The Wee Yellow Butterfly

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The piss prophets probably gave this answer away, but yes, technically, you can, since urine is generally bacteria-free and nontoxic. The real question is “Why would you?”

Without a praxis dimension, scholarship and research within the academy is, within a critical frame of reference, often little more than ideologically problematic self-indulgence, going through taken-for-granted motions and playing of Glass Bead Games. Popular activism can be deeply problematic ideologically too, however, and when ideologically progressive is often sidelined, ignored or silenced by merciless epistemological violence. Activists and scholars can both benefit from being ‘critical friends’ to each other, each offering the other: critique, solidarity, care and staunch comradeship in the face of persistent hostility from a range of interests and each deploying complementary skills in community-action-work and emancipatory-knowledge-work. Cathy was one of my key critical friends and, I hope, I was one of hers. Urine travels from the kidneys along tubes called the ureters and into the bladder where it is stored, ready to be expelled when the ‘need to pee’ strikes. Urine is made up of around 90 to 95 per cent water.Some people have their reasons. (You’d have to, right?) In a life-or-death situation, with no potable water, imbibing your own wee may keep you alive longer, but don’t make it a habit. Remember the garbage metaphor? Because urine is a waste product, each cycle through your body adds a new batch of toxins, so after a while, drinking the stuff would do you more harm than good. Producing urine is one of the mechanisms our body uses to get rid of waste. The kidneys remove toxins and waste products from circulating blood and then dissolve them in water to create urine. Heather Marcovitch received her PhD in English in Victorian Literature from the University of Florida. She teaches Victorian literature, children’s literature, literary theory, and essay writing at Red Deer Polytechnic in Alberta, Canada, where her research focuses on the writing and culture of the late Victorian period in England, especially as it pertains to The Yellow Book and the Bodley Head publishing company. She is the author of The Art of the Pose: Oscar Wilde’s Performance Theory, the co-editor of two books on television studies, and of articles on late Victorian and modernist writers, on The Yellow Book and on the afterlives of Oscar Wilde. She is currently under contract with MacFarland Press to write a companion volume to Oscar Wilde’s writings. Her essay on Ella D’Arcy will be published in Cahiers victoriens et edouardiens this spring. Her current research focuses on George Egerton’s relationship to John Lane and she is developing a longer project about secular Judaism, literature, and the Victorian fin de siècle. Cathy finished her formal education at the age of 15, leaving school against her wishes at her parents’ insistence (her financial contribution was essential to keep the family’s head above water). Cathy lived most of her adult life unemployed in Easterhouse, a township of 60,000 people, thrown up outside Glasgow to accommodate the tenants of demolished tenements in inner city areas of Glasgow. When Cathy moved into Easterhouse, it was characterised by astronomical unemployment, dire relative and absolute poverty, catastrophically low levels of health, damp fungal spore infested housing, absent community infrastructure and rudimentary public transport. Because urine is clearing waste from the blood which has circulated right around the body, a change in urine colour can indicate a problem in various organs and systems.

Any vitamin that’s mixing with your pee is a water-soluble vitamin, and any amount of it that your body doesn’t need simply gets excreted through the urine.” Sarah Parker is a Lecturer in English at Loughborough University. She is the author of The Lesbian Muse and Poetic Identity, 1889–1930 (Routledge, 2013) and Michael Field: Decadent Moderns (co-edited with Ana Parejo Vadillo, Ohio University Press, 2019). She has published several articles and book chapters on poets including Amy Levy, H.D., Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Olive Custance. TL; DR/VERDICT/SHORT ANSWER: Sure, you can. You can also hit yourself with a hammer or chew gum that’s lost its flavor. You are the captain of your own destiny. Choose wisely. Should I Pee On This Jellyfish Sting? What About This Patch of Athlete’s Foot? Urine always looks yellow but if it suddenly appears a very bright neon colour, then it may be due to consuming B vitamin supplements, particularly vitamin B12. B vitamins are water soluble so you ‘pee out’ any excess that your body hasn’t used. White urine Only if you want to make it worse and/or spend the day smelling like pee for no reason. Urine may be sterile, but it does not have magical healing properties. It’s as effective as clean water (which is fairly ineffective) for treating athlete’s foot, and can fire up the jellyfish stingers that burned your skin in the first place.

Sometimes urine changes colour and it can take you by surprise as well as trigger concerns about what might have caused it.

No, bright yellow urine doesn’t mean that you’re not absorbing your vitamins. Any vitamin that’s mixing with your pee is a water-soluble vitamin, and any amount of it that your body doesn’t need simply gets excreted through the urine. That means your body is taking in what it needs. This is by no means the end of the story though. The tenant activists had agreed to maximise participation in the study, something the researchers could do little about, if in return, the researchers agreed to remain committed to promoting the interests of the tenants beyond academic publication of the findings. Accordingly, the research was reported in local newspapers, on local radio and television; it was used to stimulate concern in the housing department, the environmental health department, the regional council, the community health council, legal centres and by the housing charity, Shelter. The research was cited in court cases by tenants; by the Scottish Grand Committee in the UK Houses of Parliament and the Minister of State for Housing in Scotland; by the Housing Department in applying to the Scottish Office for extra funding; by local forums of GPs, local councillors and tenants to bring about action. TL; DR/VERDICT/SHORT ANSWER: A) urobilin! B) Lay off the beets! C) If your diet is beet-free, see a doctor. Is It True That You Can Drink Your Urine?Dehydration can darken urine; this may be due to excessive fluid loss from sweating during exercise or with a fever or from inadequate fluid intake. Old or ‘stale’ blood has a browner colour than fresh blood and can result from any of the causes of red urine listed above.

There are numerous causes of red or pink urine from something you have eaten through to infections and cancers. If you notice red urine without an obvious cause, then you should always see your nurse or doctor. Other pee drinkers believe their habit lengthens their lifespan. Practitioners of “urotherapy” claim that consuming your own urine can cure acne, weight problems, and even cancer. The American Cancer Society does not agree. David G Pullar’s story is the children’s version of The Yellow on the Broom, an autobiography written by his great-grandmother nearly 100 years ago, and a tale that brought to light the pleasant (and not so pleasant) experiences of a Traveller’s life. The challenges that the family encounters because of their culture and lifestyle raise issues that are as relevant today as they were in the first quarter of the 20th century. Dr Juliet McGrattan explores why urine might turn all the colours of the rainbow, and what it indicates about our underlying health. David Fryer left his position as Professor of Community Critical Psychology at Charles Sturt University, Australia in October 2011 to devote more time to applied critical theory and promoting resistance to neoliberal oppression. He is grateful to The University of Queensland where he currently has an honorary position providing him with library facilities and the countless other resources available to academics.

B vitamins are water-soluble, so any excess gets released through the urine. Because vitamin B2 (riboflavin) has a fluorescent hue, the excess, when mixed with the urine, can produce that neon yellow color. Other B vitamins, including B9 (folic acid) and B12, have a similar effect. Should you stop taking vitamins if you have neon yellow urine? This dampness intervention, alone, would be a huge legacy but I want to briefly write about the activist/scholar praxis to which Cathy and I were committed and which, in our case, consisted in bringing together activism, critical reflection (not criticising but rather reflection within a frame of reference indebted to critical social theory) and academic power/knowledge work (within the Foucauldian tradition). Cathy and I met properly getting on for four decades ago. I had moved from Sheffield in England (where I had been doing research into the poor mental and physical health of many unemployed people and what was responsible for it to Stirling University in Scotland to take up a lecturing position in the psychology department. I had applied for and received funding from the British Psychological Society to run a series of seminar-workshops about unemployment and mental health.