Does urine therapy really work?

Question

I heard a lecture from a supporter of urine therapy and he claimed that urine is not only good disinfection but also as rich source of minerals. To me, these two advice seemed contradictory.

In addition, the supporter emphasized one should use his own urine - and yet, as an example of the magical effect of urine therapy we got a story of a boy who was hooked by jellyfish but was saved by a nearby doctor who used urine of his own. Apart from that I see no reason why urine should work against toxins better than a water or a disinfection (they don't).

Though, I know a very qualified doctor who advocated this treatment. What do you think?

Answer 1

This is at best anecdotal evidence. First of all, urine is, although it has been thought otherwise for decades, not sterile. The bacteria in it just don't grow under the conditions used in the lab which are used to proof bladder infections. See these two articles:

• Evidence of uncultivated bacteria in the adult female bladder.
• Urine is not sterile: use of enhanced urine culture techniques to detect resident bacterial flora in the adult female bladder.

When you take into account that bacteria grow on almost all surfaces which have a connection to the outside (like mouth, stomach, gut and so on) this is not really surprising that this is true for the bladder as well.

Urine might be a relatively low risk solution of choice to rinse a wound when nothing else is available, but otherwise I wouldn't recommend it.

Then think of what urine is used for: it is the way our body excretes all the water soluble stuff it doesn't need any more. The body makes a lot of effort here to concentrate the primary urine in our kidneys to recover all the stuff which is still needed and to save water. I wouldn't drink it and make my body go through the whole process of excretion again.

About the doctors: is there any hard evidence for that or is this only an anecdote? I get highly skeptical when I hear about such stories.