CLAIM:

Drinking your own urine can have multiple health benefits.

FACT: 

There’s no scientific evidence to substantiate these claims.

You have all heard the story perhaps- former Prime Minister Morarji Desai used to drink his own urine. The revelation caused such a stir, when as the Prime Minister of the country he spoke of drinking his own pee during an interview for the US show 60 minutes, that it was popularly referred to as the "Morarji Cola"—a subtle reference to his government booting out Coca-Cola from the country in 1977.

"I drink five to eight ounces of urine every morning on an empty stomach,” Desai reportedly told the anchor, when asked about his secret behind his health, much to the surprise (and disgust) of the journalist. Desai also spoke of how his diet primarily consisted of fruits, juices, fresh milk, yogurt, honey, nuts and garlic.

"If you drink all your urine, in just a few days the body becomes purified. By the third day your urine is without any colour or any smell or any taste and it will be pure almost like water. You will feel very good because your system is improved and cleansed considerably... Drinking urine fights the cause of all diseases, and it costs you nothing," he said, according to media reports.

But does auto-urine therapy or urophagia, as the practice is called, really offer health benefits?

Drinking your own urine for health benefits: What are the facts? 

One should note that the former Prime Minister wasn’t alone in celebrating the health benefits of drinking one’s urine—drinking or local application of one’s urine for medicinal purposes has been practiced for thousands of years in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, and is even mentioned in ancient Indian yogic texts and Chinese documents.

A quick search on YouTube still gives you a lot of results, and not just from India, showing you that many people still practice it, and is a matter of debate among different sections of society. In fact, a dedicated website to the practice in India, says 'the nectar of life' can even cure cancer.

However, research does not appear to support these fantastical claims.

"There is, it seems, virtually nothing urine won’t cure. Modern proponents use pseudoscience to explain the benefits of the various, mostly exaggerated, components of urine," according to a 2010 editorial in 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," it said, while adding that in some of the poorer parts of the world urine is used to treat fever and other ailments in children not because it is the most effective, but because people cannot afford or have access to modern medicine. "The treatment of vulnerable and already ill children with urine should be strongly discouraged," it added.

In fact when asked about the health benefits of drinking one's urine, Dr René Sotelo, a professor of clinical urology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California said that while people claim it has multiple medical applications, such as reducing hair loss, treating cancer, cleansing the cardiovascular system and even preventing viral and bacterial infections, there is no scientific basis for these claims.

"Even famous people, such as Madonna or the former prime minister of India, have been quoted to partake in urine therapy for medical treatment. It is noteworthy to mention, however, that there is no scientific evidence showing that these treatments are effective," he said.

Even topical application of urine for ailments like acne is not supported by enough evidence. "Despite the zeal of its advocates, the clinical evidence for urine therapy remains sparse in traditional medical literature. Such practices may also be dangerous. Synthetic urea manufactured in a controlled setting may act very differently from whole urine collected and applied directly to human skin," according to a study.