Does urine therapy sound like a parody of natural, alternative, or complementary medicine? Well, it's not a parody (surprise surprise). People are actually bathing in, drinking, and even injecting their own urine into their bodies.
Before anyone goes after me for being anti-natural medicine, I am not anti-natural medicine, but natural medicine needs to be held to the same standards as conventional medicine and not be purported as inherently safer or more moral than conventional medicine. With that said, I am an essential oil enthusiast. I use essential oils topically not only as a part of my skincare routine but as a part of coping with an anxiety disorder. I, however, do not inject or ingest my essential oils nor do I apply them undiluted.
Urine therapy has been said to do everything from clear skin to cure multiple sclerosis while being totally non-toxic. One source recommends applying drops of urine under the tongue to aid in the treatment of various ailments.
Start by taking 1-5 drops of morning urine on the first day. On the second day, take 5-10 drops in the morning. On the third day, take 5-10 drops in the morning, and the same amount in the evening before you go to bed.
It even recommends working your way up to drinking an ounce of your urine when using drops fails.
As you use the therapy, you will learn to adjust the amount you need by observing your reactions to the therapy. It may be that you’ll work up to actually drinking an ounce or two at a time.
While urine does contain some medically usable substances, the practice of "recycling" one's urine is different from using substances that have been isolated and added to something else in controlled amounts. Another site mentioned that drinking one's own urine is a viable source of water in survival situations. Granted, while this isn't the worst way to get water, there are many better ways to get water in a survival situation. While it might keep you hydrated in the short term, eventually, all that waste will build up in your kidneys and cause acute renal failure.
I heard another story about a man who kept himself alive with his own urine for a week in a collapsed mine. At the time of his rescue, he looked fine and was in extraordinary health. I also recently read an article about an Italian athlete who was lost in the Sahara for ten days. Upon returning to the civilised world, he told how he had drunk his own urine for lack of other liquids. He had kept himself alive by eating desert plants and insects and drinking his own urine. Shipwrecked people can drink their own urinr to surtive, although one should not wait until the body is almost dehydrated before doing so. Drinking urine is also a smart way to survive in situations in which water is unsafe to drink.
Yet another source promotes drinking urine as a way to promote fertility among other things.
The ancient Incans used to wash their hair and shave their legs using urine and it has been used by the Egyptians, Hindus, Aztecs and Chinese for centuries. The American Cancer Association even has a page dedicated to the topic and there are definitely health benefits associated with the components of urine that include: urea, Urokinase and uric acid.
The included link redirected me to a page that deals with alternative and complementary medicine in general rather than urine therapy. Not only that, just because it was done in the past doesn't mean it should be replicated. If that were the case, we would still be using tobacco smoke enemas as a way to resuscitate people and many 24-year-old redheads (very specific) would have to fear for their lives.
While maggots, medical leeches, and psychedelic mushrooms (see @psyentist for that one) have their place in medicine, urine therapy as we know it does not. Isolating the useful compounds from someone's urine might one day be a thing, but bathing in urine and drinking it does not. I've haven't found any studies that support the use of urine therapy and neither have many other people.