"Quaffing pints of your own wizz"

That's a quote from Bill Bailey's character Manny in season 2 episode 1 of 'Black Books' when he recounts his time in the "tourist swamps" of Sumatra (or possibly Borneo) drinking his own urine.  This is of course what my "secret" video is about, just here:

Our YouTube channel has long been one of those channels with one very popular video accompanied by a large number nobody ever watches.  That one popular video is of course Liz drinking her urine on national television, which i have now taken down in case it violates copyright.  I have now replaced it with a video of me drinking my own urine for the first time, something i did this morning.

Urine therapy is a touchy subject for me about which Liz and i have differences.  My own attitude is that since the human body invests so much energy in filtering urine out of the bloodstream that it's probably a bad idea to put it back in again like i just did.  I didn't find it disgusting taste-wise, although of course i did knock it back rather quickly, but the thought that there is now wee inside my stomach rather than my bladder is somewhat disconcerting, as is the facts that i could still taste it over an hour later and that it repeated on me when i burped.  I've decided that if nothing untoward has happened after five hours, which is the amount of time food, but not liquid, spends in the stomach on the whole, i'll be fine.

Urea, the main nitrogenous compound in urine (it also contains ammonia), is diuretic.  This suggests that if you have healthy kidneys and are not dehydrated, it could be useful for fluid retention or the excretion of compounds which are otherwise hard to shift.  Unless it's the excess fluid i drank to dilute it, i can confirm that it does indeed seem to be a diuretic as i keep having to empty my bladder.

There is also the issue of "heat shock proteins", which are basically the idea that "whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger" - putting the body under a low degree of stress is good for it.  Drinking urine does this of course, so maybe there's something there.

There are various suggestions by those who believe in urine therapy about how it might be beneficial.  It does also reintroduce certain useful substances to the body, notably hormones. Drinking it also crosses a tabu line and in that way is probably a helpful exercise, and overcoming one's own disgust suggests mastery of one's own body, something which could be beneficial in functional disorders if generalised.  Additionally, the application of urea to the external environment is recognised as beneficial in some circumstances such as skin disease because it helps hydrate it.  The "external environment", incidentally, does not mean the body surface - it means the skin, surfaces of the digestive system, the insides of the lungs, sinuses and remarkably, in women the lining of the womb, uterine tubes and even the abdominal cavity!  Not that urine in all of those places would be a good idea.

Therefore, i may have just "quaffed my own wizz", though nowhere near a pint, but I would consider it self-deception and rationalisation to conclude that it was actually good for me to do so.  Hence the experience for me is of doing something which is definitely not a good idea but probably not particularly harmful, like getting drunk, smoking a cigarette or getting a body piercing or tattoo.  I'm not planning to repeat the experience.

It's the best of jobs, it's the worst of jobs

I've said this before but not in this way:

Herbalism - the maintenance and improvement of health through the use of plants.  Some things are covered by this which shouldn't be, for instance you might improve health by using plants to clear the atmosphere of formaldehyde, benzene and ammonia, by creating a landscape garden or using a park as a city's "green lung", but this is specifically to do with herbalism as a narrowly medically defined approach to health.

Incidentally, this is the first video i've done using a tripod and i had endless trouble with it.  Whereas the tripod itself was very useful, the batteries ran out towards the end and on editing it, Avidemux and Windows Movie Maker both screwed it up several times.  Therefore, there are rather more um's and er's in this than i would ideally like, but i'm working to a tight schedule and ended up posting it as is.

My points are threefold really.  One is that research has shown that most of the general public do not know that herbalists exist or what we do, in spite of strenuous efforts to remedy this, so i thought it would be helpful to do a video which went through this in detail.  Another is the major discrepancy between the scepticism shown towards herbalism along with the research apparently showing that it doesn't work and my own measurable findings which occur after people consult me and i give them herbs.  That's an ethical red herring and in fact there's even an argument for herbalism being a good thing if it doesn't work.  Finally, there are two real ethical problems associated with herbalism which are rarely mentioned.  One is that seeing someone who hoards information about health doesn't ultimately help the client, and the other is that given the fact, widely known among herbalists, that it is nearly always impossible to make a living as a herbalist, the tacit pretence that it is cannot be justified.  Candidates of herbal medicine courses need to be told, before they start the course, that the chances of them being able to use their degrees professionally rather than as general degrees like English or History, are practically zero. a