Urophagia, or the drinking of urine, is nothing new. In ancient India, the practice was known as "shivambu shastra" and was seen as a way of rejuvenating body and soul. Aztecs used it to disinfect wounds and Egyptian medical texts mention its benefits. Millions of Chinese take a glass daily and it proved so popular in Cameroon that the government advised "against the consumption of urine and invites those who promote the practice to cease doing so forthwith or risk prosecution" ("Cameroon threatens to jail urine drinkers," The Daily Telegraph, 15 March 2003).
Understanding Urine
Contrary to popular belief, urine is not a by-product of the body's waste disposal system but of blood filtration. Nutrient-filled blood passes through the liver, where toxins are removed and excreted as solid waste. The purified blood then goes through another filtering process via the kidneys, where components for which the body has no immediate use are collected in a sterile, watery solution.
Urine Therapy
In the West the drinking of urine is just one of the components of Urine Therapy. "Massaging urine into your skin is the best beauty treatment you can ever get," insists one alternative health site. "Old urine up to four days old works best but has a strong odour."
For the initiated, the wonders of urine are seemingly endless. "For throat aches, tooth aches and colds try gargling with urine. Diluted urine used as eye drops and eardrops helps heal conjunctivitis, ear infections and glaucoma. Sinuses can be cured by sniffing urine." In fact, according to Jeff Lowe from Vanderbilt University, "the list of diseases for which urine therapy is said to be effective is around 175 - an extraordinary amount for any type of medical practice".
The claims made by enthusiasts seem to be borne out by the feats of survival performed with a dash of urine. When British hiker Paul Beck was stranded in the Spanish mountains for six days in 2006 after dislocating his hip, he survived by drinking his own urine. The following year, urine was held to be responsible for the survival of yachtsmen Mark Smith and Steven Freeman when their boat capsized and they spent 11 days stranded in the South China Sea. And then there's the earthquake victims, stranded commandos...
Scientific Benefits
Despite this, there's little in the way of scientific evidence for the benefits of drinking urine. According to the American Cancer Society: "Available scientific evidence does not support claims that urine or urea given in any form is helpful for cancer patients." Some scientists even suggest that the practice could be dangerous.
Dr. Chris Bates, now retired, was Head of Micronutrient Status Research at MRC in Cambridge University. "If someone is excreting vitamins or essential minerals in their urine, their body must already be saturated with them," he says. "The excess that is excreted is not only unlikely to be needed, but may actually be harmful (since an excess of many nutrients, including some vitamins and minerals, can have deleterious side-effects). Moreover, some vitamins and nutrients can become degraded, either in the body before excretion or later, in the stored urine, exacerbated by its usually alkaline character."
There are a few cases where the recycling of urine proved useful - such as "in the very earliest days of antibiotics development, where an extremely limited supply of this 'new' antibiotic material could be rescued after urinary excretion by the patient", says Dr. Bates. Or when Siberian tribes attempted to prolong a limited supply of hallucinogenic fly agaric mushrooms by drinking each other's urine. On the whole however, it seems that once liberated, urine should remain that way.
Justin Schamotta - Justin was born in South Africa, raised in the Welsh Valleys and now resides in Brighton. He has been co-editor of Bulb magazine, deputy ...
