Urine therapy no waste of time for one firm believer
By Peter Kerr
JAKARTA (JP): "Don't call me at 4:30 p.m., I'll be having my bath," chuckles Dr. Iwan T. Budiarso over the phone as we discuss a convenient time to visit his home in South Jakarta.
His "bath" is a daily ritual, but don't imagine him luxuriating in perfumed bubbles or expensive essences.
The extracts massaged into Iwan's clear and remarkably youthful skin cost him nothing, are available day and night and require no luggage space when he travels.
Iwan, an impish 68-year-old with a beaming smile and exuberant mannerisms, is a urine therapist. He believes fervently that drinking your own urine cures an array of illnesses including cancer, diabetes, heart disease and glaucoma, while rubbing it on the body stops dandruff and psoriasis, restores hair and reduces wrinkles and freckles.
If there is testimony to these claims, denied by conventional medicine and greeted by most people with a wrinkled nose, it is Iwan's own story.
In the years between 1979 and 1997 he survived four heart attacks and had two major operations, including a quadruple bypass performed by the late eminent Australian surgeon, Dr. Victor Chang, but to no avail.
Four years ago friends said he looked like "the walking dead": on oxygen several times a day and struggling to shuffle the 25 meters to his front gate.
Unable to afford more surgery, in desperation he stopped taking conventional heart drugs and began drinking his "morning beer".
Now the retired veterinary pathologist spends two hours a night counseling people over the phone free of charge on how urine therapy can change their lives.
He still goes to his doctor every month for checkups, which show him free of the heart murmur, high blood pressure and other former symptoms of life-threatening disease.
But worried about hurting the doctor's feelings, he has never confided that he no longer takes his medication and has turned to "the golden fountain".
"I've found that drinking one liter a day is enough, the rest I use for massage," he says, reaching under the coffee table in his front room for a large stainless-steel bowl containing a cup and two cloth mittens.
These are Iwan's props, which he uses during his lectures to church groups, factory employees and businesspeople. In the past two years he has given 57 talks and interviews in Java and Sumatra.
About 100 ml, or about half a cup, each time you urinate is the best initial dosage, Iwan says. For the novice he suggests mixing it with equal amounts of water, but it should be taken within five minutes.
Don't drink the first part of the stream, he says, because it can carry germs flushed from the urethra. The last part should also be avoided because it can contain calcium.
Nevertheless, Iwan collects the unused urine for his "bath", and by late afternoon each day has at least 500 ml.
Urine is what remains after the kidneys have finished filtering impurities from the blood: 95 percent water, 2.5 percent urea (a compound formed by the decomposition of protein) and 2.5 percent a mixture of minerals, salt, hormones and enzymes.
Drinking small amounts, say urine therapists, maintains the body's equilibrium and provides antibodies and other minute particles which can fight disease.
Urea therapy, as it is also known, has been around for centuries in both the East and West. It is thought to have originated in certain Hindu religious rites, and has been practiced in India for thousands of years.
Not harmful
Conventional medicine denies urine's curative properties, but considers drinking your own urine generally unharmful unless it is infected with germs or taken in large quantities.
However, drinking all your urine would be very dangerous, according to Dr. Robert Farnsworth, a urologist at the Prince of Wales and Prince Henry hospitals in Sydney, Australia.
"... if you started drinking significant volumes of your own urine, and particularly if you drank almost all of your own urine, essentially what you are doing is recycling your own waste products, so it's just the same as if your kidneys are not working -- you're going to accumulate them, and that would be very hazardous," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in a radio interview.
Iwan said he knew nothing about urine therapy until it was suggested by a friend. "Are you crazy?" was his first reaction.
Until then he had little experience with alternative medicine. His academic career, with master's and doctor of philosophy degrees from Purdue University in Indiana, the United States, mainly involved testing animals to find benefits for human health.
But with nothing to lose, he took home his friend's copy of The Water of Life, the urine therapy bible by John W. Armstrong, and read it cover to cover.
That night he stopped taking his medication and went on a "urine fast", drinking and gargling urine (then rinsing his mouth with water), and claims he woke feeling fresh and with his blood pressure normal.
Within six weeks he had determined his "maintenance dose" of three cups a day and was "completely OK".
In typical unrestrained style, Iwan chose the retirement party thrown for him by the Health Department's noncommunicable diseases section to publicly praise the benefits of drinking urine, and has never looked back.
In his lecture kit is an overhead transparency with the saying:
"One cup a day keeps you healthy and gay.
"Three cups a day keeps your diseases away.
"Five cups a day keeps your cancer away."
Iwan counsels about 10 patients from home every night, and uses their experiences to research new uses for urine.
He advises patients to begin urine therapy while still taking their conventional medicines, but to gradually reduce those while having monthly checkups with their regular doctor.
Recent successes, he says, have been three couples previously thought to have been infertile.
He also claims to be able to treat impotency, which he says in the cases presented to him has mostly been caused by hypertension and diabetes.
Apart from drinking urine, Iwan also extols the advantages of bathing in it, with a daily regimen he is happy to run through for the camera.
Having saved his excess urine during the day, he heats it on a portable electric stove (40 degrees Fahrenheit he finds is a comfortable temperature), then drops in the cloth mittens.
Most of the urine is wrung from the mittens before he rubs them over his head and body, and sits to watch television for an hour to let the urine massage have maximum effect.
He uses an eyedropper to put urine in his ears (two drops) before massaging the acupuncture points, then tilts his head back and puts it in his nose (two drops), before gargling a small amount in the back of his throat for three minutes. This, he says, cures tinnitus, deafness and sinus problems.
He also bathes each eye using a small cup, which he says improves his sight and wards off cataracts and other diseases.
When the hour is up he takes the bowl of urine into the bathroom, where it is mixed with hot water and drizzled over his body through the mittens as a "sauna".
Finally, he rinses with warm water only, no soap (although a concession is made once a week before attending church, out of politeness).
"You come out feeling hot and warm and sleepy, just like you'd paid Rp 65,000 for a sauna bath," he says with glee.
"There is no other medicine that gives you a bonus, only urine therapy.
"It makes your skin clean, and it makes your appearance very happy because your face expresses the condition of your internal organs.
"Your hair becomes full and black, and the wrinkles and freckles go away."
Well, maybe, but ... doesn't it, um, smell?
"No smell!" shouts Iwan ecstatically, thrusting out his forearm to sample.
As for his wife, herself a medical doctor, does she also drink her own urine?
"At last she now drinks," says Iwan. "It took about four or five months to convince her."
His wife had used conventional drops for cataracts for years, with little effect. But she began using her urine (make sure it is clear, because colored urine will be acidic), and "now they're better, there is no more halo, she can see clearly and she can drive at night".
So one more test remains: to down the advised half a cup myself.
The verdict? Like teardrops, a little salty, just like Iwan promised. But there sure are a lot of teardrops in 100 ml.
Iwan can be reached Monday to Friday between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. at (021) 769-1822, or fax him at (021) 751-5568. A useful website with more information about urine therapy is http://utopia.knoware.nl/users/cvdk/urinetherapy/