Can you drink your own urine?

[oldmangunner]

Can a person drink their own urine to survive. I was watching a documentary that said a man did this for a while until his urine turned toxic. How long does that take?

 

[outdoors Joe]

A survival article on the Internet mentioned drinking your own urine to survive, so I guess you can. It doesn't appeal to me now, but I guess if it would save my life, I would drink it. How would you know it became toxic?

 

[northernbushape]

Drinking urine to survive is a very bad idea and one that I suspect is mostly the stuff of legend or drunken boasting.

It is generally held that while drinking urine may indeed quench your thirst for a few minutes, you are basically re-concentrating the salt and mineral contents which will ultimately find themselves back in your kidneys in even higher concentrations and hence leaching even more moisture from other sources within your body. Should you happen to be revolted by the act and you should vomit, you will lose even more moisture.

Though there are medications and even holistic treatments that use urine, it is diluted hundreds of times and contains enough actual water to divert the harmful effects.

Bear Grylls allegedly drank urine on one of his episodes - and I saw the episode, but I have to call BS on it. I don't believe it for a minute. A guy with his background ought to know better.

Hollywood loves this stuff.

I suppose you could argue that a dying man, with his last twitch of life may extend for 15 or 20 minutes by drinking his own urine, during which time it is conceivable that a rescue may happen. But until I am actually experiencing my last twitch, I won't even consider it. The harm outweighs the benefit.

 

[outdoors Joe]

Thank you for explaining that. It makes a whole lot more sense to me to get water out of a river or creek and boil it to remove impurities. That can be done, can't it?

 

[Paige]

Ewwwwww! I don't think I could even to save myself. And if you consider all of the salts and minerals in the urine, you would just be hurting yourself worse. Boiling it would only concentrate the salts and minerals and be worse for you. Yuck!

 

[Charlene]

I agree with you Northernbushape. I don't see how it could benefit you as it is the bodies waste and if you are already dehydrated you can bet it is highly concentrated with bad stuff. Not to mention the idea is totally disgusting.

 

[SallyA]

That is totally disgusting and doesn't even make sense. There's no way I would do that. If you're in the desert, you could get water from cacti. If you're in the woods, aren't there ways to purify water from lakes and rivers in order to make it safe for drinking?

 

[HikingGuy]

Yuck. I could not imagine having to survive on urine. I think I would die first. It does not even sound appetizing. I know how it burns my son's legs when he wets his diaper at night, couldn't imagine drinking it too.

 

[faye]

Ew! No I can't! To me, urine is considered as one of our body wastes. It would just do more harm than good to my own kidney.

 

[northernbushape]

Thank you for explaining that. It makes a whole lot more sense to me to get water out of a river or creek and boil it to remove impurities. That can be done, can't it?

Yes, absolutely. I do it frequently while hiking. Try to find a source that is clear and running if possible. If you have to use still water, boil it for at least a minute or 2 before drinking it. You can also filter out any bigger particles with a bandanna or other type of filter medium.

 

[GPER]

I would rather set up a solar still and pee on the ground.

 

[foxylady]

There would be no way in heck I would drink my own urine even to save my life! That is just too disgusting to even think about. Eww. I don't care if Bear Grylls says you can. he says a lot of things I would never ingest.

 

[oldmangunner]

I see, wow thanks for all the input. Now that I know that you can not drink your urine I never will! If it will only make matters worse then it is not a good solution at all.

 

[primitivesite]

Absolutely not. You cannot drink you own urine and survive. I read that in the U.S. Army Field Manual. However, I have heard that you can give yourself an enema with seawater (salt water) and survive. I have not double checked that claim. But if true, it might apply to urine too. Perhaps.

 

[Michael]

However, I have heard that you can give yourself an enema with seawater (salt water) and survive.

Absorption of water is by passive diffusion. Water travels across a permeable membrane from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration, moving toward equilibrium.

This is why drinking salt water makes you thirstier. The high salt content creates a concentration gradient that actually draws water out of your body and into the salt water.

I'm inclined to think that a seawater enema would do exactly the same thing. I haven't researched it specifically, but it seems logical to me that it would be this way.

 

[woodsman]

Yes you can drink it, if you kidneys are healthy it probably won't have any side effects, aside from your kidneys using more water to filter them, essentially ending up more thirsty than you are. In conclusion not drinking your urine is probably a good idea, if you want to see the sunset.

 

[dinosaur]

Always boil the water you drink,

 

[sh4d0wm4573ri7]

I would not recommend drinking ones urine in any situation aside from the fact that most of us would become sick and more dehydrated I just look at it as waste why would I put it back in now a solar still yes it will convert my urine to drinkable water.