Urine therapy

Overview
In alternative medicine, the term urine therapy (also urotherapy, urinotherapy or uropathy) refers to various applications of human urine for medicinal or cosmetic purposes, including drinking of one's own urine and massaging one's skin with one's own urine. A practitioner of urine therapy is sometimes called a uropath.

In the Indian ayurvedic tradition, urine therapy may be called amaroli. Another name is Shivambu Kalpa, taken from the title of the ancient text Shivambu Kalpa Vidhi. Here, shivambu can be translated as "the waters of Shiva", and refers to the urine.

History
Promoters of urine therapy believe urine to have many preventative and curative powers. Some cultures have traditionally used urine as a medicine, especially India's, where it is prescribed by the Shivambu Kalpa Vidhi, which (among other uses and prescriptions) suggests massaging one's skin with aged, concentrated urine. In traditional Tibetan medicine, examination of the patient's urine is one of the main sources of information for a diagnosis.

The Koryak tribe of Siberia is reported to have used the Amanita muscaria mushroom as an entheogen, and to have drunk the urine of those using the mushroom in order to experience the effects themselves. Tribesmen who could not afford the mushrooms drank the urine of those who could; tribesmen drank their own urine in order to prolong the experience; and tribesmen on trips carried their own urine with them. They sometimes concentrated their urine by partially freezing it and ingesting the unfrozen liquid. R. Gordon Wasson has theorized that the mythological soma of the Vedic religion was also Amanita muscaria.

The homeopath John Henry Clarke wrote, "…man who, for a skin affection, drank in the morning the urine he had passed the night before. The symptoms were severe, consisting of general-dropsy, scanty urine, and excessive weakness. These symptoms I have arranged under Urinum. Urinotherapy is practically as old as man himself. The Chinese (Therapist, x. 329) treat wounds by sprinkling urine on them, and the custom is widespread in the Far East. Taken internally it is believed to stimulate the circulation".

Modern claims and findings
Urine's main constituents are water and urea. However, it contains small quantities of many hormones and metabolites, including corticosteroids. Urea has been claimed by some doctors to have an anti-cancer effect. In addition, the other chemicals in urine might have some effect if ingested. In 1997, Joseph Eldor, of the Theoretical Medicine Institute in Jerusalem, published a paper suggesting that because cancer cells release antigens which appear in the urine, oral autourotherapy could spur the intestinal lymphatic system to produce antibodies against these antigens.

Despite these claims, there has been no research that has found drinking urine to be useful for any illness. However, human urine is normally sterile, and drinking small amounts of one's own urine is unlikely to be seriously harmful. Urinating on jellyfish stings is a common folk remedy, but has no beneficial effect and may be counterproductive as it can activate nematocysts remaining at the site of the sting.

Trivia

 * Cameroon's Health Minister Urbain Olanguena Awono warned people against drinking their own urine, believed in some circles to be a tonic and cure for a number of ailments. "Given the risks of toxicity associated with ingesting urine", he wrote, "the health ministry advises against the consumption of urine and invites those who promote the practice to cease doing so or risk prosecution."
 * Urinotherapy was in vogue recently to improve well-being or as a last resort in severe illness in the former Soviet Union and in some post-USSR countries.
 * Former Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai practiced urinotherapy.
 * Urine contains many vitamins, hormones and nutrients that are essential to the proper functioning of human body. However, it also contains metabolic waste by-products and small amounts of toxins such as ammonia and formaldehyde.
 * In Shelagh Stephenson's The Memory of Water, one of the characters practices urine therapy. Her sister says that if God had intended people to drink their own urine, He would have built a straw from the bladder to the mouth.