Urine Therapies for Arthritis

Urine therapy is a treatment that involves using one's own urine in order to improve your health. Self-treatment using urine is a practice thousands of years old and has been used to treat a variety of ailments from colds and cancer to asthma and even arthritis. While urine is often viewed as a waste by-product of the body, it is actually relatively clean and sterile.

How Urine Therapy Benefits your Health in General

• Comprised of mostly water, urine contains a small amount of urea as well as a variety of salts, amino acids, hormones, enzymes and other nutrients. A tiny percentage of urine does contain toxins, and it is these toxins that help make urine therapy work. It may seem counterintuitive, but reintroducing the toxins your body eliminated is a form of self-vaccination. Your immune system recognizes the toxins as the enemy so it produces the antibodies needed to fight them.

Possible Urine Benefits for Arthritis

• Arthritis is often viewed as an "old person's disease," but this is not the case. Most often, arthritis is the body's response to some autoimmune trigger. The job of white blood cells is to attack such invaders in the blood stream like viruses and bacteria, but sometimes, they rebel and attack the body instead. When these white blood cells attack such body parts like the synovium, the membrane that protects your joints, the area becomes inflamed. That inflammation releases proteins which can damage bone, cartilage, ligaments and tendons near your joints.

  Ingesting your own urine reintroduces the minute particles that may have contributed to your arthritis back into your blood stream. However, instead of compounding your arthritic pain, your body produces the antibodies needed to combat these "invaders" to ward off additional damage. Urine soaked compresses held in place with bandages on your most painful joints can also help with pain. The beneficial compounds found in your urine absorb through the skin and are directed straight to the arthritic area.

Starting Urine Therapy

• You have to start with a small dose and work your way up to a full glass of urine a day for maximum health benefits for arthritis and other ailments. The best collection of urine for ingestion is the first bathroom visit of the day. Using a clean collection jar or glass, collect your urine mid-stream after waiting for a few seconds after the start of the elimination process. In addition to drinking the urine as early in the day as possible, make sure you drink plenty of water as well to stay hydrated and eat a healthy, balanced diet to keep the beneficial properties of the urine strong.

  For compresses, simply soak an animal-based fiber material such as wool in urine, wring out slightly and apply right to the affected site. Cotton or synthetic material will react with the urine and produce an unpleasant odor, unlike wool. For both internal and external urine therapy, it is important to maintain excellent personal cleanliness. Poor hygiene can affect the quality of your urine and even contaminate it.