Auto-urine Drinking and Meditation
Drinking one's morning urine ('amaroli') was an ancient yoga practise designed to promote meditation. The ancient Hindu and yoga texts that mention auto-urine drinking, require it be done before sunrise and that only the mid-stream sample be used. The pineal hormone melatonin and its conjugated esters are present in morning urine in significant quantities, the pineal gland secreting melatonin maximally at about 2 am, this secretion being shut off by the eyes' exposure to bright sunlight. Melatonin, when ingested or given intravenously, amongst other effects, provokes tranquility and heightened visualisation. There are high concentrations of melatonin in the first morning urine, but not in a physiologically active form. Mills and Faunce at Newcastle University Australia in 1991 developed the hypothesis that ingestion of morning urine into low pH gastric acid would cause deconjugation of its esters back to the active form of melatonin. This, they suggested, might restore plasma night-time melatonin levels. Thus, they argued, oral pre-dawn consumption of auto-exogenous melatonin, by either re-setting of the sleep-wake cycle or enhancement of the physiological prerequisites for meditation (decreased body awareness (i.e. analgesia) and claimed slowed brain wave activity, as well as heightened visualization ability), may be the mechanism behind the alleged benefits ascribed to 'amaroli' or auto-urine drinking by ancient texts of the yogic religion. Obvious experimental difficulties (particularly in constructing a double-blind clinical trial) mean that this is a difficult hypothesis to reliably test to any requisite evidence-based standard.
Read more about this topic: Urine Therapy
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