The Common Urine Myth That's Been Debunked By Science

It can be awkward to talk about certain bodily functions. Like, who wants to strike up a dinner conversation about fun fart facts and myths? Perhaps it's due to the taboo of bathroom talk, but there are a lot of inaccurate rumors out there about pee and poop, and one of those myths could actually put someone in danger. It's the idea that you can drink your own urine, a practice advertised by survivalists like Bear Grylls as a way to hydrate when no clean water is available. Fortunately, most of you will never find yourselves lost in the desert and will never have to resort to drinking your own pee, but if you did, you could get really sick. Grylls and other survivalists have claimed that drinking urine is safe because it's sterile, but that's not true, and scientists have proven it.

It wasn't just the survivalist genre that spawned this myth, as scientists themselves used to believe pee was sterile, too. But then, science technology advanced, and the means to test for microbes in urine vastly improved over time. A study of 65 urine samples conducted in 2014 and published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology identified bacteria in 80% of test subjects. A second study published in Urologia Internationalis in 2015 backed up these findings in a test of 52 urine samples. They found an average of 5.8 bacterial species in women's urine and 7.1 species in men's urine. This clearly illustrates that urine is not sterile.

Many people believe that urine is sterile because when it comes to the function of human organs, the kidney's job is to filter waste, but the kidneys are not the last stop your pee makes. It has to travel through your bladder and urethra first, and both of those contain bacteria that the pee picks up along its journey. The fact that men have longer urethras than women may help to explain why the Urologia Internationalis study found more bacterial species in male urine versus female urine. It is crucial to recognize that the bacteria in your bladder and urethra are only meant for that part of your body, but by drinking urine, you introduce them to your gastrointestinal tract, where they do not belong, and risk making yourself sick.

Moreover, drinking urine has been presented as a survival technique, but if you're dehydrated, it's even more dangerous to drink your pee. You may have heard that the color of your urine can reveal information about your health, and it varies based on hydration levels. That reflects a change in the chemical composition of your urine under extreme dehydration circumstances. The more dehydrated you are, the harder your kidneys must work to keep water in your body. This means that you pee less, and what you do pee will contain a higher concentration of toxins. So, if you're severely dehydrated, drinking your own urine becomes increasingly dangerous. These toxins can affect your nervous system, causing symptoms ranging from vomiting to passing out. So please, pack a lot of water.