We've heard of some pretty crazy beauty treatments (snake venom wrinkle cream, anyone?) but this just might be one of the weirdest (and grossest!) yet.
Martha Christy, author of In Your Own Perfect Medicine, claims that putting your own urine on your face — dubbed "urotherapy" — can help reduce the appearance of acne, eczema, and other skin conditions because pee contains minerals and nutrients.
If this is true, this would be the cheapest facial moisturizer ever. But it still seems kind of strange. So we checked in with Mona Gohara, M.D. and associate clinical professor of dermatology at Yale University, to get her take.
"Urine is basically water. It has a little bit of urea in it, and there are some minerals and enzymes," she explains. "But I don't think it's ideal to use urine on your skin."
In fact, what Christy and other fans of this beauty trend are really touting is the urea found in urine. "Urea certainly does have beneficial properties for moisturization," says Gohara. But the amounts found in your pee are so small, you're probably better off just using beauty products from brands like Eucerin that use a more concentrated amount of synthetic urea.
Good news: If you've already tried this trick (wow, you're brave!), Gohara says that putting urine on your face won't actually hurt you. It's just not that effective in terms of anti-aging and beauty.
Christy also drinks one cup of urine first thing in the morning, but that's a topic for a whole other day — and we're pretty sure no one in our Institute's Health and Beauty Lab is up for testing it.
TELL US: Would you put pee on your face to make it softer?