Thai Health Minister debunks ‘urine’ craze “body wastes must not be eaten or drunk”

“She added that urine is a kind of waste discharged from the body and is not for drinking.”

The Thai Department of Health is warning the public against following the example of several online stories of Thais drinking their own urine and using it to wash their faces. The practice has become somewhat of a craze in recent weeks.

Doctor Amporn Benjapolphithak, deputy director-general of the department, says that urine is dangerous to drink or use as a face or eyewash, as being promoted by Facebook enthusiasts.

Meanwhile, Deputy PM and Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul came out yesterday saying that body wastes must not be eaten or drunk but added that the Public Health Ministry would not issue a formal announcement.

Dr Anuttorn Jittinan, former head of Thailand’s national kidney association, also took to Facebook yesterday telling people to “stop promoting the idea of drinking your own urine”.

He said that the chemical constituents in urine are things rejected by the kidneys.

“If there is any benefit in urine it would be a minimal amount of minerals that the body can’t cope with.”

The whole fad followed a Facebook user posting that a school in Khon Kaen’s Phol district used urine, mixed with herbs, and gave it to students to drink to cure stomach pains.

Another resident in Ratchaburi’s Ban Pong district posted on her Facebook wall that she regularly drank urine and used it to wash her eyes and wounds, while a nurse has posted that she also drank urine and also boiled and distilled urine and used it to wash wounds of patients.

A TV channel then spread the fad after interviewing others who claimed to drink their own urine and wash their faces with it.

Dr. Amporn acknowledged that urine was used as a medicine during the Greek and Roman empires but pointed out that the average life span was less than 40 years. She added that in ancient days, clean drinking water was hard to find, so the urine was treated as water by some people.

But she says there are no modern medical studies that endorsed the use of urine as a cure for disease.

Amporn explained that cream for treating pimples contains urea, a substance found in the urine and that it would be safer to buy this inexpensive cream rather than use possibly contaminated urine to watch their faces.

She added that urine is a kind of waste discharged from the body and is not for drinking.

SOURCE: Pattaya One