On the Facebook social network, a page on the effects of bissap juice on infertility has been shared thousands of times. But no active principle of this plant on fertility has ever been recognized by scientists.
- The Facebook page that praises the virtues of bissap juice against infertility highlights its hormonal action
- This action is not based on any serious evidence, according to the health professionals questioned on this question
“Get pregnant in 1 month!“. This Facebook group has obviously caught the attention of many women who want to have children and who have difficulty getting pregnant. False hope: the recommendation to drink bissap juice -hibiscus sabdariffa, from its scientific name-, a very popular plant in Senegal and Ivory Coast, has no chance of leading to pregnancy! what several health specialists say to AFP Côte d’Ivoire : “This grandmother’s recipe for boosting fertility in women has no scientific basis“, underlines the Ivorian gynecologist-obstetrician Moïse Amuah with the agency.
But then how could this false information have spread to the point of being shared several thousand times on the social network? “The bissap flower is not a known remedy in modern medicine and I rather believe that the red color of this juice has created in the popular imagination this myth of a remedy; it is not a hormonal regulator, no study known to date has demonstrated this“, believes Dr. Amuah.
Digestive and diuretic virtues
Because this is how this drink is presented as a solution to infertility. “Whatever makes you infertile, these sheets cleanse it thoroughly and activate the good hormones“, is it mentioned on the Facebook page “Get pregnant in 1 month!“.
Except that if it could have digestive and diuretic virtues and constitute a contribution in vitamin C, the juice of bissap, generally consumed in the form of infusion, “has no hormonal actione,” insists Dr. Amuyah.”This publication lending gynecological and fertility virtues to bissap is strange and even dangerous“, adds, still with AFP, Stéphane Besançon, director general of the NGO Santé Diabète in Mali.
50 million infertile couples
The agency also takes the opportunity to recall the necessary caution in the face of all the miracle cures that are presented on social networks to fight against infertility, an illness that would affect nearly 50 million couples in the world. “No scientific studies have shown any positive effect of plants on fertility“, says Joëlle Balaïsch-Allart, president of the National College of French Gynecologists and Obstetricians.
