BOULDER, CO ? Forget kale smoothies ... a meetup group in Boulder swears by drinking their own urine for health benefits. While most doctors would advise against it, the members claim that the practice has cured many of their ailments.
The Urine Therapy Meetup group said their practice is based on 4,000 years of evidence ? accounts of people drinking their own urine have been recorded in ancient India, China, Greece and Rome.
The Boulder group doesn't just drink their own pee, they rub it on their skin. Christopher Macor told 9News that regular medical creams never cured his eczema, but that the condition cleared when he began soaking his hands in urine.
Dozens of urine therapy groups from around the world are listed on Facebook, but the ones in the United States appear to have the most members ? several have amassed more than 4,000 followers.
The group in Boulder said their practice, which is called Shivambhu, can cure diseases, allergies and infections.
Most medical experts say urine can contain harmful bacteria and advise against the practice. There is no documented scientific and clinical evidence of the benefits of urine therapy, according to the Pan African Medical Journal.
"There may be rare situations where urine is the cleanest liquid at hand to pour over a dirty wound, or the only liquid to drink when buried under a collapsed building or lost at sea for days, but most of the time there are better or tastier ways to improve one's health," the journal's authors wrote.
Proponents of the practice say there's no documented evidence about the benefits of drinking urine because there's no money to be made from it; however, the science is fairly basic: the bodily fluid is made up of about 91 to 96 percent water, and the remaining percentage is ammonia, salt and waste the body is ridding itself of.
Dr. Andrew Thornber told BBC Three that drinking urine will add that waste back into the body, which could be hard on the digestive system. He said the kidneys will have to work hard to filter the waste all over again.
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