Is it true that drinking urine is healthy?

[Mr Rayon]

Is it true that drinking your own urine is healthy? My friend says that there are many health benefits from doing so. initially i didn't believe it but after surfing the net a little, i 've found a lot of sites supporting this idea. so, what's the general consensus among SFN?

[DJBruce]

Generally drinking one's own urine is a fairly safe. There is a risk of one dehydrating themselves as urine contains many salts. It is also possible for urine to contain remnants of previously taken medications, which can pose a problem. Urine can also be contaminated with bacteria. However, these things are fairly rare.

 

As for if drinking urine provides amazing health benefits I doubt it does. It sounds like your friend is believing in urine therapy, which as far as I know has never been validated by science.

[Mr Rayon]

It sounds like your friend is believing in urine therapy, which as far as I know has never been validated by science.

 

Is this because of a lack of research conducted? Have there been many attempts to find any health benefits from drinking one's own urine?

[DJBruce]

Is this because of a lack of research conducted? Have there been many attempts to find any health benefits from drinking one's own urine?

 

I am not sure about the quantity of research conducted on urine therapy, however, I would think that the fact urine therapy shows no health benefits is because it in fact does not work.

[Mr Rayon]

I am not sure about the quantity of research conducted on urine therapy, however, I would think that the fact urine therapy shows no health benefits is because it in fact does not work.

 

that's like saying there's no cure to cancer. It could be beneficial we just need to find in what way, in fact I bet in the future everybody will be drinking their urine. :Drolleyes:

[insane_alien]

put it this way, urine is your bodies way of getting rid of stuff it doesn't want or need. if you are reingesting the waste then its going to accumulate somewhat.

 

the only time i'd advise it is if you knew you weren't going to have a water source available to you any time in the near future when recycling water becomes very very important.

[Moontanman]

Urine? or Mine? I doubt it would hurt you to drink your own urine, i know some Native Americans thought it helpful to drink the mornings first urine but I see no reason to do so and no research that really supports this but like i always say, "what ever floats your boat"....

[PhDwannabe]

It's difficult to put it better, as usual, than the Skeptic's Dictionary.

[Mr Skeptic]

Urine is essentially a waste product, the stuff from your bloodstream that was discarded by your kidneys. For the most part, drinking your own urine seems like it would do nothing more than force your kidneys to discard the same stuff twice.

 

Historically, in the early days penicillin was very rare and expensive, and you could get second-hand penicillin by drinking the urine from someone who took some. The same should apply to most medicines or drugs, those which are discarded via the kidneys rather than metabolized. Of course, I'd prefer to just up my dose of the drug by taking more of it (with the doctor's permission) rather than trying to recycle it via urine, but to each their own.

[jimmydasaint]

Hang on folks! I thought urea, made by kidneys, from excess amino acids, and excreted from the body in urine, was quite poisonous. Moreover, I thought urea was, by far, in the greatest concentration as a solute in urine.

 

Urine is an aqueous solution of greater than 95% water, with the remaining constituents, in order of decreasing concentration urea 9.3 g/l, chloride 1.87 g/l, sodium 1.17 g/l, potassium 0.750 g/l, creatinine 0.670 g/l and other dissolved ions, inorganic and organic compounds.

 

Link

 

However, to answer my own point, it is probably likely that it is too dilute to cause problems.

[insane_alien]

the LD50 of urea is on the order of 5 grams per kilogram. not too poisonous.

 

so for a 70kg person thats 350g of urea they'd need to consume. or in urine form, 37.5L of urine.

 

thats a lot of pee. you're essentially going to be physically unable to drink that much fluid.

[JN.]

Well, I think the logic is "if your body expelled it, then it's not useful".

 

However, urine has also water so, in an emergency, I think we can drink urine without fearing for our health, although the probability of being drinking

 

some pathogenic bacteria. Moreover, I think that an healthy adult can metabolize again the wastes of its urine, so it will not be prejudicial.

 

But you're not asking if drinking urine is dangerous, but precisely the opposite. Well, I think it's not. And since we cannot find any scientific evidence to support this, I guess that we can assume that drinking urine isn't healthy.

 

 

[CharonY]

Drinking urine to gain water is a lousy idea. The basic idea is to concentrate urine before getting rid of it while minimizing water loss. Drinking the high concentrated salt solution would not be fatal but lead to more water loss (as you need more water to get rid of the added salts).

[Evolutionist]

Urine becomes more concentrated as one dehydrates. If one is in a survival situation where one has become dehydrated then the urine produced once dehydrated would be relativley concentrated. The body will produce uric acid at a relatively constant rate as a by-product of cellular respiration. If you are drinking a lot of water the kidneys will be actively removing it to maintain the ideal blood ph level thus producing a rather dilute urine. If you are dehydrated the kidneys will be attempting to conserve water for exactly the same reason. So the concentration of urine, and thus its effect on the body when re-ingested, will depend on the circumstances of its production.

 

Thus in a survival situation with limited fresh water, where that water is rationed, the body will be in a constant state of dehydration and so producing concentrated urine. If one consumes that concentrated urine the problem is that it may be so concentrated as to set up an osmotic gradient such that water would be drawn from the capillaries in the intestine out of the body, thus making matters worse! I do believe this is the issue when drinking sea water. Also the US navy carried out an experiment to see if sailors cast adrift at sea could survive by giving themselves sea water enemas thus allowing the large colon to absorb water as that is one of its existing functions. The experiments proved that the sailors dehydrated more quickly with the enema than without it and that was ascribed to the osmotic gradient created in the large colon removing water from the subject's body.

 

So drinking dilute urine would not be a major problem but drinking concentrated urine could/would be. Urine from a healthy person is normally pathogen free.

Edited August 26, 2010 by Evolutionist

[nec209]

Urine becomes more concentrated as one dehydrates. If one is in a survival situation where one has become dehydrated then the urine produced once dehydrated would be relativley concentrated. The body will produce uric acid at a relatively constant rate as a by-product of cellular respiration. If you are drinking a lot of water the kidneys will be actively removing it to maintain the ideal blood ph level thus producing a rather dilute urine. If you are dehydrated the kidneys will be attempting to conserve water for exactly the same reason. So the concentration of urine, and thus its effect on the body when re-ingested, will depend on the circumstances of its production.

 

Thus in a survival situation with limited fresh water, where that water is rationed, the body will be in a constant state of dehydration and so producing concentrated urine. If one consumes that concentrated urine the problem is that it may be so concentrated as to set up an osmotic gradient such that water would be drawn from the capillaries in the intestine out of the body, thus making matters worse! I do believe this is the issue when drinking sea water. Also the US navy carried out an experiment to see if sailors cast adrift at sea could survive by giving themselves sea water enemas thus allowing the large colon to absorb water as that is one of its existing functions. The experiments proved that the sailors dehydrated more quickly with the enema than without it and that was ascribed to the osmotic gradient created in the large colon removing water from the subject's body.

 

 

So drinking dilute urine would not be a major problem but drinking concentrated urine could/would be. Urine from a healthy person is normally pathogen free.

 

 

 

Yes the less you drink the more the urine is concentrated that is why urine is dark yellow if you only drank 4 glass of water in 15 hours and the urine more white if you drank 9 glasses of water in 12 hours.

 

Most people say you should drink about 10 to 12 glasses in day.

[Incendia]

Though urine is safe to drink I doubt it comes with benefits...In-fact I think it would be bad for you...you're putting your bodily waste products back into your body when you drink urine...your waste comes out for a reason...

[lemur]

Reading this thread turned out to be much more in formative than I expected. I hereby raise my glass to you all! (i.e. glass of clear water)

[insane_alien]

Most people say you should drink about 10 to 12 glasses in day.

 

stuff like this isn't accurate. it depends on your environment. you should drink when you're thirsty and when you're not thirsty you don't drink.

 

funnily enough your body knows when to take a drink. for instance, in the winter when i'm healthy and not actually doing very much i can get by on maybe 2-3 glasses of water per day(yep, i counted. nearly lost count at 2 though) where as in the middle of the summer if i'm climbing i might drink 20 glasses of water in a day.

 

your intake should reflect your needs.

[John F]

stuff like this isn't accurate. it depends on your environment. you should drink when you're thirsty and when you're not thirsty you don't drink.

 

funnily enough your body knows when to take a drink. for instance, in the winter when i'm healthy and not actually doing very much i can get by on maybe 2-3 glasses of water per day(yep, i counted. nearly lost count at 2 though) where as in the middle of the summer if i'm climbing i might drink 20 glasses of water in a day.

 

your intake should reflect your needs.

 

I agree that not everyone needs 10-12, depending on their activities, because your body will tell you when you are thirsty. A big problem for many people is that they mistake being thirsty for being hungry. Sometimes people's bodies have a hard time distinguishing between the two. They eat more food when they should be drinking. This can lead many people to eat too much.

[insane_alien]

A big problem for many people is that they mistake being thirsty for being hungry. Sometimes people's bodies have a hard time distinguishing between the two. They eat more food when they should be drinking. This can lead many people to eat too much.

 

eh? now this may just be a failure of imagination on my part but how the hell do you confuse thirsty and hungry? I mean, they're two very different sensations.

[john5746]

If I were going to drink my piss on a regular basis, I'd make sure to drink plenty of water - to help improve the taste. So, maybe as a feedback mechanism to make sure you stay hydrated, maybe it might help. Or just don't flush your toilet in the morning and welcome that smell when returning from work.

[Versa]

I don't know how people would actually believe in this. Although there are many supporting facts that point to the health benefit, I still don't really agree. Urine is something that we excrete out and contains mostly the by products. In other words there are also toxin. So how can we claim that this will be something healthy if we consume it?

[HerpetologyFangirl]

The only time I could imagine it being healthy is when you're either in a survival situation with no other water options, like you're lost in a desert or something, or when your body is dangerously low on natural salts, although I can't think of a situation which would cause that. :-/

Edited November 25, 2010 by HerpetologyFangirl

[Tatiana]

eh? now this may just be a failure of imagination on my part but how the hell do you confuse thirsty and hungry? I mean, they're two very different sensations.

 

No, it's true, I sometimes think I'm hungry when I'm actually dehydrated, it's taken me a while to learn that I should have a drink first, and if I'm still hungry after that then I can eat, but sometimes the "hunger" goes away. It's essentially like thirst from the stomach rather than feeling thirsty from your mouth, it's similar to the peckish "something's missing" type feeling of being hungry.

 

Having said that, it's been said that you shouldn't wait until you feel thirsty to drink, because you're already dehydrated at that point, and you should keep up a regular intake of water throughout the day regardless of the weather conditions. Unless you're taking anti-diuretics, it's probably better to drink more than you think you need, it won't hurt you.

[insane_alien]

drinking more than you need CAN hurt you. it can cause salt imbalances that can be fatal. thirst doesn't mean you are already dehydrated. thirst means you're thirsty. it is perfectly possible to feel thirsty yet be in a state of excess hydration. and dehydration as a medical condition has a number of symptoms that go beyond a feeling of thirst that would have to appear before it is classed as dehydration.

 

i have still never experienced a confusion between thirst and hunger. even when quite badly dehydrated it still felt distinct from hunger. hunger is an empty, hollow feeling while thirst (besides the dry mouth feeling) is more of a spongy feeling(this is honestly the best i can do to articulate it. it's not quite right but i'm unable to articulate the feeling with out calling it 'thirsty')