Urine Therapy Is a Terrible Idea
Why you should not drink your own pee (yes, really) for Covid-19 or anything else
If there’s one truth you can rely on regardless of the situation — from the current unending pandemic nightmare to the balmy days before — it’s that someone, somewhere, will try literally anything if they think it might help their health. For example, I’ve previously discussed geophagy, where people eat dirt, or slapping therapy, the discredited practice of, you guessed it, slapping yourself over and over again to cure medical problems.
One topic I’ve never touched on is urine therapy. This is the practice of drinking, bathing in, and generally reusing your own pee for medical purposes.
Now, this is pretty out there, and most people don’t need a detailed reason not to drink their own urine, but it has recently gained prominence because a well-known anti-vaccine advocate has recommended urine instead of a jab. For most normal people, this sounds like a terrible joke, but in fact urine therapy has been a mainstay of many alternative therapy groups for some time. The idea that you should drink (or bathe in) your own pee, as bizarre as it…
