Burn and Rave

I know, I gagged, too. Still, the elderly woman looked ten years younger than her real age, and as signs of good health, her hair and fingernails looked robust.

In The Water of Life, first published in 1945, John Armstrong chronicles many of the health benefits that have been linked to urine drinking such as improvement and even cures in chronic colds, flu, bronchitis, stomach problems, jaundice, allergies, asthma, and cancers. Drinking the first morning urine has also been claimed to strengthen the immune system as a preventative measure and to increase energy and alertness. Topical application of urine can treat inflammation, infection, burns, vaginal discharge, thinning hair, scalp problems, and bruises. Armstrong himself was cured of tuberculosis and relieved from bee strings by using his own urine.

Martha M. Christy’s book Your Own Perfect Medicine also sets out to educate the general public about the great medical uses of urine. Christy was once plagued with pelvic inflammatory disease, ulcerative colitis, Chron's disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, Hashimoto's disease, mononucleosis, severe kidney infections, two miscarriages, chronic cystitis, severe candida, endometriosis, adrenal insufficiency, serious chronic ear and sinus infections, food and chemical allergies. Just to name a few. $100,000 later, her husband found out about amaroli and suggested it to her. Within a week of trying it, many of her symptoms were resolved, and eventually she felt whole again. Many Amazon.com reviewers of her book also left accounts of their own miraculous cures after drinking urine. Their ailments include bad breath, athlete’s foot, fatigue, insomnia, flu, and ulcers.

People have been healed with urine for at least five millennia. In a 5000-year old Indian text, the Damar Tantra, shivambu is described as “divine nectar.” Literally, “shivambu” means drinking the water of Shiva, the highest god in the Indian pantheon. In the 3500-year old Ebers Medical Papyri of ancient Egypt, urine drinking is recommended for a variety of ailments. Continuing into contemporary times, Swami Satyananda Saraswati encouraged in a 1978 publication of Amaroli that those wishing to perfect their yoga meditations must also practice amaroli. Withstanding the test of time and geography, the practice has also spread into the culture of Greeks, Romans, Aztecs, Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and Germans.

Supporters of auto-urine therapy often site a plethora of historical accounts where a group people were trapped in a cave and those who drank their own urine survived, while those who couldn’t get over the ick factor literally died of disgust. On October 16, 1992, NBC Nightly News’ Tom Brokaw reported that in Egypt, a 37-year-old man survived in earthquake rubble for almost 82 hours by drinking his own urine. His wife, daughter and mother would not and they died. While that story has become buried under the rubble of fourteen years’ worth of other news, you might perhaps remember Aron Ralston, the man who freed himself from being stuck under a rock by breaking his own arm. Guess what he did after he ran out of water.

But don’t get too caught up with this last group of survivors, because if the Egyptian man and Ralston had to drink their own urine for more than a few days, than they would have both died of dehydration because urine is so concentrated. People who practice auto-urine therapy do not drink large quantities of their own urine, as people who ran out of water might have to quench their thirst. The urine is taken in small quantities and constitutes only a tiny, tiny fraction of daily liquid intake. That explains why urine does not alter their body’s water balance.

Here’s how some people practice amaroli, as summarized from several websites*. Clean the genital area before you do this, to ensure you get a sterile sample. Collect midstream urine from the first morning bathroom visit in a clean cup. From here, there are two ways to prepare the urine. The first sounds very reasonable, perhaps more fitting for the beginner. In the homeopathic tradition, distill several drops of the urine into a bottle of water. Shake it vigorously. Distill several drops of this solution into another bottle of water. Shake again. Add a few drops of vodka for preservation. If you are currently ill, place three drops on your tongue hourly until you start to feel better. If you are healthy, drink one ounce of the solution daily.

The second way, for the adventurous or seasoned urine users, is very simple. Drink one ounce of the collected urine every morning. Down it like a shot.

According to the “Kidney” section in my fifth edition of Berne and Levy’s Physiology textbook, you would be consuming Na+, K+, NH4+, Ca2+, Mg2+, Cl-, Pi, urea, and creatinine. I don’t see anything toxic there, do you? Pharmaceutical companies didn’t either, but instead they found many useful chemicals in urine. They saw that urine had a lot of potential, except that it needed a makeover, so they collect many people’s urine, isolated a chemical, and market them as attractive, and of course expensive, health products. Urea is used in many beauty skincare products designed to soften chapped skin. LH and FSH, ovulation enhancing hormones found in urine, are used in the fertility drug Pergonal. Urokinase, an enzyme found in urine, is repackaged into a blood clot-dissolving drug for unblocking coronary arteries.

In fact, drinking your own urine might even be like taking a pill designed just for your own needs. At least there’s that possibility for future cancer patients, according to a research study published by Joseph Eldor, MD, in Medical Hypotheses. Cancer cells secrete antigens, particles from a tumor that are capable of triggering the body’s immune system to attack the tumor. Some of these antigens wind up in the urine. If a cancer patient ingests her own urine, then she can provide her immune system with very specific information about the tumor that is inside of her. With that information, her body can know what the cancer cells look like and start the attack.

This might be the mechanism for how returning excreted substances to your own body benefits your own health. When trouble makers such as mutated cells, non-resident bacteria, and infectious agents circulate through your blood and body, they will produce little particles of themselves. These particles might have a slight chance of meeting up with a B cell whose job is to protect your body. If so, the B cell can use the particles to mold ammunition against the particle’s origin which, to review, could be mutated cells, non-resident bacteria, and infectious agents. If the particle does not encounter a B cell, then it gets secreted in the urine. Returning some of the urine to your system might give the B cells another chance at snagging the particle to attack the trouble makers in your body.

Testimonial and theoretical evidence certainly does seem to mount in favor of auto-urine therapy. The research on this subject, however, is stark and inconclusive. While I find both Dr. Eldor’s proposal and my own explanation above to be plausible, I would like to note that they are purely theoretical. Dr. Eldor’s paper was published in the Medical Hypotheses journal, with an emphasis on “hypotheses.”

The only other article I found searching on Pubmed (a database for articles in medical research) was a study 1991 by Australian scientists MH Mills and TA Faunce. They investigated the effect of amaroli on yoga meditation. They pointed to melatonin as the biochemical connection. At night when there is no light, a part of the brain called the pineal gland causes the secretion of melatonin. This chemical has been shown in many studies to induce a sleepy state and decreased awareness of pain in lab rats, guinea pigs, and people volunteers. Incidentally, melatonin is also found in morning urine. Mills and Faunce proposed that melatonin from the morning urine is very likely the reason why amaroli-practicing yoga-ists are able to comfortably settle into one position for two hours and achieve a deeper inner peace from their meditation.

Perhaps I could use a little dose of morning urine myself because my tushie hurts from sitting and typing so long. Kidding. Taking into consideration the testimonials and hypothetical research results, I am comfortably settled on my position regarding amaroli. Unless myself, someone I know, or a future patient of mine is desperately ill with no affordable treatment option available, I would not recommend auto-urine therapy. However, neither would I discourage anyone who already uses it.

As for the old, amaroli-practicing woman at the airport, I’m guessing good genes. In addition, if she was willing to swallow her own golden juice for the sake of good health, she was probably also willing to keep other habits that would keep her healthy, such as drinking enough water, eating well-balanced meals, exercising, and not smoking.

* CAUTION: I AM A MEDICAL STUDENT REPORTING INSTRUCTIONS FROM AMAROLI WEBSITES. CONSULT A DOCTOR AND DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH BEFORE SIPPING URINE. CHEERS.