Ted's Remedies

Commonly known as Urine therapy, used in India and even since the biblical times, they have been using urine to drink and to use in skin also.

Of course our society find this hard to accept, so we go to a more cleaner solution in finding the active components of why urine is so effective.

Basically it is the urea component and the osmolarity of sodium and potassium. However in certain bacteria, such as e. coli, which is most resistant are more sensitive to urea components than it is for the ammonia (in the urine), the osmolarity(salts), or the pH. In this case, we can consider that urea, which is available found in a local fertilizer, is the active components against certain bacteria. You can perhaps buy them yourself and use that as a skin lotion or antiseptic solution using a urea, and perhaps a concentrated sea salt solution added. This is the closest artificial urine without using the real thing.

Urea is most effective when urine pH is between 5.5 to 6.5 for e.coli. But this may not be true for other bacteria.

However, it is interesting to note that you can increase urea by eating very salty fishes to increase urea (a protein by product) which will increase both urea, and osmolarity enough to kill the urinary tract infection by something as simple as the food we eat. For me at least just a tablespoon of sea salt would kill the urinary tract infection, but it won't work for everyone. So perhaps eating fishes would invariably increase the urea, plus some cranberry juice, where its active component in my opinion comes from the benzoate found naturally in the cranberry.

Another component of urine, which is in much smaller amount is hydroxyurea, which is basically a reaction between hydroxylamine hcl with baking soda, and can actually be found in urine and also have some antibacterial and antiviral components too. Some conventional medicine use this for anti-cancer treatment, but in my opinion the dose is way too high and should lower the dose but with higher bicarbonates instead.

Different organisms have different sensitivity necessary to reduce their numbers and may effect a kill, either salts (osmolarity), pH (usually alkalinity), or certain biological by products such as urea.

It not sup rising that many cosmetic preparation often add about 10% urea also to help with the skin or another form of such as Diazolidinyl Urea in most skin preparations.

It is probably why urine therapy was used in the olden times for cancer and other conditions, it is perhaps the urea, as well as the antioxidant charges (most urine oxidation reduction potentials are often negative in value, while most of the food we drinks are strongly positive in value) and therefore an oxidant. There are other components too, besides that. I cut and paste a simple study on just urea on its effect of e.coli, in case you are wondering why urine works. I prefer a more chemical means of using urea directly, perhaps because of my chemistry background and that I haven't quite yet grown accustomed to using them in the original form! Ted

J Clin Invest. 1968 October; 47(10): 2374–2390.

Antibacterial activity of human urine

Donald Kaye
1Department of Medicine, The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, New York 10021

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

Abstract
The fate of bacteria in human urine was studied after inoculation of small numbers of Escherichia coli and other bacterial strains commonly implicated in urinary tract infection. Urine from normal individuals was often inhibitory and sometimes bactericidal for growth of these organisms. Antibacterial activity of urine was not related to lack of nutrient material as addition of broth did not decrease inhibitory activity. Antibacterial activity was correlated with osmolality, urea concentration and ammonium concentration, but not with organic acid, sodium, or potassium concentration. Between a pH range of 5.0-6.5 antibacterial activity of urine was greater at lower pH. Ultrafiltration and column chromatography to remove protein did not decrease antibacterial activity.

Urea concentration was a more important determinant of antibacterial activity than osmolality or ammonium concentration. Increasing the urea of a non inhibitory urine to equal that of an inhibitory urine made the urine inhibitory. However, increasing osmolality (with sodium chloride) or increasing ammonium to equal the osmolality or ammonium of an inhibitory urine did not increase antibacterial activity. Similarly, dialysis to decrease osmolality or ammonium but preserve urea did not decrease inhibitory activity. Decreasing urea with preservation of ammonium and osmolality decreased antibacterial activity. Removal of ammonium with an ion exchanger did not decrease antibacterial activity, whereas conversion of urea to ammonium with urease and subsequent removal of the ammonium decreased antibacterial activity.

Urine collected from volunteers after ingestion of urea demonstrated a marked increase in antibacterial activity, as compared with urine collected before ingestion of urea.