gare is this true?

[Bobby Wong]

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=19506

Quote:

You've been running a lot of piss-related questions lately, and I need some advice. I'm in a long-term relationship with my partner; we've been together for almost nine years. I'm extremely kinky and he's not, and we have some difficulties meeting each other's needs. One thing we both used to get a lot of pleasure from was when he'd drink my piss. It was something fun we could share regularly, he loved it, and I really enjoyed the kinky aspect. Coming home after a long commute and unloading an aching bladder down his throat was definitely a win/win for both of us, and had been something we'd been doing for years.

Then my partner developed gout. Gout is an arthritis-like disease where uric acid forms crystals in the cartilage of your joints, which get painfully inflamed and swollen. Sometimes it will even flare up all by itself, or after drinking alcohol. He's been hobbled by it for weeks at a time, needing crutches just to get around. And he's only 29!

Ever since he was diagnosed, we've been terrified to make a bad situation worse, and have stopped the piss drinking entirely. Urine contains a lot of uric acid (of course) and I worry that it is partly my fault that he developed gout! Since you've been extolling the safety of piss drinking, and potentially tempting your readers to try it for themselves, is there any chance that it could cause or exacerbate gout? I've looked online for medical information, but I've never seen anything about this at all.

We are both totally bummed that one of the few kinks we could share and enjoy has been taken away from us. Is there anything we can do? Is even a little additional uric acid in his diet going to make his gout worse? Please ask your doctor friend before anyone else winds up with this chronic disease!

Must Our Urine Sharing End?


I'm afraid the urine sharing must end.

But before we get to my doctor friend's advice, MOUSE, I have a bone to pick with you: I have not been "extolling the safety of piss drinking." I have not gone out of my way to promote the practice, or to popularize it. My recent controversial mention of the practice merely pointed out that compared to eating shit, getting into piss--splashing it over your skin or sipping from the source--is very nearly harmless. I certainly didn't encourage people to drink large quantities of piss or to take up the practice. Like all other sexual practices, drinking piss carries some degree of risk--and one of the risks, as it turns out, may very well be gout.

"No one really knows what causes gout," says my doctor friend, Barak Gaster of the University of Washington's Department of Medicine. "The higher that uric acid levels are in the blood, the higher the chance that someone will have gout, but we don't really understand why one person with a slightly high uric acid level gets gout but another with the same slightly elevated uric acid level does not." Doctors believe that there must be some genetic factor because gout is much more common in men than women, MOUSE, so you may not be entirely to blame. It's possible that your boyfriend would have developed gout even if he wasn't drinking your stanky piss. Still, all that piss couldn't have helped. "People who have had a gout attack can reduce their chances of future attacks by lowering their uric acid levels," says Barak, "by taking medications and avoiding triggers." Such as? "Common triggers are alcohol and dehydration or eating large quantities of meat such as liver." And? "Drinking large amounts of urine also could bring on an attack. Since urine is made up of stuff the body wants to get rid of, drinking very large quantities could be bad for you and should definitely be avoided in people who have gout."