This morning I was flushing my eye with a mix of isotonic boric acid (borax) and some of my own urine. I have had an irritating dryness the last few days, I think almost certainly due to many hours of driving while in the UK, keeping my eyes open, fixed on the road (where they should be). The thought came to me that most of my readers would be surprised at this. Shocked? Maybe. Repulsed? I hope not.
Using one’s own urine as a medication is a very old idea, its beginnings lost in antiquity. Naturally, it has been dismissed as folklore, unworthy of serious study by modern medicine. Yet it is a curiously persistent notion—a fact that of itself bears some consideration. Certainly it has strong theoretical plus points.
Many investigators have independently and unequivocally demonstrated the presence of competent (physiologically active) antibodies in normal human urine. Think about it: just minutes before, urine was blood plasma. In fact it could be a unique therapeutic agent since only that patient’s urine could possibly contain the exact correct antibodies to his or her inflammagens and pathogens.
I first got interested in this in the early 1980s, because of my involvement with allergies, especially food and airborne allergens.
This giraffe seems to know something!
Background
The earliest scientific report, dating back to 1863, is in the physiological Memoirs of Surgeon-General Hammond of the US Army. But the paper that seems to have generated most interest among fellow doctors was an account in 1947 by Dr Jonas Plesch, who was, incidentally, personal physician to Albert Einstein. He left Germany at the time of the Nazi takeover and set up a fashionable practice in London. Dr Carl Eckhardt of Riverside, California read his paper while serving in Europe during the Second World War and put it to the test when he returned home.
Eckhardt tried it out first on a member of his family with severe incapacitating eczema: the condition cleared up completely. From that time until his death in 1976 he carried out approximately 70,000 treatments on 9,000 cases with remarkable success and relatively few side-effects.
Dr. William Fife, from Sacramento, California, next took up the mantle. Fife himself was an allergy sufferer and had been forced to retire due to ill-health. By chance he heard of auto-immune urine therapy (AIU) and, after a course of treatment, his health and vigor were restored. He has since claimed that several clinical trials have shown that over 80 per cent of patients have experienced various degrees of clinical improvement, lasting up to many years without further treatment.
However he does caution that it is wrong to talk of a cure. AIU lowers the individual’s sensitivity and allows more contact with previous offending allergens, but sensitivity is only reduced, not abolished, so frequent injudicious antigen exposure will still cause trouble.
Fife’s Technique
The patient is given a sterile plastic urine container and a medicated swab with instructions on how to collect a sterile specimen of mid-stream urine. This is tested before use in the normal way for specific gravity, pH, glucose, proteins, etc.
The patient then lies face-down on the examination table and the urine is injected slowly over several minutes into the subcutaneous fat of the upper outer quadrant of the buttock (the dose depends on the patient’s body weight).
Treatments are generally given once a week but it is not detrimental if one or more shots are omitted. The intervals need not be exactly one week, but usually this is convenient from the point of view of scheduling appointments
Observation shows that improvement is frequently manifest in two stages:
1. Almost immediate relief of symptoms, indicating an immune blocking effect
2. A build up of tolerance to the allergen after several months, suggesting an antibody mobilization, similar to that of immunization.
Advantages
There are a number of possible advantages for auto-immune urine therapy:
1. Extensive allergy testing for all possible antigens is not essential to treatment, as the body makes its own antibodies to all the antigens it is reacting to.
2. The medication is cheap and, being fresh, no preservatives are required.
3. There are no toxic chemicals or drugs required which hypersensitive patients might react to.
4. It has a high safety factor. Urine is naturally sterile. Since it is autogenous, unaltered and the antigens have been attenuated by passage through the body, the most sensitive patient is spared the danger of anaphylactic shock. Fife claimed to have given over 100,000 treatments without a single serous reaction.
What About Side-Effects?
Side-effects are relatively minor, though some researchers have reported a short-lasting depression. More common is a flaring up of previously experienced allergic symptoms or the premonitory feeling of coming down with a cold, a sort of Herxeimer reaction.
There may indeed be mental stimulation and a sense of well-being or euphoria. This stimulation is appreciated by the tired and depressed but can be temporarily disturbing to some tense schizophrenics, so they should be under adequate supervision. These symptoms may last for a few days after a treatment.
Rarely, a local inflammatory reaction at the site of the needle penetration occurs; this may subside voluntarily or with the aid of an antibiotic injection. There is a notable lack of any local tissue destruction caused by the urine.
Increasing the Chances of Success
Since the success of this treatment, theoretically at least, depends on the presence of effective antibodies in the urine, it is sensible to try to boost these just before treatment. Thus the patient is told to expose him– or herself to moderate amounts of known or likely antigens the evening before reporting to the clinic. This may mean eating several suspect foods or spending some time breathing in the air in suspicious locations. Foods expected to produce a severe reaction are not eaten until arrival at the clinic (the AIU injection will then probably switch off the symptoms quickly and besides, adrenalin/epinephrine is available).
The best time of all to collect urine is when the patient is at the height of a symptom attack. It may not be possible to identify any known or possible allergens for the patient but if, at the time of collecting the sample, the patient is reacting then it seems logical that at that time the urine will be loaded with antibodies. The patient may thus be told to report at once to the clinic if a reaction starts up.
As with all treatments, there is little hope of success if the patient doesn’t also carry out at least some corrective procedures in his or her environment and diet. Thus it is necessary to advise the patient to avoid addictions, such as to drugs, tobacco, alcohol, coffee, cola, wheat, sugar, milk, junk food, etc., as appropriate.
Objections
Orthodox opponents of AIU say it may be dangerous, obviously, though they are happy to prescribe things like Vioxx and other NSAIDs, or use powerful and sometimes fatal allergy shots! Fife points out that no one has been able to produce any disease by injecting normal, unaltered urine and that when one ureter is severed and opened into the peritoneum no serious or fatal effects result.
Probably one of the main objections is aesthetic: in our culture people cannot easily accept that urine can be beneficial.
Parsley Tea
Here is one way you could try auto-immune urine therapy for yourself or family. You disguise it with the taste of parsley (and that’s what you tell your friends it is called)!
Parsley tea is made up with a handful of fresh parsley and a quart of water, which is simmered for an hour. Strain and allow to cool and then add one ounce of early-morning urine. It can be drunk hot or cold throughout the day.
Please note that parsley on its own has no particular value. It’s just a good fresh herb. The benefits only come when urine is included.
Parsley tea (we know what it is really, wink!)
It’s good for urinary infections and is also said to dissolve stones.
One can speculate that the reason for the striking success of this therapy in urinary infections is related to the possible effect of parsley tea on the bladder wall. This is the mode of action of mannitol.
Many urinary tract pathogens, notably E. coli for example, stick to the bladder wall. That’s how the escape eradication. But mannitol, when present, exerts a greater osmotic pressure and causes the organisms to stick to it, so stripping them from the bladder wall.
In women urinary tract infections usually originate in the urethra with symptoms of frequent voiding and burning discomfort when voiding. Some kidney infections originate with bacteria from the blood stream landing in kidney tissue (pyelonephritis). The same type kidney damage may arise from infections that spread up the bladder via the ureters into the kidney tissue.
Bacterial infection of the kidney may progress to destruction of kidney tissue particularly if virulent forms of bacteria are involved (pseudomonas, proteus, enterococci, klebsiella). Often inadequate therapy permits smoldering infections to gradually destroy kidney tissue. This is particularly likely to occur when there is obstruction to urine flow out of the kidney (stones, tumors and scarring of the ureters which drain the kidneys).
On a final note, you may be surprised at the number of famous people who drink their own urine for health benefits. Ones that come to mind are the actress Sarah Miles, singer Madonna, singer songwriter Kesha and He-man Bear Grylls!
So I’m in good company! (as if that mattered to me)
To Your Good Health,
Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor
 might sound unusual, but it has been used for centuries to boost immunity and relieve allergies.){kind=link}