US Woman 'Cures' Acne By Applying Pee On Face! Here's What You Should Know About Urine Therapy

How far would you go to treat your aggressive acne? Given how it can rob you of your youth and beauty, most people would go to any lengths to see the spots disappear for good and one of them is painter Julia Sillaman. The 26-year-old painter from Maryland USA was hesitant to visit the dermatologist after she developed severe acne. She took some sage advice from meteorologist Christo Dabraccio from Idaho who apparently lost close to 14 kilos with a rather unconventional therapy – urine therapy. He drank three cups of urine every day and was surprised by how it turned his health around. Sillaman followed suit, and she now claims that her acne disappeared and her complexion improved after she started dabbing her skin with urine. Debraccio and Sillaman belong to a growing tribe of people who swear by urine therapy for a wide variety of health concerns. And if you have read this far without wanting to throw up, let’s find out whether their claims hold water.

What is Urine Therapy?

Urine is the liquid waste product filtered out of the body. It is mainly made up of water 25g/d of urea, 1g/d of uric acid, 1.5g of creatinine, 10g/d of electrolytes and trace amount of proteins. Woman drinks her dog’s urine; claims that it cleared her acne (watch video)

Urine therapy is not a new phenomenon. Drinking and applying urine, animal or human, has been used for various medicinal purposes all over the world for over a millennium. There are records from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome which recommend the usage of the bodily fluid for health purposes. These texts even consider urine as the “gold of the blood” and “the water of life.” Even ancient Indian yogic texts recommend drinking one’s own urine to reap its many supposed health benefits. 'Peegasms' is the latest sex trend: here's how holding on to urine for orgasm can cause infection and damage your kidneys.

People who practice urine therapy recommend drinking freshly-voided morning urine for treating viral or bacterial infections and compressing tumours. Urine is also used for body and foot bath and as drops for the eyes, nose and ears.

Claims that urine has cosmetic uses have existed for a while. Medical Daily says that applying urine to the skin with a clean, damp cloth as a beauty treatment helps clear up psoriasis, eczema and acne. The early-morning urine is best suited for this purpose since it contains rich reserves of hormones.

Is Urine Therapy Safe?

Proponents who use urine for therapeutic purposes claim that the disgust for urine is socially inculcated and that it is a sterile liquid. But that claim can be disputed. Urine may be sterile when it is produced in the kidney, but once it leaves the body, it gets contaminated. When left outside the body for an extended period, it can become a hotbed for bacteria. There is little clinical evidence that supports urine therapy. Experts say that such practices may also be hazardous.

When a person suffers from inflammatory skin conditions like acne and atopic dermatitis, the skin barrier gets compromised. So applying urine that harbours bacteria may leave patients susceptible to topical, systemic infections.

While urine is not toxic, it’s not advisable to use urine for any therapeutic purposes. The only time it is ok to use urine is there is an unavailability of clean water to treat a dirty wound. Sometimes, drinking urine is advised if the person faces a certain death due to dehydration during natural calamities.

(References: The Golden Fountain - Is urine the miracle drug no one told you about? Kids These Days: Urine as a Home Remedy for Acne Vulgaris?)

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 10, 2018 07:48 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).