The treatment of chilblains with urine is useless and does not work. Yet, the use of urine soaks or “peeing” on chilblains are surprisingly commonly advocated when there is no mechanism or research on how it could or would work.
You can commonly come across comments like:
“Did your mother tell you the only way to treat chilblains was to pee on them?”
“I remember when we were children and suffered with nasty chilblains our mum would get us to soak our feet in urine”
“The most widespread treatment seems to have been immersing the affected part in urine”
“When I was a child my mother used to dip my chilblains in my urine” .
Chilblains are a relatively common painful non-freezing cold injury related to vasospasm of the small blood vessels, mostly of the toes and fingers in colder climates. Urine therapy is the drinking of one’s own urine, the bathing in urine or applying urine to different areas of the body to allegedly treat a wide range of disorders that is based on made up pseudoscience. There is no evidence that it works for anything. There is no evidence to support the use of any of the forms of urine therapy for chilblains apart from the unreliable anecdotes and testimonials. If urine therapy appears to help chilblains, then it does so as its a placebo or because of the natural history of the chilblain, regression to the mean of the symptoms or the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy. There is no known physiological basis in which urine therapy can affect chilblains.
However, its is possible that the warmth from fresh urine by “peeing” on the chilblain may have some therapeutic benefit, but not because its urine, but because of the warmth. There are better and more efficient ways to apply warmth to treat chilblains.
Related Topics:
Urine Therapy | Kibe | Chilblains | Chilblains and ‘COVID Toes’ | Celiac disease and chilblains | Chilblains and Leukaemia | Natural treatment for chilblains | Treatment of Chilblains
Page last updated:
Comments are closed.