Many people might find it disgusting. However, urinating in the shower is a practice with many followers: it not only offers several benefits but also has no contraindications. This is because urine is mostly water (95%), and the toxic substances eliminated with it are lost through the shower drain as easily as in the toilet bowl. What are the benefits? They are listed below.
1. It saves water. This is by far the most important benefit. The most efficient toilet cisterns allow for three-liter flushes, an amount that is usually enough to flush urine. Well, assuming about five times a day per person (it’s usually more), we can conclude that in Spain we use more than 600 million liters of water per day just when we urinate. Therefore, given that water is a scarce resource, saving it is essential. If one of those urinations takes place in the shower, we will avoid using about 120 million liters of water daily.
In 2014, two students at the University of East Anglia in the UK launched an initiative called “Go with the Flow,” which asked all students at the institution to urinate in the shower instead of using the toilet. Chris Dobson and Debs Torr, the originators of the proposal, calculated that each toilet flush uses twelve liters of water. Based on this figure, if the university’s 15,000 students urinated in the shower, they would save an amount of water equivalent to the capacity of 26 Olympic-sized swimming pools each year.
Of course, saving water also means saving money. According to the National Institute of Statistics, housing accounts for more than 30% of Spaniards’ spending, and water consumption falls under this category. It’s also worth noting that this water saving is valuable only if it isn’t wasted in other ways: if you want to protect the environment, it doesn’t make much sense to urinate while showering if that shower lasts half an hour.
2. It saves paper. When you’re in the shower, it’s clear that you don’t need to use toilet paper to clean yourself after urinating. This saving might seem insignificant, since the amount of paper used after urinating (generally only by women) isn’t very much. However, toilet paper—as we consume it in Spain—is becoming increasingly unsustainable. We use 690,000 tons of toilet paper and sanitary paper per year, and increasingly more of the “premium” type, whose production requires the use of virgin wood, something that puts forests and their biodiversity at risk. Given all this data, any measure that leads to savings is welcome.
3. It helps prevent infections. Although some people find urinating in the shower disgusting or unhygienic, the opposite is true: it’s healthier, since you wash your genitals immediately afterward. It’s especially hygienic for women, who risk contaminating the urethra with bacteria from the anus or surrounding area when wiping with toilet paper from back to front, which can cause urethritis, an infection that includes inflammation, irritation, and pain.
On the other hand, there’s a belief that women who urinate standing up expel less urine, and that the residual urine that remains in their bodies could have negative effects. This could happen if they urinate standing up in the shower.
However, a study by Taiwanese scientists, published in 2010, indicated that there is no significant difference. The research aimed to confirm whether, for women, urinating standing up in public restrooms—with the help of devices specifically designed for this purpose—was a healthy option. The conclusion? Yes, it is.
4. Avoid having to hold in your urine. While many specialists maintain that holding in urine can cause urinary tract infections, others point out that there is insufficient evidence to confirm this. Beyond this lack of consensus, it is clear that retaining urine when you feel the urge to urinate is not a pleasant sensation.
It also happens that many people feel the urge to urinate precisely when they are under the shower, which could be a consequence of the relaxation produced by the noise and the feel of the water falling on the body. In any case, it’s an opportunity to not hold back and perform one of the most natural actions there is.
5. The toilet gets less dirty. Urinating in the shower is equivalent to not using the toilet, and although it doesn’t make a huge difference, it does help keep the toilet (and its surroundings, in the case of men) cleaner. This can reduce how often it needs cleaning and, therefore, the amount of detergent used, many of which also harm ecosystems.
Why urinating in the shower is useless
Beyond these advantages, there are also beliefs about other supposed benefits of urinating in the shower. In particular, some claim that urine could be good for the skin or have a positive effect on wounds and infections. Ethnomedical experts from the University of Extremadura published the results of a 2017 study that identified 204 different uses of urine as “traditional medicine” in Spain. The majority of these uses (two-thirds of the total) took advantage of the supposed skin health properties of urine.
It is true that the main solid component of urine is a substance called urea, which—according to the book *A Manual for Fussy Parents* by Ken Jennings (Planeta, 2013)—”has antimicrobial properties and softens and exfoliates the skin.” But urea represents only about 2% of urine, while in fungicides its presence can reach up to 40%.
A relatively small amount, such as that found in our urine, has virtually no effect upon contact with the skin. The Scientific Communication Research Group (GRECC, for its Catalan acronym), based in Barcelona, explains that so-called urine therapy, according to which “urine has healing properties due to its high levels of urea and hormones,” is actually a pseudoscience: “Its application is not beneficial in any case.”
On the contrary, given that “urine can also contain a significant amount of suspended bacteria and viruses,” the GRECC experts specify that its purported therapeutic use can cause “superinfections when applied to the skin, digestive problems when ingested, and even death when administered intravenously.” Therefore, it is important to clarify that urinating in the shower is advisable, but not for the reasons listed above, and not because it can cure wounds or any disease.
