Today we will look at what could be classed as a rather unsavoury type of therapy. However, I like to explore all possible therapies, so let’s talk about urotherapy.
Urotherapy has been promoted for a wide variety of diseases and conditions, including cancer. Advocates of urotherapy propose several ways by which the treatment can slow, or stop, the growth of cancer.One is that urine can stimulate the body’s immune system.
Cancer and other diseases release chemicals called antigens into the bloodstream. When the immune system detects them, it responds by making antibodies to fight the invading disease. Some of the antigens made by cancer cells appear in the urine, so practitioners have hypothesised that if they give urine to cancer patients, the immune system would react more vigorously by making a greater number of antibodies, thereby increasing its capacity to kill tumour cells.
Other practitioners have suggested that urine inhibits the ability of cancer cells to crowd together, which disrupts their flow of nutrients and waste excretion. Without any way to nourish themselves or get rid of waste products, the tumour cells die.
One proponent asserts that certain components in urine establish a biochemical defence system that works independently of the body’s immune system. It is claimed that these chemicals don’t destroy cancer cells, but ‘correct’ their defects and prevent them from spreading.
Patients undergoing urotherapy may drink their own urine (from a few drops to full glasses), use it as an enema, or have it injected directly into the bloodstream or into tumours. In powdered form, urea, the primary component of urine, has been applied directly to tumours appearing on the skin. Urea may also be packed into capsules or dissolved in a flavoured drink. There are no established guidelines for how much urine or urea should be used.
The thought of drinking urine may offend the sensibilities of most Westerners, but in fact, human urine has been considered a healing agent in many Asian cultures for centuries. In India, this practice has been a part of traditional medical practices for thousands of years.
In the mid-1950s, a Greek doctor named Evangelos Danopolous professed that he had identified anti-cancer properties in urea and had used the compound to successfully treat patients with certain types of skin and liver cancer. Danopolous claimed that his therapy significantly extended patients’ lives. He published several small positive case reports, but later studies by other researchers did not achieve the same results.
Other doctors have also claimed that urea has anti-cancer characteristics. One of them, Vincent Speckhart, testified about urea’s benefits before a House of Representatives committee. A breast cancer patient whom Speckhart treated with urea reportedly recovered from her disease and was alive 10 years after therapy.
We all entered this world in a vat of urine called amniotic fluid
Urotherapy is currently offered along with other forms of alternative therapies in some cancer clinics in Mexico.
In addition, World War II doctors used it when they ran out of antiseptics in the trenches. Bedouins used it to clean and heal burns. Amazonian tribes used it to cure poisonous snake bites. The Aztecs used it on wounds. The ancient Chinese used it for a wide range of applications and wrote extensively about its curative properties in their earliest medical texts.
However, the most ancient known reference to autourotherapy is the Shivambu Kalpa Vidhi from the Damar Tantra in the yogic Vedas, which date back, by some accounts, to as much as 8,000 years ago, or even earlier. An early remedy in traditional Ayurvedic medicine is still practised by some Ayurvedic doctors today.
Just as a pointer to those who are turning up their nose at the moment. We all entered this world after swimming around in a vat of urine called amniotic fluid for nine months. This fluid causes no issues with anyone medical or otherwise. As researchers from the department of pediatrics at the University of California put it, amniotic fluid is a marvellously complex and dynamic milieu that changes as pregnancy progresses.
Amniotic fluid contains nutrients and growth factors that facilitate foetal growth, provides mechanical cushioning and antimicrobial effectors that protect the foetus and allows assessment of foetal maturity and disease. (J. Perinatol., 2005)
According to Coen van der Kroon, a practitioner and co-founder of the Academy of Ayurvedic Studies in the Netherlands, from the Ayurvedic medical perspective, urine contains information about the disease or infection the body has been exposed to; the body can then use this to cook up its own internal pharmacopoeia to fight the disease.
“Whether you ingest it, inject it, or use it homeopathically, in all cases urine therapy uses, at least to some extent, a feedback loop through the body where the latter gets its own information very compactly returned to itself as a small information package,” says Van der Kroon.
“The body does this inside itself most of the time. So as long as the system works well, the feedback loop is continuously giving feedback information so the body can adjust things.”
Van der Kroon is the author of one of the most globally respected books on autourotherapy called The Golden Fountain: The Complete Guide to Urine Therapy.
The question to ask after all this is: is autourotherapy an effective treatment for cancer and other major illnesses?
kathryn@maltanet.net