The History of Human Urine — The Drinkers

What this video covers

Episode 9 of the video series The History of Human Urine. The narrator recaps earlier episodes on urine in ancient Rome, collected from streets and households, used by farmers as fertilizer and in dye vats for a blue dye. He then turns to drinking one's own urine as a deliberate practice with a name, a philosophy and rules. He says one of the oldest traditions is in India, known as Shivambu, or Amaroli in yogic traditions, where the body was seen as part of a larger system. He mentions texts associated with the Shivambu Kalpa and the Damar Tantra that give detailed instructions on when and how to collect and use one's urine, making it a system rather than a one-off experiment, and says hatha yoga texts, including the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, place practices with bodily fluids within purification, energy conservation and spiritual progress. In the modern era, he says, British advocate John W. Armstrong published The Water of Life in 1944, describing urine fasting and applying urine to the body, which brought the idea to English speakers. He says the practice developed long before microscopes, hormones or DNA were known, that practitioners now speak of hormones, immune response, signaling, stem cells and regeneration, that urine contains metabolites, electrolytes, hormones, proteins and cells, and that researchers have isolated cells from urine for regenerative medicine; in his view that does not by itself show drinking urine heals as practitioners say, which he calls a separate question. The episode ends with a teaser for Episode 10 on what is inside urine.

These are the speakers' own experiences. This is not medical advice.