenta Shampoo
Conditioned left side of head with Hask Placenta Leave-In Conditioning Treatment Spray
Conditioned right side of head with Queen Helene Hot Oil Treatment, then Formula 707 B

The first thing I noticed was the shampoo felt like slightly unset Jello, or that weird gel stuff they put in the Wonder World Aquarium (just me?). It also smelled slightly of sandalwood, which was comforting for me because that’s the incense my grandma favors. It lathered up really quickly and almost immediately felt like it was adding a lot of volume to my hair, and when I brushed through it with a wide comb there were not many knots, which was strange for me, as a person who really needs to condition every time I get my hair wet.

Onto the conditioning products. Almost immediately I could tell that the left side of my hair would need to be re-conditioned soon. The leave-in conditioning spray is really watery, so while it may be infusing my strands with vitamins and hormones (??), it didn’t make it feel particularly silky or smooth. Given that I have pretty thick, curly hair that frizzes easily, I need that silky feeling, so I would not use that particular product again. However, the hot oil treatment was a revelation. After I washed it out my curls started to bounce up, not weighed down by any heavy creams, and they kept their shape without getting frizzy. I also added the Formula 707 B on that side, which was also slightly watery and pearlescent, but given that I didn’t test it independently, we can’t know for sure if human placenta gives your hair a little extra oomph.

Before going to bed my husband commented “You look really pretty, that placenta must be working.” And, funny story, according to at least one maybe-believable website, placental protein gives your body “a hit of hormones,” so maybe that gets men thinking of sex idk. The next morning the right side of my hair is feeling noticeably softer than the left side, and a little shinier too. I think hot oil treatment is the way to go from now on, though maybe I’ll switch to a brand with fewer possible side-effects.

Jazmine’s Treatment:

Washed hair with Lafier Colageno and Placenta Shampoo
Conditioned left side of head with Hask Placenta Leave-In Instant Conditioning Treatment
Conditioned right side of head with Formula 707 B

Jaya and I both started with the placenta shampoo, which smelled what world traveler Jaya Saxena deemed “sandalwood” and what green-thumbed hillbilly J.S. Hughes thought to be “corn chips.” But we were both right!!! Because we’re geniuses.

So here’s the deal with my hair: you can’t see it!! I currently have a bunch of synthetic hair (think Solange but with a blog) braided into my natural hair, which I have recently stopped chemically straightening. My hair, when out of braids, looks like this. Anyway, when my hair is in braids, all I do is rinse and deep condition my scalp once every 7–10 days, and shampoo it whenever I think to do it (so maybe every 2–3 weeks? I’m gross). All this to say: I didn’t have a ton of actual hair for the products to interact with, so I might have to do this again when I take my braids out.

Wetting your braids in the shower is messy and heavy and way too much effort, so I generally just take a spray bottle and mist my scalp, then rub shampoo in. The placenta shampoo, which looked like slightly solidified jizz, went in fine, but too SO LONG to take out. It got clumped up where the synthetic hair meets my hair and was a pain to get out — I had to go home and wash my hair out in the shower.

I didn’t feel like rinsing anything out again, so I tried the two leave-in conditioners: the human one, which was essentially stinky water, and the conditioning treatment shot glass, on either side of my head. Neither of them made too much of a difference, and my hair takes a while to air dry, but the nape of my neck, where there’s more loose hair and where I used the conditioning shot, was noticeably softer than usual this morning.

I took home the Hask conditioning spray. Braids LOVE sprays — my hair craves moisture all the time, but especially when locked up for 2 months — so I put that on my scalp the next morning after washing the placenta smell off and it seemed to do me well.

Matt’s Treatment:
Forced to try beauty products by two pushy broads

“I will put placenta in my beard if Jazmine Hughes actually ever comes to Queens,” a man once said, a man who underestimated me and a man who ended up with placenta in his beard. Matt Lubchansky, professional good sport, used the Hask Henna ’n’ Placenta with Olive Oil conditioning treatment on his beard.

This is how the scene went:

JAYA: You put a bunch of it through your beard….
MATT: This smells bad!!!
JAZMINE: It smells… ok.
JAYA: …and then you leave it on for ten minutes and rinse it out.
MATT: TEN MINUTES?!? Goddamnit. * beardy pout *

There was a lot of pouting, but he got the conditioner on, and bolted to the bathroom as soon as we told him his ten minutes were up. But there was a difference! Matt says he often conditions his beard in the shower, but the deep conditioning treatment left his beard much softer and much less puffy. The morning after, he says “it feels really soft but much less so after sleeping, like than it did yesterday. I guess I’d want to put this on before a big night out of strangers touching my beard, but its efficacy is fading by the minute.”

FINAL PLACENTA VERDICT: Would you use again?

Jaya: I will probably use the hot oil treatment again, just because I have extra and it really helped! The shampoo didn’t seem all that different from other shampoos, but it was $4.50 and a bottle of shampoo so I will use it until it’s out.
Jazmine: I’d probably use the Henna ’n’ Placenta mask; I started using a mask with olive oil about two months ago, and it almost instantly made my hair so much softer, even in the braids. I touched Chansk’s beard and I have to agree: it was smooth as fuck. The spray hasn’t impressed me, but it hasn’t not impressed me, so I’ll keep that around for a little while as well.
Matt: If I was trying to impress someone with the softness of my beard, I would use it again. But in general I don’t like leave-in stuff and will likely just go back to conditioning in the shower.

NEXT: Placenta face masks. No, really, Jazmine got super excited and bought them already.

Jaya and Jazmine and Matt are friends that met in a Masterchef Junior betting pool.