Drinking your own urine: The unorthodox Chinese 'miracle cure'
The China Urine Therapy Association claims that drinking urine can 'improve the body's ability to fight diseases'
If the infamously bitter taste of Chinese traditional medicine is already bad enough to turn you off, just imagine that there are 100,000 people practising urine therapy in mainland China - at least according to claims by members of the China Urine Therapy Association.
For many of these urine drinking practitioners, what the unitiated may see as a strange practice actually holds many curative effects.
For 79-year-old Bao Yafu, urine therapy is just another daily routine: he drinks three cups of his own urine every day, and even washes his eyes and wipes his face with it.
“In these 22 years [of urine therapy], I never caught a cold. My eyesight has become clearer and I don’t have any age pigment,” Bao told local newspaper Wuhan Evening News, also revealing that a medical check conducted by a local hospital recently showed that he has the bone density of a 30-year-old.
Bao, the chairman of the China Urine Therapy Association, said that the group has over 1,000 members from almost everywhere in China except for Tibet and Ningxia provinces. The organisation claims that it is “a non-profit non-governmental organisation for the common wealth recognised by the Hong Kong SAR government”.
One of the requirements of joining is to consume urine and promote its healing effects. The groups' membership fee is 20 RMB (HK$ 25) per year, and around 100 members gather once a year to share their experiences.