In short: Urine therapy means drinking or applying your own urine in the hope of healing. Its story stretches from medieval hatha yoga, where it is called amaroli, to a 1944 book by British naturopath John W. Armstrong, a famously outspoken Indian prime minister and, today, TikTok. Science has taken a close look at urine, and the evidence points the other way: urine is not sterile, it is mostly water plus substances your kidneys have worked to remove, and there are no trials showing that it treats anything. The risks are real, including infection, salt and dehydration, medication residues, and delayed care. This is a “read to know” article, so you will not find any how-to steps here.
Read in Vietnamese: bài tiếng Việt trên Float Vietnam
Maybe a video appeared in your feed of someone sipping a glass of something pale yellow and calling it “liquid gold”. Maybe an aunt dropped a post into the family group chat about washing your eyes with it. You are curious, perhaps a little taken aback, and you want a straight answer without being made to feel silly for asking. So here it is: where the practice came from, why people believe in it, what researchers have actually found inside urine, and why we land firmly on “fascinating history, not a health habit”.
Part of the Ōmni Recovery Library · Recovery by the Body Itself
Ōmni Evidence Scale: No good evidence yet. There are no controlled trials of drinking or applying urine for any health condition, only personal stories, and there are documented cases of harm. See how we rate evidence on the Ōmni Evidence Scale.
Where urine therapy comes from
Urine has had a place in medicine for a very long time, although for most of that history it was something doctors examined rather than something people drank. For centuries in Europe, physicians practised uroscopy: holding a flask of a patient’s urine up to the light and studying its colour, cloudiness and smell. It was, in a sense, the blood test of its day, and painters loved the scene.
India: animal urine in Ayurveda, amaroli in hatha yoga
India is where the idea of urine as a remedy has some of its deepest roots, but two traditions that often get blended together online are worth separating. The classical Ayurvedic text, the Charaka Samhita, lists eight kinds of animal urine for medicinal use (from ewes, goats, cows, buffalo, elephants, camels, horses and donkeys); the online edition of the text does not list human urine among them. Drinking your own urine belongs to a different tradition. In medieval hatha yoga it is called amaroli, and the 15th-century Hatha Yoga Pradipika mentions it only briefly, alongside other esoteric practices.
The text most modern advocates tend to quote is the Shivambu Kalpa (“shivambu” roughly means “auspicious water”), said to form part of an older work called the Damara Tantra. The anthropologist Joseph Alter, who studied modern yoga in India, notes that this 107-verse text is not well attested and mostly appears as an appendix in modern Indian books on the subject. In other words, it may be younger than its reputation suggests.
England, 1944: “The Water of Life”
The modern movement has a surprisingly English chapter. John W. Armstrong, a British naturopath, began recommending urine regimens around 1918 and in 1944 published The Water of Life: A Treatise on Urine Therapy. Armstrong described his own recovery from tuberculosis and argued that urine could heal almost any illness. The book is still in print and became a founding text of the modern movement. It is a striking read today, but it is built on personal conviction and case stories, not controlled studies.
A prime minister who drank it every morning
The practice found its most famous advocate in Morarji Desai, Prime Minister of India from 1977 to 1979. In October 1977, TIME reported that Desai, then 81, told a reporter he had drunk six to eight ounces of his own urine every morning for five or six years, calling it “very good for you”. Shortly before, he had told a meeting of India’s Tuberculosis Association that urine therapy could cure cancer and cataracts. He lived to 99, a fact advocates still cite. But one long life tells us about one person, not whether a practice works.
Today: TikTok, “liquid gold” and eye rinses
The latest wave lives online. A 2025 fact-check by Science Feedback rated as “unsupported” a collection of viral claims: urine as a “healing secret”, a source of “stem cells”, a skin tonic because it contains urea, or a way to balance the body’s pH. Vietnam has its own version. In April 2026, VietNamNet reported social media accounts recommending urine for bathing, face washing, massage and even rinsing the eyes, with one account saying they had done it for ten years. Some old Vietnamese remedies also mention “tiểu đồng tiện”, the urine of healthy young boys, although doctors of traditional medicine at Hanoi’s K Hospital told VietNamNet that no authoritative text endorses drinking urine to treat disease.
It is not hard to understand the appeal. Urine is free, it is yours, it comes wrapped in ancient-sounding language, and the people who swear by it often sound calm and completely certain. We can understand why someone living with a long illness, or simply exhausted by expensive treatments, might want to believe. That is exactly why the evidence matters.
What science actually says
What is in urine
Your kidneys filter about 150 quarts (around 140 litres) of blood each day, return almost all of the water and useful substances to your bloodstream, and send out just 1 to 2 quarts as urine. Urine is, by design, made up largely of what the body does not need at that moment: excess water and salts, urea from protein breakdown, and leftovers from food, medicines and the environment.
It is also chemically rich. A 2013 study in PLOS ONE built a database of the human urine metabolome, identifying 2,651 confirmed compounds. That richness is one reason urine is so useful for medical testing. It does not mean drinking it is useful: as two researchers at Bond University wrote in The Conversation, urine is about 95% water, and its urea is far too dilute to do what skincare products do (and the urea in those products is made in a lab anyway).
“Urine is sterile”: a myth
One of the most common arguments for urine therapy is that urine is sterile, so it cannot hurt you. That idea came in part from a standard lab test developed decades ago to detect kidney infections, a test that only looked for large numbers of a few common bacteria. In 2014, Hilt and colleagues at Loyola University Chicago used a more thorough method, expanded quantitative urine culture, on urine samples from 65 women. Bacteria grew from 80% of samples (52 of 65), almost all of which the standard test had reported as “no growth”. They identified 35 genera and 85 species. The bladder has its own small community of microbes, the urinary microbiome, and once urine leaves the body it picks up more.
Plausible mechanism versus shown effect
Some molecules found in urine do have biological activity. Medicine has purified useful drugs from urine for decades, and urine-derived stem cells are a real area of regenerative medicine research. But that research involves isolating cells or molecules in a lab and using them in controlled doses, not drinking the source. A regenerative medicine researcher interviewed by Science Feedback explained that stomach acid and digestive enzymes make it highly improbable that drinking urine could deliver living stem cells anywhere useful. And as for pH, the kidneys help regulate your blood’s acidity by putting acid into urine; drinking it back does not “balance” anything.
So the clearest summary is this: urine contains some biologically interesting things, but there is no trial showing that drinking or applying it treats any condition, and the claims of benefit still rest on stories.
The risks, plainly
- Infection. Urine carries bacteria. In Nigeria, where children’s and cows’ urine has been given to young children with convulsions, a 2010 study isolated 116 bacteria, including E. coli, Proteus and Klebsiella, many resistant to several antibiotics. An editorial published alongside it concluded that giving urine to vulnerable, already ill children should be strongly discouraged.
- Salt and dehydration. Drinking urine puts back the salts your kidneys have just removed. That is why survival manuals, including the US Army’s, advise against drinking it even when water runs out.
- Medicines and toxins. Urine contains traces of the medicines you take and substances you have been exposed to. Drinking it sends them around again, which can matter for people with allergies or those taking regular medication.
- Skin and eyes. Urine breaks down into ammonia, which can irritate skin and mucous membranes; Vietnamese doctors quoted in 2026 warned in particular against eye rinses.
- Injection is life-threatening. Medical journals describe a man in India who developed septic shock and multiple organ failure after injecting his own urine (he survived after intensive care) and a woman in Germany who died of sepsis after accidentally injecting it.
- Delayed care. The quietest risk may also be the biggest: time spent relying on urine therapy for cancer or stroke is time not spent on care that has been shown to work.
What Ōmni thinks
We find the history genuinely fascinating: a practice travelling from medieval yoga texts to an English naturopath’s study, then to a prime minister’s breakfast and eventually onto your phone. We also understand the people drawn to it, often because they want to take their health into their own hands. But we would not do it, and we do not recommend it. There is a better version of the “recovery by the body itself” idea: your body’s own systems, kidneys included, already handle the filtering and recycling. What they usually need from you is much simpler — water, sleep and rest.
Rest is what we do at Ōmni. In float therapy, you lie back in warm water holding about 500 kg of dense, mineral-rich Epsom salt, inside a private room that can become completely dark and quiet. Randomised trials have found clear effects on stress and anxiety. We rate it Strong because, alongside these trials, user experience is overwhelmingly positive: in a 2025 survey of regular floaters, 92% reported relaxation and 77% less stress, echoed by thousands of reviews, Reddit threads and forums, and by athletes and public figures who float. A single float costs 1,500,000 VND for 60 minutes or 2,000,000 VND for 90 minutes; the couple room adds 700,000 VND for the second person. We are at 16C Quốc Hương, Thảo Điền, open 9:00–21:00 daily, from the team behind Float Vietnam, the country’s pioneer float centre since 2017.
FAQ
Is urine sterile?
No. A 2014 study using a more thorough culture method grew bacteria from 80% of urine samples that the standard test had called “no growth”. The bladder has its own microbiome, and urine picks up more bacteria once it leaves the body.
Does drinking urine have any proven health benefits?
No. There are no controlled trials showing benefit for any condition. Claims rest on personal stories, and fact-checkers have rated recent social media claims as unsupported.
What is amaroli?
Amaroli is the hatha yoga name for drinking one’s own urine. The 15th-century Hatha Yoga Pradipika mentions it briefly; most modern advocates quote the Shivambu Kalpa, a text that scholars say is not well attested.
Did Morarji Desai really drink his own urine?
Yes, by his own account. In 1977, TIME reported that India’s prime minister said he drank six to eight ounces of his urine every morning. His long life is often cited, but one person’s story cannot show that the practice works.
Can you drink urine to survive without water?
Survival guidance, including the US Army’s field manual, advises against it: urine returns salts to a body that is already short of water, and a dehydrated person makes very little urine anyway.
Written by the team at Ōmni Space – Float Saigon in Thảo Điền as part of the Ōmni Recovery Library. A history and evidence read, not a guide or medical advice; sources checked on 30 October 2026.
Sources
- Charak Samhita Online. Mutra (urine), citing Charaka Samhita Sutra Sthana 1/93 (checked 30 October 2026).
- Alter JS (2004). Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and Philosophy. Princeton University Press.
- Armstrong JW. The Water of Life: A Treatise on Urine Therapy (first published 1944). Vermilion / Penguin Random House.
- TIME (24 October 1977). The World: Drink Up, Drink Up.
- Science Feedback (7 June 2025). Social media claims about urine therapy benefits aren’t backed by scientific evidence.
- Phương Thuý, VietNamNet (26 April 2026). Lan truyền nguy hiểm dùng nước tiểu chữa bệnh, bác sĩ sửng sốt, cảnh báo nóng.
- VietNamNet (12 April 2012). ‘Chữa ung thư bằng nước tiểu là uống… thuốc độc’.
- National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Your Kidneys & How They Work.
- Bouatra S et al. (2013). The human urine metabolome. PLOS ONE 8(9): e73076.
- Moro C, Phelps C (21 October 2022). Is urine sterile? Do urine ‘therapies’ work? Experts debunk common pee myths. The Conversation.
- Hilt EE et al. (2014). Urine is not sterile: use of enhanced urine culture techniques to detect resident bacterial flora in the adult female bladder. Journal of Clinical Microbiology 52(3): 871–876. doi:10.1128/JCM.02876-13.
- Ogunshe AAO, Fawole AO, Ajayi VA (2010). Microbial evaluation and public health implications of urine as alternative therapy in clinical pediatric cases: health implication of urine therapy. Pan African Medical Journal 5: 12.
- Loeffler JM (2010). The Golden Fountain: is urine the miracle drug no one told you about? Pan African Medical Journal 5: 13.
- Subramanian S et al. (2011). Polymicrobial sepsis in an immunocompetent host due to self injection of urine. Journal of Global Infectious Diseases 3(3): 312–313.
- Eyer F, Pfab R, Zilker T (2005). Lethal sepsis and multi-organ failure after accidental injection of urine in a drug addict (article in German). Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift 130(20): 1258–1260. doi:10.1055/s-2005-868710.
- van Dierendonck D, te Nijenhuis J (2005). Flotation restricted environmental stimulation therapy (REST) as a stress-management tool: a meta-analysis. Psychology & Health 20(3): 405–412.
- Kjellgren A, Westman J (2014). Beneficial effects of treatment with sensory isolation in flotation-tank as a preventive health-care intervention: a randomized controlled pilot trial. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 14: 417.
- Hilpert K, Chis Ster I (2025). Experiences and perceptions of regular floatation-REST users: results from an online survey. Journal of Clinical Images and Medical Case Reports 6(5): 3600.
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