Would you try the ‘urine therapy’ beauty trend?
Who among us has not participated in a weird beauty trend in the name of personal vanity? Still, there’s “weird” and there’s “WTF weird,” and we’re of the mind that “urine therapy” firmly belongs in the latter category.
As Brit + Co reports, urine skin therapy is pretty much what it sounds like: You collect your urine (the first pee of the day is apparently the best, as it contains “peak nutrients and antibodies”) and proceed to wash your face and body with it to reap the benefits, of which there are supposedly several.
Urine therapy is supposed to help with acne, eczema, rashes, and dry skin, and it’s also supposed to boost the elasticity and suppleness of the skin.
Which all sounds great in theory, but the actual practice of splashing your first pee of the day on your face sounds…less great. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know that urine is sterile and also apparently cleaner that distilled water, but come ON, you guys, COME ON.)
Lest you think that this is some crazy new fad, know that urine therapy has actually been around for centuries. As Shape reports, the earliest documented usage of pee skincare was in India five hundred years ago. The Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks eventually got in on the action, it was used throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and on into 18th century French skincare. Even Madonna has gotten in on the urine skincare action, as she revealed on David Letterman in the ’90s that she regularly peed in the shower to prevent athlete’s foot (no word on whether the Material Girl still engages in the practice).
Also, if the idea of pee on your face just grosses you out to no end, we have some bad news for you. As dermatologist Rachel Nazarian M.D. of Schweiger Dermatology Group told Marie Claire, “We already use urea, a component of urine, in a lot of skincare products. Urine is essentially mostly water — but a small percentage is urea.”
So most of us have basically been using urine skin therapy all along? Omigod, this is like a beauty episode of The Twilight Zone. We need a lot of time alone to process this.