Urophagia

# Overview
Urophagia is the consumption of urine.

# Health issues
Urophagia is generally considered harmless, as the urine of healthy individuals is sterile. However, a small risk exists if there is a disease present, or bacterial infection of the urethra. There may also be secondary effects, such as skin rashes in individuals sensitive to urine.
The main dangers are the high salt and mineral content. The high salt content usually does not pose a problem if the urine is sufficiently diluted and not consumed in mass quantities. The effect of the high salt may be mitigated by drinking some water after consuming urine. The urine may be diluted if the person whose urine will be consumed drinks some water (or diet soda, see below) an hour or so before the act.  Many people into BDSM drink beer before the act because it dilutes any unpleasant chemicals in the urine, and alcohol acts as a diuretic, stimulating the body to excrete more urine than it normally would.
Since artificial sweeteners are excreted in urine, consuming artificial sweetener before urine play can lend a sweet taste to the urine. Drinking diet soda, or other beverages containing artificial sweetener, before urine play will have the dual effect of diluting the urine and sweetening it. However, if the taste of sugar is detected in an individual's urine, and it is known that artificial sweetener has not been consumed, this may be a sign of diabetes and a doctor should be consulted. Asparagus, on the other hand, gives urine an unpleasant smell with about 40%-79% of people.  
The participants should use caution or avoid drinking urine if one or both of them are taking vitamin or mineral supplements or medication, since many of these are excreted in urine.
Urine of persons who are ill, or regularly take medication, should generally not be consumed. In special cases (e.g. chronic illness of the partner), a medical doctor should be consulted to clarify whether the urine of the chronically ill or medicated person may be consumed without endangering one's health, or not.
If put through a house hold water filter, the urine will become odorless and taste much like water.

# Survival
It has been suggested that when a person is in desert survival or surrounded by salt water and devoid of drinking water that the person must resort to drinking his/her own urine if it is the only liquid available.  As it tends to cause further dehydration due to the salts in it, drinking urine for survival is advised against by the US Army Field Manual, the head of the Texas Urological Society, and numerous survival instructors and guides 
while the Discovery Channel advises it 
Aron Ralston claims to have used the technique when trapped for several days with his arm under a boulder.
Bear Grylls of the Discovery Channel's Man vs. Wild supposedly drank his own urine while he was in the Outback of Australia. 
Alternatively Les Stroud drank water evaporated from urine that he made to collect on plastic wrap and drip into a cup.

# Alternative medicine/Practices
In countries such as India and China, it is considered normal by some groups to drink your own urine for health and cosmetic purposes. This health branch of drinking urine is considered to be labeled as Urine therapy. Also, an old method of teeth-whitening during the Renaissance involved the consumption of urine, though it needn't be, and wasn't always necessarily, that of the user.

## Teeth whitening
In Roman times, there was a tradition among the Gauls to use urine to whiten teeth.  A famous poem by the Roman poet Catullus, criticizing a Gaul named Egnatius, reads:
Egnatius, because he has snow-white teeth,
smiles all the time. If youre a defendant
in court, when the counsel draws tears,
he smiles: if youre in grief at the pyre 
-f pious sons, the lone lorn mother weeping,
he smiles. Whatever it is, wherever it is,
whatever hes doing, he smiles: hes got a disease,
neither polite, I would say, nor charming. 
So a reminder to you, from me, good Egnatius.
If you were a Sabine or Tiburtine
-r a fat Umbrian, or plump Etruscan,
-r dark toothy Lanuvian, or from north of the Po,
and Ill mention my own Veronese too,
-r whoever else clean their teeth religiously, 
Id still not want you to smile all the time:
theres nothing more foolish than foolishly smiling.
Now youre Spanish: in the country of Spain
what each man pisses, hes used to brushing
his teeth and red gums with, every morning,
so the fact that your teeth are so polished
just shows youre the more full of piss.

# Ceremonial
The Koryak people of Siberia drink urine in conjunction with their ceremonial use of the psychoactive Amanita muscaria (commonly known as fly agaric) mushroom.  The active alkaloids are unchanged as they pass through the human body, allowing the urine to prolong the intoxicating effects of the mushroom.