I have read that fresh urine is sterile, but how sterile is stale urine? For example if someone was to put fresh urine in a jar for a couple days would it start to grow harmful bacteria?
Is the jar sterile? Is the lid sterile? Was the urine collected under sterile conditions? Did the urine have to make its way through a non-sterile foreskin, for example?
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The anterior urethra is not sterile and grows several sorts of bacteria common to skin and mucous membranes.
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Urine is actually not quite sterile after all.
Appreciate however that freshwater out of a lake isn’t sterile either and actually has total bacteria counts as high or higher as that in urine during an infection.
Sterile enough to drink…not sterile enough to put in your veins.
How come if urine is left to sit in a sterile container for several days it starts to smell bad, is this the result of bacteria growing? I have also seen crystals form at the bottom of the container, what are these?
There really isn’t anything in a healthy person’s urine that would lead to a large growth of bacteria, various health conditions can lead to say sugar in the urine though.
Why does it smell bad then?
The urea which is normal in urine turns into ammonia.
Bad odor by itself is not necessarily an indication of bacterial activity.
Urea.
It also explains the smell long-term, as with time it decays back into ammonia. Ammonia stinks, and is also toxic and corrosive in high concentration, which is why your body wants to store it in urea and piss it out before the decay happens.
Are we all just going to let this go like this is a totally normal sentence?
I was going to ask, but I got distracted googling piss crystals.
For science, boy. Science ! I’m sure they all told **sara **she was mad, MAD they said, but she’ll show them all, oh yes…
Have you tried pan-frying it, perhaps?
One need not be a mad scientist to collect urine in jars.
It might be that our OP has discovered the wonders of urine therapy.
Most aficionados of this traditional healing method seem to advocate consumption of the fresh article, but there remains the problem of having a backup supply for when guests drop by unexpectedly…
OTOH, Cecil Hisself says of Urine Therapy (UT):
So who ya gonna believe, Cecil or this Shirley Lipschutz-Robinson character?
As a bonus, the above comment also addresses an important issue for when guests drop by, at least if you’re the guest.
Be advised that name is already taken!
Bubbadog
Lead Guitar and Vocals
The Googling Piss Crystals
I once was asked to do a 24 hr urine collection to check for…I forget. Cortisol or sugar, probably. Dr. changed his mind but I forgot the jug in the fridge for a few days.
Well, I had to look, duh. It was pretty nasty.
It was difficult not to laugh while reading this.
I recall a talk at a conference discussing bacteria that infect bladder epithelium (the layer of cells lining the inside of your bladder). Since your has to expand and contract dramatically, it also changes surface area. When your bladder contracts, epithelial cells deal with this by turning large portions of the cell membrane into intracellular vesicles. The membranes are returned back to the cell surface as the bladder expands.
This whole membrane recycling process provides an environment for bacteria to hide. The bacteria attach to the epithelium and hitch a ride inside the cells with the extra cell membrane is gathered up and stored internally. Once inside the cells, the bacteria manipulate the membrane recycling process so that they stay inside the cells even when the bladder is expanded. (The talk was primarily about the molecular cell biology of membrane recycling and how bacteria manipulate the process.)
I believe these bacteria are responsible for common types of recurring infections. They’ll be dormant, living peacefully in the bladder epithelium and never showing up in a urine culture, but occasionally they’ll cause an outbreak. After the outbreak ends on its own, perhaps thought to be “cured” by ineffective antibiotics, the bacteria remain in the bladder epithelium and will cause another outbreak in the future.
In the bigger picture, it’s another example of how many different places thought to be sterile are actually full of bacteria that were invisible because they didn’t grow on a petri dish.
The context in which I heard about the relative sterility of urine was its use in the Vietnam war to clean surgical tools, when there was no bottled water available. It’s not that the urine was sterile, it’s just a lot better than anything else available in the jungle. Meanwhile, Bob’s bleeding out.
Why does urine smell bad? Most likely, for the same reason that feces and rotten meat smell bad: because we live longer if we avoid the stuff. It certainly doesn’t smell bad to my dog.