Life of Pee

I liked that book The Life of Pi but I found a disturbing mistake in it. In the survival manual he finds on the life boat, Pi reads that one should never drink pee in survival conditions. The truth is that in most survival manuals, military or civilian, it is mentioned that if you don’t have any water to drink you can survive for 40 days just by drinking pee; that is recycling.

When I first came across the idea of doing anything with pee my first reaction was disgust. I thought "these freaks take it too far with healthy extremes, and I hope she's not drinking it out of my cups." Then I took a lecture in India and it took me almost a year to put everything I heard into test in many different ways. Since then I have been talking about this and giving people the inspiration to discover something they can make use of. For me the most striking thing about the qualities of pee is that it is so readily available yet its use has become almost a taboo.

Before we go into the subject in detail, I want you to ask yourself a few questions and check out how much you really know about your pee, and how much of this knowledge is reasonable. What is urine? What does it consist of? Is it dirty? Does it contain microbes, bacteria, other bad organisms? Where did you learn about these things? Is there anything else that you have contact with so often yet you know so little about?

Urine mostly consists of water, minerals and other things which are filtered from blood by the kidneys. It is later stored in the bladder which is just a kind of hollow muscle and is discharged through the small intestines. It’s mostly water but also contains urea, minerals, hormones, antibody building blocks, and other stuff that is in excess in our blood circulation. It does not contain any microorganisms or such nasty stuff (unless there is a kidney or urinary track infection (UTI) or typhus). Bladder itself is a sterile environment, therefore urine is also usually cleaner than the cleanest water you can find to sterilize things. That’s why it was used as injection liquid until less than a hundred years ago (yes, you can mix medicine with pee and inject it with no side effects or risks). The mineral content of urine changes with our diet and other factors but in a healthy individual it is pretty similar to that of a bottle of mineral soda.

One common mistake we make while thinking of pee is to compare it with shit. We think “they are refuses of the body so they must be dirty” (and we know shit is dirty). Here is the difference. When we eat, our stomach starts the digestion and the process goes on in the guts and the excess or useless stuff turns into shit, which is like the pulp of fruit juice. The nutrition in the food goes into our bloodstream and is carried to various parts of our body. Blood carries all sorts of things and is regularly filtered by the kidneys. What is in excess or is no more needed in the bloodstream is filtered out in the kidneys. So if you can lick your blood when you cut your finger, you are already halfway to tasting your urine; since urine is blood minus some other elements in the blood.


Another thing is about the smell and the looks. Doesn’t the offensive smell of urine mean that it is not to be touched? Of course all organic things are subject to decay and with urine also the oxidation process starts as soon as urine contacts with air. If you pee in a plate or a toilet bowl and let it stay for a long time it starts to stink as more ammonia is produced as it contacts with oxygen. This is the smell that you remember from public toilets. When you pee on a surface which dries quickly, there is still some smell but it is rather different. You may test this and see for yourself. And also most of the repulsiveness of the smell of pee comes from conditioning we received as a child during our toilet education (“when you feel it you have to say it because pee is d-i-r-t-y, you do it in the potty”)

Nature has given us many tools but some of them we are more and more alienated with. This was not always like it is now. Just like we knew more about natural medicine, we also knew more about urine before. Perhaps you have heard the use of or even used pee after a bee sting. This is because the astringency of pee helps the tissues to contract and keep the poison local rather than sending it into the blood stream. This can be utilized in all sorts of stings including scorpion, mosquito and jellyfish stings. But there are many other traditional uses of pee. For example, did you ever wonder how the ancient Romans kept their white clothes so white. They had pee containers on the streets where the pee from households and public toilets would be gathered. The laundry people would gather everyone’s clothes, soak them in that stinky pee for some time and than rinse them in the river. This is because the same mineral salts in the urine helps the cloth fibers to expand. It is the same principle as the detergent salts and it can also be used for dyeing fabric (instead of alum salt). Another use of pee was as yeast. Although I haven’t tested this myself, couple of sources mention that it was used in certain bread and cheese recipes in Europe. In some tribal cultures which has the tradition of using hallucinogens, sometimes it was only the shaman who ate the mushroom. S/he neutralized the poison in his/her body and the tribe drank his/her pee to get only the good effects of the mushrooms (documented in Siberian tribes and the use of Amanita Muscaria mushrooms).

Before I start to tell about the traditional medicinal uses of pee I want to remind you about the exceptions. If you have any sort of infection in your kidneys, bladder or small intestines (UTI), if you have typhus (which is the only disease that can be passed through urine) or diabetes, or if you cannot take your urine in its purity (i.e. if you are menstruating) then you better not attempt to use it internally. Also you have to be careful what you eat. You shouldn’t use it if you are taking chemical medicines because the excess of chemicals are also filtered in the urine and you can overdose yourself by recycling it. This applies to other chemicals that are around us, additives in food, alcohol, pollution and even meats. So if you intend to use urine internally it is a very good idea to keep a simple controlled diet which is mostly vegetarian and take no chemicals (and you will see that once you start to observe your pee everyday, you will want to keep a healthy diet).
The most important known use of urine is its medicinal use. The earliest text we find about this is an early Indian sacred book called Shivambu Kalpa in Damar Tantra. Shivambu is the Sanskrit name for urine and it means the Water of Transformation (or, as some like to put it, “nectar of immortality”). According to this source, one has to drink a cup of his/her own midstream urine every morning. Midstream means that you do not take the first part of the urine (which just rinses the intestine) and the last part which may have some more solid residues from the bottom of the bladder. You only take the middle part of the first pee in the morning. And drink it. I know it won’t be easy at first. If it’s too hard you can mix it with some water or for a few days you can just keep it in your mouth and spit it out. Do not try to swallow anything that nauseates you. It is better to familiarize yourself with it first.

I found out that one of the best things about using pee is observing what is going on inside. You pee in a glass and look at it. Is it clear or blurred (which can be just too much urea, too much meat products or UTI)? Is it dark or like water? If it is very salty it means that you should drink some more water (this is the case in hot climates when you loose much water through sweating). Sometimes there is a strange color to it which may be the artificial coloring of that ice cream you had the day before. You can even taste the additives of a chewing gum in your pee. If there is even a little bit sweetness in your urine, it means your body cannot metabolize sugars and this is the easiest way to diagnose diabetes. In fact, before the modern tests were invented, doctors usually would just taste a little bit of the patient’s urine to see if s/he has diabetes. Certain herbs and vegetables change urine. Asparagus gives a very strong smell and beetroot makes it darker. When I started to use it first time, I discovered that drinking nutmeg before bed added a delicious aroma to my morning urine and made it very appealing. You can find your favorite flavoring through testing or just mixing a spoon of honey in it (although on the long run it’s better to have it plain).

The Damar Tantra goes on to state that if you do this for a year your immune system is greatly improved. If you do this everyday for longer you become immune to most diseases and poisons. And at the end of a long list it says if you do it for over 12 years you become immortal (almost)! At one time India had the world’s oldest elected prime minister, Morarji Desai, who was 94 years old when he took office. When he was asked how he can keep his mind so active being so old he said that his secret is drinking his pee every morning since he was a little kid.

Mannekin Pis in Brussels
Indian medicine Ayurveda states that the best pee for
medicinal use is the one taken from a very young boy.

There are some western doctors who successfully used urine for the treatment of life threatening conditions such as tuberclosis and cancer. In J.W. Armstrong’s book Water of Life: A treatise on Urine Therapy he describes a technique which consists of putting the patient into a complete fast and making him/her drink all the urine, day and night, while also massaging the body with urine.

There is not a completely scientific explanation to how it works. We know that urine contains excesses and recycling them can help. For example, when you eat an orange most of the vitamin C gets filtered into the urine after less then 3 hours. If you drink that urine you make the protection of the vitamin longer. Same applies for other things like antibodies. When you are sick, drink your urine and some of your body’s soldiers will go back to fighting while your body can create only a certain amount of soldiers in a certain time. Some people argue that antibodies would not survive the digestion process, but at least their building blocks do. Some tribes in Siberia have the tradition of mixing their urine and drinking together to share everyone’s immunity as a tribe. When you get a sample of the antibody of someone who is sick, your body will be prepared before the actual sickness reaches it. Excess hormones also go into pee and that’s why you should observe yourself better if you drink it while you are having PMS. This is also the reason why you should cut down on animal products while drinking urine.

Honestly I do not drink my pee all the time because I am not that much of a master of my diet when I travel and I sometimes forget to do it in the sleepiness of the morning. But there are other medicinal uses of pee that you can test and see for yourself. Here are some I have personal experience with.

- For the eyes: I don’t think there is a better medicine for the dryness or the inflammation of the eyes. My eyes are very sensitive to inflammation and conjunctivitis (the itchy white eruptions on the side of the eyelid) and I have tried all sorts of things from garlic to modern creams. Nothing helps better than pee. Take some clean pee (not necessarily morning pee) in your hand or in a spoon and give your eyes a good wash with it few times a day. This way conjunctivitis just grows and explodes very quickly and there is usually no further infection. I have helped many people successfully use it this way and it seems to work each time. Pee and tears have similar amounts of minerals and when your eyes are dry you can wet them with pee. You may need to dilute it if it is too salty. It can be used as contact lens liquid but after a few days the salts in pee can damage your lenses.

- Use it on all wounds. When you cut yourself or are bitten, stung, etc. just cover the wound with pee and let it dry there. It will not only disinfect it, it will also help it to heal faster. I have survived some nasty injuries in India without getting infected just by using urine. But once it is infected you may need to use other things. You can also turn it into a fine antiseptic cream by evaporating its water. You have do it quickly but do not let it boil. It makes a nice golden cream and only a little quantity is enough.

- It is great on the skin. Wash your face with it, let it dry and stretch your skin, letting all the black holes pop out and clean the pores. The first time I did this, I was afraid that people would realize it but when they did they just said “wow, what happened to you? You look younger today.” It’s true, it does make you look younger and it’s cheaper and healthier than botox.

- Use it on your hair. They say you can keep it for a few days in a closed container and it will make a better shampoo but the smell can be too intense. Either way it makes the hair very silky and helps dissolve all the dirt without using any shampoo.

- If your respiratory system is clogged you can gurgle with it and take some into your nose. Even just keeping some in your mouth will help you discharge all the mucus you do not need.

- For receding gums and sores inside the mouth (e.g. herpes) rinse your mouth with urine few times a day (not necessarily morning urine) and let it stay for sometime before you wash it with water. This will harden the loosened tissues.

And you know that in emergencies when you don’t have any water to drink, just recycle the whole thing, do not waste a drop of your pee. After all, that’s what they do in space, it's astronauts' drink :)

Do not believe in anything I say. Try it and see for yourself. You do not have to apply it right now but you may need it one day. And please share this knowledge with your friends and family.

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I'd be happy to answer any questions on this issue. Just leave a comment with your name.

Here are some resources if you want to learn more about using urine. Here is a free e-book by Dr G.K.Thakkar, Shivambu Gita (PDF file). He seems to have many books in circulation about this subject. One book I found particuarly simple and useful is the Golden Fountain by Coen van der Kroon. And here are some websites: A complete guide to urine therapy, miracles of urine therapy, healing with urine therapy (this one lists other sources and books).