Ruby Karyo drinking her own urine. Picture: Screenshot from Ruby Karyo's Instagram account.
An American-based woman of Ghanaian descent has garnered a copious amount of media attention after a video of her admitting to drinking her urine as part of her skincare routine went viral.
The woman, named Ruby Karyo, has since taken to her Instagram on a regular basis to address all the comments and questions she has been getting as a result of her revelation which she has dubbed “urine therapy”.
Ruby claims to have even lost a number of friends since her video revelation went viral.
Ruby’s story was first covered by website Unilad, who shared the story of her 56-year-old boyfriend, Brian Offenburger, who claims that drinking his own urine at Ruby’s behest helped thicken his thinning hair.
In a response video posted to her Instagram page after articles posted about her practice, she likened the practice to drinking diet soda and all the other unique dishes and animals that people around the world ate.
“Some people eat alligators, frogs, lizards, dogs, cats… meow! You guys eat all kinds of food and I’m crazy because I drink my urine?”
She went on to mention that she found another YouTuber who supposedly drank her dog’s urine for the same purposes and called that lady stupid because she was not ingesting what her own body was excreting like Ruby was.
Ruby the addressed the questions about why she would ingest the waste her body was naturally trying to rid itself of.
“And people are saying ‘why are you eating something that’s waste coming out of your body?’ Well, it’s not waste, it’s actually a pH balance that happens in the kidneys. So it excretes the urine and it processes it, okay?”
According to Ruby and her mom, you cannot practice urine therapy if you do not eat healthily, if you drink alcohol, or if you smoke.
She concluded her video by downing a big glass of her own urine which she had stored in the fridge prior to filming the video.
A Glamour Magazine article on the issue states that there was still no concrete evidence proving the ingestion of urine to be beneficial to health.
“The moment it passes through the skin, it has become contaminated by bacteria that could result in harm if ingested,” added the publication.
Glamour likened it to drinking seawater as it had a high salt content and could, therefore, lead to dehydration.
READ NEXT: Health Check – what can your doctor tell from your urine?
For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.
Download our app and read this and other great stories on the move. Available for Android and iOS.