Some Say a Sip of Urine a Day Keeps the Doctor Away
By Gail Johnson
Some alternative health treatments are harder to swallow than others. But if
you ask Ifat Erez about urine therapy, she’ll tell you it’s one cure-all that
cannot be surpassed. That’s right. Urine. The owner of the Prana, Yoga &
Zen Centre has been drinking her own every morning for the past 12 years—
and she says she’s never felt better. She knows the concept of drinking their
own pee is one many people struggle with at first, but she’s hoping more
Vancouverites will give it a shot.
“I’m not doing this to rebel against the medical world, but I think people are
already open to it,” Erez said. “At the centre, people who never dreamed
they’d drink are drinking their urine. And I’m always talking urine, 24 hours
a day. Urine, urine, urine.”
The Prana, Yoga & Zen Centre hosted two seminars on the treatment in late
June featuring Balkrishna Khare, a urologist, urine therapist, and naturopath
from Bombay. Erez said about 30 people attended each session, and since
then, several have started sipping the golden liquid at home. “We’ve had a
few people with HIV who started to drink, and they say they’re starting to
feel better.”
As is the case with practitioners of many weird-sounding treatments,
advocates say urine, also known to some as the “water of life”, can be used
to treat a sweeping range of illnesses and conditions, such as eczema,
arthritis, yeast infections, cancer, allergies, toothaches, migraines, ringworm,
and mental illness.
In an interview with the Straight in Erez’s home before the seminars, Khare
explained even he was a little bit put off when he first heard of the therapy,
which consists of both drinking one’s own urine and applying it externally.
Twenty-four years ago, Khare was on his way to a urology conference when
an acquaintance gave him a book on the topic. “I thought, ‘What the hell?’ ”
he said with a grin. “Being an allopath, I tried to keep a pleasant face, and
said, ‘Thank you,’ but in my heart of hearts I didn’t think it was for me.” But
he was stuck on a train for 18 hours—and he forgot the books he wanted to
read. “It was so fantastic I read it through and through.”
Khare said that since then, he’s used the therapy—which was practised by
Mahatma Gandhi, he added—on thousands of patients. He says one of the
most common misconceptions about urine is that it’s a waste product.
Rather, Khare said, it consists of such beneficial elements as electrolytes,
amino acids, calcium, iron, magnesium, riboflavin, ascorbic acid, zinc, and
urea.
Advocates claim urea is not toxic body waste but rather an effective
medicinal
agent.
On
his
Web
site,
Urinet
(http://utopia.
knoware.nl/users/cvdk/urinetherapy/index.html), Coen van der Kroon—who
wrote the 1998 book The Golden Fountain: The Complete Guide to Urine
Therapy (Amethyst) and organized the Second World Conference on Urine
Therapy in Germany this past May—states that urea has antitumour
properties; he notes it’s used in anticancer drugs, to treat diabetes, and as a
key ingredient in moisturizers, among other applications.
So if urine has all these good things in it, why does the body secrete it?
Proponents say that whatever is excreted is simply not needed by the body at
the time.
However, those arguments don’t wash with most members of the medical
community. “That sounds like a disgusting idea to me,” Morris Van Andel,
deputy registrar of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C., told the
Straight. “I’m not an expert on drinking urine, believe me. There may not be
anything hugely harmful in it, but it does contain urea, which is an excretory
byproduct, and if you were to drink a lot of that, it would probably do some
harm. There is no scientific basis for this whatsoever.”
Similarly, Morley Sutter, professor emeritus of pharmacology and
therapeutics at UBC, said he knows of no medical studies that prove the
therapy’s efficacy. “Urine contains some normal things, which would be
relatively safe to drink, and it contains others—such as blood, infection—
that are not so safe,” he said. “Particularly in females, urine could be
contaminated by bacteria from the genital tract, and during menstruation
there’s blood. It’s true urine has remnants of all hormones that the body
produces. But it’s repugnant because of contamination, impurities, bugs,
God knows what. You don’t know what you’re getting.”
And Vancouver Hospital urologist Howard Fenster said he would never
advise someone to drink urine. “There’s no scientific basis for this, and it
could be potentially dangerous to people because of toxins and infections.”
Nevertheless, Erez, who also uses urine externally for healthy-looking skin
and to drop in her eyes, maintains that one of the benefits of practising urine
therapy is that it’s a free method of fending off illness and disease. “You are
taking what you already have,” she said. “You’re completely independent in
your health. No one makes any money off of it.”
For those who want to give it a swig, Khare and Erez have some tips. It’s
best to drink the midstream urine of the first morning pee on a daily basis to
maintain health, they say. When you’re starting out, Khare said, the night
before, eat a light meal of fruit, vegetables, and salad, and avoid tobacco,
alcohol, and meat of all types. “On the first day, spit it right out. On the
second day, rinse it around your mouth, then spit it right out. On the third
day, rinse it around your mouth a bit longer, then spit it out. On the fourth
day, gulp it right down.”
Erez suggests that for your first time, you try a small sip at about noon on
an empty stomach. Drink water afterward if you need to. Once you get used
to it, move on to first morning urine, which may be a little stronger but also
has a higher concentration of nutrients and hormones, she says. And if
you’re really disgusted by the idea, Erez points to a tip from New York
urine-therapy advocate Martin Lara, who suggests a little cocktail made with
two drops of first morning urine, one tablespoon of water, and 20 drops of
vodka. Shake in a bottle for five minutes, then put five drops under the
tongue four times a day. “Coffee tastes worse than urine,” Erez said.
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