YOUNG men in an Indian village are gulping down and bathing in cow urine - to get rid of spots.
Hemant Paliwal,
36, and his friends have been drinking cow urine religiously for past
four years and also claim it has kept them disease free for years.
They
also apply it on their faces and hands twice a day-to make them soft
and acne free and on the weekends even bathe in the pee collected from
30 cows.
The young men all work at a cow shed in
a village in Udaipur in Rajasthan in western India and claim none of
them have seen a doctor for any disease ever since they got the taste
for the pungent liquid.
Mr Paliwal says:
"I was suffering from acute lung diseases and would catch a cough and
cold regularly. I even had acne and pimples on my skin but once I
started applying urine, my face was crystal clear in just a week.
"Since then, there hasn't been a single day when I haven't drunk cow urine."
The
cow is considered the holiest animal in Hinduism and any product
generated from it- be it milk or urine - is believed to have divine
healing powers.
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| Men in India drink cow urine to to get rid of zits and skin conditions |
Clarified butter,
made from cow's milk is used for fire worship which is the highest form
of prayer for Hindus. This adds religious significance to cow's
products and hence, cow urine is also used as an antiseptic cleaning
agent.
And while cow urine is known to have been
an integral ingredient of medicines such as eye and ear drops, joint
pain and even antiseptic liquids, with the fashion of drinking it raw
gaining momentum, major brands are cashing on the trend and selling
packed urine, sometimes four times expensive than vegetable oil.
Popular brands
like Patanjali, known for selling herbal products, sell a 100 ml of the
urine for nearly 50p. But for these villagers, only a fresh cow urine
has the benefits.
Yogesh Paliwal, 32, who joins
Hemant every morning in drinking cow urine, said: "Cow urine is
available in Indian supermarkets but we have in abundance here in our
village so we don't buy it.
"I drink fresh cow
urine after collecting it from the cow. The benefits of it are
unbelievable. It has cured my Asthma completely."
Mr Paliwal claims that many men and women in the village consume cow urine regularly but women are too shy to admit it.
He
said: "Many girls in the village are curing their acne with cow urine
but they won't admit it. It is all because of social stigma.
"My friends Shiv Prasad, Shankar Singh Rajput and Chunni Lal love it so much that they even offer it to the guests."
