I'll admit to not knowing a huge amount about the benefits of using urine as a topical. I think because it is something I have never considered I haven't gotten out there and done any research. Regardless, if you are seeing an improvement in your skin then I have no reason to not believe you. In the end we all want the same thing. I love that you research things!

However, when it comes to true scar tissue there are no topical treatments out there that will really do much to improve it. The reason is that scar tissue is collagen, it is just "stacked" differently. It is our bodies natural response to trauma - "close that wound asap, I don't care if you have to use spac filler!". It's truly remarkable and it is a shame that society sees this natural, normal bodily function as a disfiguring disease. But sadly this is the world we live in. In order to correct the scarring we need to somehow break down the scar tissue and tell the body to go and arrange new collagen in those areas... "but this time do it properly!". The only way to do this is to induce some kind of trauma to the skin. Lasers, skin needling, chemical peels, dermabrasion... all these things create trauma and promote new "healthy" collagen to form. I've just realised that you probably already know all this fluff... so I apologise if that's the case.

I guess what I am getting at is that I don't understand how urine alone will break down the scar tissue and promote collagen regrowth. I don't suffer from hypertrophic scars so I can't comment about those, but for the indented scars I don't think you're going to see the results you're after (I hope I'm wrong). As for the redness/pigmentation, have you noticed any significant improvement?

so far i've been through a week of topical application, and i THINK i'm seeing a reduction in redness. i don't want to jump the gun and say i'm definitely seeing one because i've been disappointed so many times before with treatments that i thought were working, so i think i'm going to give it another week or two. but so far it seems promising! it feels nice on the skin, i'm only using fresh urine so the smell is minimal to none (and any active constituents don't get much of a chance to break down cause it's not sitting in a bottle for days), and there's no irritation either, which is always a huge plus.

fair point about topicals being relatively ineffective. yes, when the skin is wounded, the body's first response is to fill it in asap to prevent infection and restore the skin barrier, without worrying about orientation of fibers. however, i think there are a few important things to remember.

#1 science does not know everything, if much at all, about scarring and wound closure. nearly every paper i've read about scarring and wounds has started off by stating how little is actually known about how this process happens and what cells do exactly what. while it's important medically, it's not as extensively studied (maybe not as urgent or as profitable? i don't know), so what we know about the mechanism of wound closure is a limited model at best. and i like to try to push a little outside the box if i can

#2 it's important to remember that collagen is not the only thing involved, which is why i'm using the urea cream. yes there is definitely collagen (in "whorl" shapes apparently), but there's also elastin and keratin and blood vessels, at least. the very top epidermal layer of the skin (the horny layer) is made only of keratin, and there are papers that report upregulation of genes that cause overactivation of keratinocytes (cells that produce keratin) that persists for many months after wound closure. i haven't yet found a paper that talks about keratin in scars that are many years old, but if i were to theorize based on what i've been given, since hypertrophic scars stop growing and stabilize after a certain point in time, that upregulation may eventually be normalized. think of it as the cells getting agitated and aggressively trying to heal, and then needing more time to calm down that "anxiety" than they needed to actually get the job done. in that case, that would result in extra deposits of keratin that just keeps renewing itself, even though skin signals have gone back to normal, so we need to find a way to bring THAT down too, in addition to helping remodel the collagen and whatever else is in there. again, this is just my theory, but it gives me hope nonetheless

#3 remodeling! i think people make a mistake in viewing healing as "breaking down" scar tissue. obviously your body is not going to eat away at the hole it plugged in order to replace it better. instead, you want to focus less on breaking down, and more on gradual reorganizing and normalizing, ie, remodeling. and yes, attempting to reactivate skin is is definitely why people do things like dermarolling or lasers, to promote a second intent healing response. and while i do believe this is a great method for things like icepick or rolling scars, i don't believe it will do anything at all for raised scars (especially keloids, since they already have issues with stopping their production cycles). as long as you have a blood supply to the scar (ie as long as it still gets red), there's still remodeling possible. so, the idea is to somehow stimulate the scarred area to start picking apart the disorganized tissue very very gradually, and protect it while it does so. stimulation doesn't have to mean re-injury, it can be chemical too, which is where the urine comes in.

urine contains a ton of (natural) chemicals. it's always listed as being mainly water with some urea and salts, but there's more than just that. think about it, when you go to the doctor's office and they do a urine test, what sort of things can they test for? the list is enormous! they don't just take samples to look at sodium and potassium levels, they can check for all sorts of things. granted, usually they use blood samples instead of urine for a lot of things because it gives a better idea of what's still actively circulating rather than being expelled, but urine is just filtered blood (ie blood minus any living cells). for example, blood and urine can contain:

- the whole range of amino acids (molecular building blocks used to make proteins, including molecules made with sulfur, which is a commonly used skin healing agent).

- vitamins and minerals! including things like vitamin A, vitamin C, copper and zinc, all of which are implicated in skin health.

- hormones, including the corticosteroids which are prescribed by doctors in synthetic cream form to help bring down swelling, as well as any other adrenal hormones that may be secreted. there are sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone (estrogen has been shown to improve skin elasticity and improve wound healing...it's partly why women don't normally get as aggressive wrinkles as men until they hit menopause ) there's also DHEA, a testosterone derivative molecule which is being implicated for its beneficial effects in aging skin, not to mention thyroid hormones and sleep hormones, and whatever other endocrine regulators that have gotten filtered.

- growth factors! epidermal growth factor (EGF) is one of the things that makes it out of the body through urine, and it does exactly what it sounds like it does: it regulates skin growth. and hey, the appropriate receptors for that are right there in the skin, aren't they?

- there are antigens that basically profile your body's immune response at the time and can stimulate cells to mount an immune response if introduced back into the body (this is the basis for the kind of urine therapy where you drink your urine, that by re-introducing antigens into the body, you mount another immune response and keep fighting whatever it is your body is trying to fight).

- some claim it contains entire enzymes, but i'm not so sure about that as those are gigantic and tend to be dependent on things like pH and temperature to function properly, so without specific evidence, i'm inclined to believe they would likely have trouble crossing the skin barrier to get back in anyway, let alone function properly again...but if they are there, then there's that too.

so while the urea is very moisturizing, and the salts are good for fluid balance and regulating cellular activity, there are so many other things in there that may contribute to "waking the skin up" so to speak.

#4 now, if all these things are so good for you and important for wound healing and skin health, then why wouldn't your body just direct them to the scars from the inside in the first place? well, because a scar is just not important to your body. it's the lowest priority for the body to deal with and it just doesn't care about getting enough nutrients there to remodel and improve, just so long as the skin barrier isn't disturbed. so by putting all these ingredients straight onto the area we want them to go helps bypass the body's limitation in getting beneficial nutrients there. again, activating that part of the skin IS why people perform second intent injuries, and for severe cases of atrophic tissue, yes, you want to induce a growth response, so second intent injury seems like a good idea, but honestly, for cases where scars are mild, i personally don't see how that would help versus just worsening the scar. if you do try to re-injure skin for healing of minor scars, it has to be a very gradual and gentle process of exfoliation and moisturizing/healing. but where exactly is that sweet spot where you're seeing improvement but not irritation that may result in further scarring? well, that's what everyone is constantly trying to figure out

#5 on the subject of active ingredients: so when people say oh why bother with urine just get a urea cream...well, it's not just about the urea. yea the urea is very moisturizing, it helps take away excess keratin and this is documented and well utilized in medical practice (it's used for skin conditions like eczema and keratosis pilaris, as well as for calluses and thickened nails), but i find that this isolation and purification of "active ingredients" is a problem in the medical field. now this is just my opinion of course, but, even if there is an active ingredient in any plant or natural product, there are *always* countless other molecules that can work in conjuction with or contribute to the active's actions, and we can never really tell what kind of accessory effect they have. by isolating the compound that we think is doing the heavy lifting, we eliminate any side interactions that may actually contribute as well. also remember that synthetic molecules don't always mean that they're precisely the same as the natural molecule. a lot of the time synthetics are built to look just enough like the natural thing to fool the body into thinking it's real, but again, we don't know what kind of positive effects we're missing out on or what negative effects we're causing.

(urea is a bit extreme of an example for this, but think about birth control pills. the hormones in those are not actually estrogen and progesterone. they are made of one type of estrogen (estrogen is a catch-all term for a few different molecules, there's at least three kinds of in the body), and progestin, which is a synthetic molecule made to have properties that act on progesterone receptors AND androgen (male hormone) receptors (which is why women can have problems with libido or hair growth or aggressive mood swings on certain pills...those are all controlled by progesterone and androgen activity). the idea behind synthetics is not to reproduce the natural thing, it's only to get a product that does what it's claimed to do, that at best mimics a net effect, but what happens on the molecular sidelines that accumulates over time is not very well known, studied, or sadly, cared about. again, urea is not quite as dramatic as the concerns for something like the pill, but that's the general idea.)

side effects or missing out on positive effects by using synthetics is also the idea behind eating whole foods instead of taking nutrition supplements. or using pure organic essential oils and plant extracts for healing by aromatherapy instead of synthetic ones (like chemical vitamin A derivatives that cause dermal swelling versus something like rosehip seed oil). obviously isolating active ingredients works well in plenty of cases, and you do get a more aggressive response from synthetics because they're more concentrated, but it's not without its drawbacks and limitations, as well as potential permanent side effects. for example, when the doctor prescribes a steroid cream, it can thin your skin out permanently if you use it more than a week or two, and that's terrifying to me! and yet, corticosteroids are a naturally produced compound within your body. the difference is that the synthetic cream you use is not biologically regulated. or when you get antibiotics, yes they work and they've saved many many people from bacterial disease over the years, however, we're now running into super bacteria that are resistant to our drugs, but that seem to still be affected by natural products like tea tree oil, oregano or thyme oil, or, well, even urine

so, that line of thinking is why i'm opting for using the natural urine product instead of sticking to just a urea cream because it has more than just urea and water in it. i'm adding the urea cream because the urea content really is low in urine, and there's no harm in supplementing it to help speed exfoliation and at least get at the pigmentation

and just as a side note, regarding toxins that people may be worried about...toxins are broken down and deactivated mainly in the liver before they're put back into the blood to be filtered out. they come out in pieces basically, so they aren't really toxins anymore, but just jumbled up building blocks. so as long as you don't have a urinary infection (bacteria and viruses are teeny and they make it through the kidneys intact), i don't think there's much of a reason to be worried about re-absorbing toxins.

now, for all my talk and extrapolation and theorizing there just aren't enough studies to really *prove* anything about urine therapy (no profit in something free and easy like urine, right? science and medicine still all comes down to what's profitable to study and market), and that's why i'm here. anecdotal evidence is still valuable, because even if we don't know HOW something works, we can still take advantage of its effects (which again, is a very commonly used principle in medicine and science). which is why i'd love to hear about anyone that's had results with urine therapy for scars, or pigmentation

sorry for the giant post! i hope that addressed some of your concerns i do plan to re-post with my progress (if any), as time goes on. maybe this will help with at least the pigmentation. i expect if it can have any effect on skin texture, it will be a very slow process that unfolds over time, so it may be a while before we see about that. but i figure why not try it for a few months, it takes very little time and effort to do, and costs me nothing compared to all the products i've bought and attempted to use over the years

Thank you for trying this!

I have heard that you should store the urine,because aged urine(5 days old) is better in order to break

the hard collagen.

Fresh urine is being used for moisturizing effects.

Just wanted to share what i have read.What a cheap treatment:)

thanks for the suggestion panos! yea, i have read that aged urine can be used for stubborn marks, but i also read that it's because over time the urea breaks down into ammonia, which is a harsh irritant, so i wasn't very keen on putting that on my face. not to mention all the good stuff in urine does provide a great breeding ground for bacteria so i'm hesitant to keep it sitting around that long. however, if i don't see any decent improvement with the fresh stuff, i will definitely reconsider the aged urine

Urine is filled with all sorts of toxins and contaminants. I highly recommend not applying it on your face. You may find some correlation between the improvement of your scars and the application of topical urine because of a placebo effect you instilled in your mind. However, Putting toxins on your face is a no, no.

There is a reason why you urinate, and that's the waste product of all the nasty gunk your body consumed.

Have patience and time and proper sun protection will remove the redness on your face.

actually no, waste comes through the intestines (feces is bacteria laden and i would NOT recommend doing anything with it other flushing it or fertilizing your garden with it). urine is the sterile product of a filtration system (the kidneys) through which blood constantly passes, to clear excess materials that the body doesn't want at any given point in time. the kidneys don't filter out whole toxins. generally speaking, harmful toxins are broken down into inactive subunits, usually in the liver, and THEN they pass through back into the blood, through the kidneys and out. for example, if you drink alcohol, you don't sober up because you urinated, you sober up because the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase breaks down the alcohol in your system, and you might urinate more in conjuction with drinking alcohol because an additional effect of alcohol in your system is that it is a diuretic (it suppresses reabsorption of water from the kidneys and increases urine volume). the resulting broken down molecules are then flushed out in urine along with whatever other excess may be in your blood...that doesn't make urine toxic.

pharmaceutical drugs, on the other hand, are a whole other matter. but for an ordinary person eating a relatively healthy diet and not on any drugs they could overdose on, utilizing urine doesn't appear to be harmful.

not to mention if it were toxic i'd have seen a negative effect by now.

and furthermore, i just want to make sure we're on the same page as to what it would mean for this to be a placebo effect. if it IS a placebo, and i'm seeing a real result due to positive thinking despite the topical reagent itself being ineffective, then so be it, it's still a real effect. but if you mean i'm imagining it, i highly doubt it. after trying every single product and method out there that i could reasonably get my hands on, and examining my scars obsessively for two years in every lighting situation from every angle at different times of day, and tracking how they look over time in each of these situations, i've become extremely skeptical and very careful about what i label as real improvement.

Yes, I've read urine therapy is a fantastic health remedy. In fact, an Indian Prime Minister used to bathe in his own urine daily and attributed urine therapy to his ripe old age and great health!

And urine is non -toxic...it basically contains excess vitamins/ minerals etc plus water etc...you can actually drink your own urine too for health (that is, at least a tincture of it) ! And people have done so for survival in extreme circumstances (lost in the wilderness etc)....it's feces that is toxic...so don't eat that or smear it on your face !!! lol

And no, I've not tried urine therapy, however, I remember in my youth someone told me to get a baby diaper with baby urine and smear it on my face for my acne...at the time I thought they were nuts! O, but how wrong I was !!! Perhaps, if I'd tried this wise folk medicine advice, I would have never tried all the toxic big pharma stuff like BP etc....

So, thanks for posting this info...

I've not tried it for my skin yet...but I may do so....

Cheers

PS, Btw, Purpletulip, you mentioned you had burn scars...I recently (2.5 months ago) received 2nd degree burn scars from using Retin - A and a glycolic peel in the same session (my foolish mistake!)...my skin has been healing exceptionally well since then, considering I had blisters and weeping sores...I found beta glucan key to healing my burned skin...have you tried this?

hey aquasea,

sorry to hear about your burns i've never heard of beta glucan. do you take it as an oral supplement or is there a topical version of it? and how did you hear about using it for your burns?

I really don't understand why people are doing this. Putting aside the obvious sanitation issues for not doing this, it literally does nothing for you.

If I'm wrong, please enlighten me. And I don't mean to tell me about some old man that bathed in urine and lived a long and happy life LOL; is there any science to this?

There are better ways to treat scarring than rubbing pee on your face. Not trying to sound condescending, I'm just shocked people think this works.

I doubt it could make your skin worse, but where did you hear that it helps with anything?

my assumption is that people are doing this because they have gotten to the point of desperation and conventional methods just aren't working for them. i don't really think there's any reason to doubt the presence of a variety of different substances in urine that could be beneficial, and there is evidence that urine (from animals other than humans) is used in certain drugs and cosmetics/cosmeceuticals.

i tried explaining a potential scientific basis for it in one of my above posts, as best as i could based on what information is available. otherwise, i'm not sure what kind of true scientific evidence we could ever really expect for something that is not as urgent as research for many other diseases, and that has no potential for commercial profit. but just because scientists haven't investigated something doesn't mean it can't be real.

scarring is complicated, and it's just not that important to the research and medical community. doctors don't generally seem to care about something that isn't in their textbooks (i can't even begin to tell you how disappointed i was when i went to dermatologists that either dismissed me completely, some without even bothering to examine me properly, or just threw up their hands and said they didn't know what to do but would i like a steroid cream anyway). as for researchers, they can only investigate what they can get funding for, and they simply don't get the money to study scars and the truth vs myth behind holistic treatments, because it just isn't life threatening enough. there are plenty of conditions like this that don't get any attention but that ruin quality of life for people, scarring is just one of the most common.

there have been many books written about urine therapy, and plenty of anecdotal advice based on the practice of drinking one's urine in different parts of the world. just google it you will run across tons of sites on holistic and homeopathic medicine, as well as many hits for literature and explanations of the mentality and history behind it, and even some reviews/stories. obviously, it's not good practice to believe everything one reads on the internet, but when something is so widely discussed from many different sources, and i personally can see some of the logic in it, it makes it more difficult to dismiss.

honestly, if there are better ways to treat scarring, please do say what they are. because i have tried everything short of going under a laser and nothing has really been that effective, so i would appreciate any suggestions.

i could be very wrong, maybe urine really does nothing. but for me, at this point in time, it's worth a shot, just in case.

Oh I've read the anecodotal reports and suggestions by those into natural remedies, I was looking for some studies on it.

Skincare and acne is a huge business for pharmacuetical companies, so I think if there was anything to be looked at in regards to its effectiveness it would have been accessed already in a clinical setting to see if it would have a practical commercial use.

The logic through you hypothesizing is good, but unfortunately science doesn't always follow that kind of linear thinking so I think you are making some generous jumps in your conclusions.

If feel it's working, fine, give it a shot. But realize that there's really nothing in your urine that a store bought cream or lotion wouldn't be able to provide in an easier and more sanitary package. Your urine has sodium and spent minerals in it, as well as urea which will exfoliate your skin like many other products. That's really about it though.

As far as other treatments for scarring, there are many out there and everyone's skin reacts differently to them. Have you tried an ACV toner? It is a strong exfoliator with vitamins and minerals; it sort of acts like a weak acid peel. It should give about the same results as the urine but with much less ewww factor lol. I have mild scarring, and that's what I use.

yea i wish there were better/more official scientific studies on it. but again, it just doesn't seem like something of interest to the scientific community.

and yes you're right that my line of thinking is a bit broader than we'd like it to be, but it's all i've got.

on the subject of pharma companies presumably investigating anything that had potential therapeutic effect....i seriously doubt they would investigate this even if there was overwhelmingly convincing anecdotal evidence. there just isn't any money in it. they investigate it from the perspective of creating synthetic urea sure, but again, there's no guarantee that a single synthetically reproduced ingredient would have the same effect as a whole solution of ingredients that come together. more often than not, isolating active ingredients and claiming they do exactly the same thing as their natural alternatives is like taking a multivitamin and claiming it's just as good as eating fruits and vegetables. it's just never the same, because nature rarely works in absolutes, and things are always more complicated than they seem.

i'm not sure what you mean by "spent minerals" :/ but there should be more than just sodium in there as far as salts are concerned.

and yea the urea is one of the few pieces of the urine therapy theory that is scientifically supported. hence my supplemental use of a strong urea cream

yes, i have tried ACV. i used it for many months and i didn't really see much of an effect i can honestly attribute to it. maybe i'll try it again at some point just to be sure, but for now i'm putting it aside. if you find it works for you then i'm glad at least it helps someone

heh i'm actually not very disgusted by the urine. once i got over the initial weirdness of it, it stopped having any real eww factor for me

I really don't understand why people are doing this. Putting aside the obvious sanitation issues for not doing this, it literally does nothing for you.

If I'm wrong, please enlighten me. And I don't mean to tell me about some old man that bathed in urine and lived a long and happy life LOL; is there any science to this?

There are better ways to treat scarring than rubbing pee on your face. Not trying to sound condescending, I'm just shocked people think this works.

I doubt it could make your skin worse, but where did you hear that it helps with anything?

actually he never bathed.

he drank a lil' every morning as an alternative.

i wish people would only claim facts after they are sure.

please guys.

urine therapy is old treatment and it has shown both pros and cons.

its s fact that urine has toxic substances - i dnt know how anyone can deny that!

i wish someone would be more specific about these supposed toxic substances that make urine so horribly bad for you. clearly they can't be THAT toxic if people are drinking urine and seeing no notable negative effects. and as i've mentioned several times before, the general system for toxins in the body involves their breakdown before being expelled, so that they really aren't toxic to you anymore. if anything, urine is the detoxified form of whatever is in your blood.

drinking one's own urine(if not on drugs-legal or otherwise) isnt a straight cure but it is sorta used to enhance the excretory process and also boost the immunity system consequently.

the process is it goes into the digestive system where its ingredients are sorted out. Then, the useful ingredients are recycled while the toxins are rejected. When the level of toxins becomes too high, the toxins stimulate the intestines into flushing themselves out to eliminate any stagnated excrements accumulated in the colon. Although we could probably filter out the toxins before drinking the urine, the toxins are needed because they stimulate a cleansing reaction in the body.

also, healthy urine is sterile untill its meets microbes outside the body.

so topically?!!!

i dont get it.

i've head topical usage of urine(fresh) causes 'muscle wasting'.(i have no proof,only anecdotes just like pro-urine users have)

i am posting some quotes.but please remember this are meant for urine therapy that stands for 'drinking urine' not topical application.

Myth: Double-blind studies prove that urine is effective at reducing allergies.

Fact: Popularized by author Martha Christy, this myth twists scientific fact to suit urine drinkers' agendas. The fact is, there is no credible scientific evidence that re-consuming one's own urine is beneficial.

Myth: Urine isn't waste.

Fact: Urine IS a waste product. Urine contains substances that your body either didn't need or couldn't use the first time you consumed them. What possible purpose could be served by re-consumming them?

Myth: Drinking your own urine is safe. Because it's a creation of your own body, it can't hurt you.

Fact: Even the largest pro-urine organization in the world, The Chinese Association of Urine Therapy, warns against side-effects including diarrhea, fever and infection.

interesting. i didn't plan on drinking it anyway *shrugs* so if i had to make a guess, i'd say re-ingesting what's considered "waste" stimulates the body to cleanse more aggressively. i expect the effects probably vary from person to person in type and severity. but okay, assuming these sources are trustworthy (which honestly i have to say at the very least i don't trust yahoovoices there is a lot of misinformation and sketchy stuff on there), one could argue that negative effects reactions are part of the "purge" that's supposed to happen. this concept of a purge in response to a treatment has been discussed and reinforced many times on these forums as well, for example in the use of topical ACV. people start breaking out like mad after smearing vinegar on their faces and are told it's a purge rather than their skin being irritated by the acid. some believe it, some don't. there's no real way to know. just like everything else, some things work for some people and not for others.

and yes *technically* urine is waste because it's expelled from the body. but it's not waste in the same way that feces are waste. it's blood filtrate as opposed to, well, the body's version of compost.

regarding its sterility: obviously you can't use it until it comes out. so after catching mid-stream, you do your best to avoid introducing any microbes to it. your skin is normally covered in bacteria anyway, so as long as you're being careful i don't see what the issue is.

the idea behind topical is that the skin absorbs what's put on it, just not as much as your body would absorb if you ingested something. and maybe, if you believe in the purge concept, topically it causes a purging reaction as well, stimulating the skin to pay attention to what's happening and try to "heal" the area. <-- just speculating

most of the times its not purging.

its just that ur skin gets irritated.

but with topicals or acids or vinegar the skin sometimes gets used to it and the effect lessens.

same thing happens when using bp.

aha does bring the zits etc on the surface.so they say its initial break out but the fact is it would have come up one day or the next day anyway!its just hurrying the phase.

see,there is no scientific study or research on urine therapy.nothing is proved.so just like we r accepting the good points from anecdotal(or unreliable sources),we dnt have other choices but to do the same for negative points as well.

i will repeat what CBIOT13 had said.

If feel it's working, fine, give it a shot. But realize that there's really nothing in your urine that a store bought cream or lotion wouldn't be able to provide in an easier and more sanitary package. Your urine has sodium and spent minerals in it, as well as urea which will exfoliate your skin like many other products. That's really about it though.

i'm not trying to be an extremist, i understand that you have valid negative points. i'm just trying to defend my rationale for deciding to try this in the first place. obviously there isn't a foolproof argument for urine therapy, because it hasn't been studied scientifically, which is why we're debating it in the first place. if there was scientific evidence that it cured everything it claims to cure, we wouldn't need so much debate and deduction. you can keep putting opposing arguments out there, and i can keep rebutting them, but we won't get any closer to an answer.

i don't know that i believe in the purging theory, i'm just pointing out that it's out there. i never saw any sort of purging effect when using ACV as a toner.

the point is that there ARE no bacteria in urine (assuming you don't have a bladder infection). it's sterile. any bacteria that might end up in it come from not keeping the urethral area clean. and yes obviously if you're prone to acne, you don't want to introduce more bacteria. but also consider this: using products like BP kill a lot of the good bacteria on the skin too, which actually makes your follicles more likely to get infected by outside bacteria that no longer have any local populations to contend with (this is the idea behind how we get resistant superbacteria in hospitals or situations where antibacterials and antibiotics are overused over a long period of time >.<) i personally do not regularly get acne anymore, so for someone that IS prone to bacteria-induced acne (as opposed to hormonal), yea maybe this isn't the best option :/ also remember, this is the scars section, not the active acne section.

consider this: plenty of people that perform oral sex on each other put their mouths in the very place that urine comes from, and any bacteria exchange that might occur with handling your own urine also occurs in that context (in fact oral sex is probably more "dirty" than touching your own fresh mid-stream urine). if it's socially and medically acceptable to put your mouth over someone else's urethra (or even in some cases, swallow what comes out), and people aren't getting sick and dying left and right from this sort of practice, why are we so disgusted by touching our own urine? "it's disgusting" is not an acceptable argument because apparently the disgustingness of an action relies on whether or not the product of that action is positive.

also consider how much outside foreign bacteria you put on your skin everyday without even realizing. you use your hands to put on your shoes, you drive your car with your hands on the steering wheel, you touch doorknobs and money and tabletops and eventually scratch or touch your nose or your cheek or your neck, or rest your face in your palm or rub your eyes at the end of a long day....unless you're using antibacterial gel all over your hands every ten minutes, it's pretty likely that you're "mixing up" your skin's natural bacteria with lots of other kinds anyway. i don't understand why people get all up in arms about bacteria...it's all relative. rubbing a small amount of your own urine on your skin is not the same as, say, rolling around on the floor in a public bathroom (now that's gross). i'm not worried about a few little bacteria that may or may not be in my own fresh urine, so long as i'm careful about collection and use, because bacteria are *everywhere*, and the ultimate goal in protecting yourself is to limit exposure to extreme amounts, or to any one dominant bacterial population, ie avoid the kind that are particularly aggressive/invariably cause disease.

the point i'm trying to make about filtrate vs waste is that people seem to equate waste with harmful things, whereas waste can also mean just excess. yes, urine is waste because it gets excreted. but it doesn't have to be harmful. for example, my multivitamin contains 500% of the daily recommended intake of vitamin C, way more than your body needs in one day, so that gets filtered out too. does that suddenly make it toxic vitamin C? no, it's just excess that gets "thrown out" by the body. water can also be "toxic" in the sense that it can kill you if you drink too much of it (i'm talkin if you drink gallons upon gallons), so that gets filtered out too. you can call anything "waste" if it gets discarded. it's just a technicality.

on the subject of potential vitamins and minerals in the urine: if theoretically, my goal is to put the excess vitamin C from my urine on skin so it can work on damaged tissue, couldn't i just use a cream with vitamin C in it instead? i can try, but there are reports that the synthetic and supposedly stabilized form of vitamin C found in commercial products is simply not as effective, if at all. and they contrast with reports that certain synthetic forms of it are more effective than others, as well as with reports that they're all certainly effective, as well as reports that say it's effective but only if not exposed to heat or air that may cause it to react and become ineffective. there just isn't enough evidence in any direction, and no way to tell what's true in terms of what's contained in complicated cosmeceuticals. they're not FDA approved for any sort of bioactivity (and even if they were, i dunno if you've ever looked through clinical trial or FDA data, but it's not always that comprehensive or foolproof either). for every positive article or review there's always a negative one, for every person claiming they saw an effect with a given product, there's one that claims they didn't. you just don't know.

my point is, don't discount something until you've tried it, because you never really know.

honestly, i agree that if it works i'm happy too and i don't quite care how or why. if it doesn't, then no real harm done.

we are all always asked to avoid putting our hands on face or change /clean things that touches us.

but that doesnt mean done in anyway is right!

??!!

why would u take urine for vit c?

u could use anything else.

there are vit c stuff with and without harsh chemicals.

not all are bad!(thats just a concept some people have!)

urine has toxic stuff.YES!

its just in less amount so when it doesnt do great harm when taken in.

i think it would be the same for topical use too.

u dnt really mean to say urine has nothing 'harmful for our skin or body' and just vit c or water,do u?

no, that's not what i said. the vitamin c part was just an example of what it means for urine to be used as a vehicle for excretion of excess materials in the body that aren't necessarily toxic. and yes, urine has plenty of things in it other than water and vitamin c no one is doubting that...

we are all always asked to avoid putting our hands on face or change /clean things that touches us.

but that doesnt mean done in anyway is right!

??!!

what?

oh just because we get bacteria from stuff,it doesnt matter if we get some from urine as well??

urine is toxic.

consumption of lil' amount (internally) is not harmful but doesnt mean it has no side effect at all.

i have quoted above the effects that people have.

urine isnt just whats excess!

its also got compounds that are not apt for body.

check the basic urine list.whether in small amount or otherwise!

oh just because we get bacteria from stuff,it doesnt matter if we get some from urine as well??

...my point is that the general reaction towards urine is disproportional to what is actually in it. people overreact.

what "basic urine list" are you talking about?

your quote involves people drinking urine. i am not drinking it. we are talking about *topical* urine.

okay, since the biggest issue seems to be that no one can say what exactly is in urine, i'm linking a source.

this is a study done by NASA in the 70s where they performed analysis on human urine and came up with an exhaustive detailed description of the composition of human urine. their goal was to assess whether/how they would be able to recycle human urine in space to be able to extract drinkable water from it.

reference for the paper is here: "David F. Putnam Composition and Concentrative Properties of Human Urine. NASA Contractor Report. July 1971"

link to the paper is here (pdf file direct download from google): http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CC8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffranklin.chem.colostate.edu%2Fdiverdi%2FC433%2Fexperiments%2FHPLC%2520urine%2520analysis%2FNASA%2520CR-1802%2520urine.pdf&ei=4zO7UcYyj5vIAZmzgcAG&usg=AFQjCNFWEKHEV_zSxSAqsF4i0oEXZUQlhQ&sig2=t4T9PRvtZeeissuIKSFxeA&bvm=bv.47883778,d.aWc

if you can't download from that link, just copy-paste the paper reference (author name etc) into google the way it's listed above, and it will be the first hit.

the Tables listing what is in human urine are at the end of the paper, specifically Table I (page 39). I tried copy-pasting it but the formatting on the table won't let me get a clear copy, without jumbling up some of the words and letters.

Constituents are listed in order of highest concentration to lowest, as the authors state on page 5:

"The composition of human urine has been studied by many investigators

and the quantities of 158 different chemical constituents are summarized in

the NASA Bioastronautics Data Book (Reference 14). These constituents are

broadly categorized as electrolytes, nitrogenous compounds, vitamins,

hormones, organic acids, and miscellaneous organic compounds. The 68

constituents that have individual maximum concentrations exceeding 10 mg/l

are listed in Table I in decreasing order of concentration. These constituents

add up to about 36,800 mg/f in typical urine. The remaining 90 compounds

total approximately 250 mg/B."

There are lots of things in there that i wouldn't necessarily want to or need to re-ingest, but also lots of things that would be good to be able to focus on areas that may need building blocks to heal (like skin). like everything else in this world, it's a balance. obviously urine is an excretory tool for your body to get rid of undesirable things as well as excess good things. the question is whether these undesirable things (at first glance: bilirubin, ammonia) are bad enough to prevent you from utilizing the good things that may actually help (the vitamins and minerals, the hormones, the amino acids, even allantoin!). you take some of what you think may be bad, with the good, and if you don't have a negative reaction then great.