Urine Isn’t ‘Sterile,’ But are Golden Showers Unhealthy?

At Donald Trump’s press conference this morning, the president-elect claimed that the allegations he engaged in urine play– better known as “golden showers”– could not be true because he is “a germaphobe.”

As many were quick to note after Trump’s statement, however, urine is commonly believed to be sterile, thanks, in part, to survival television shows.

And while recent studies show that urine isn’t completely bacteria and “germ”-free, urine has been shown to have antibacterial and antiviral properties, likely leading to the the myth that urinating on a wound is a good idea (which it’s not.)

What’s more, the bacteria present in urine is similar to the so-called “flora” living symbiotically other places in the body such as the mouth or gastrointestinal tract.

“It’s like any other niche on our body,” Evann Hilt, a microbiology researcher at Loyola University of Chicago, told the audience at a conference of the American Society for Microbiology back in 2014, “you have a good flora that keeps you healthy.”

While bacteria that are safe and healthy for your own biological ecosystem, they aren’t necessarily meant to be shared with others, says Dr. Hunter Handsfield, Professor Emeritus of Medicine, University of Washington Center for AIDS and STDs and Chief Medical Advisor for the American Sexual Health Association (ASHA).

Yet urine exposure likely won’t put you at risk for an STD or illness, according to Handsfield. In fact, it’s far less risky than vaginal or anal sex, and even less risky than oral sex.

“STDs are not merely infections that happen to involve the genitals,” Handsfield told The Daily Beast. “The bacteria and viruses that cause them evolved to require the intimate contact of sex to be transmitted. That’s why you don’t see them transmitted by people shaking hands or transmitted among co-workers. Sex, or sex per-se, is required.”

Contact with urine or urine-play as part of sexual activity would not facilitate the transfer of the “large amounts of causative bacteria and viruses needed,” Handsfield explains. “The little bit of sexual secretions or concentration of virus that would be in urine if you were exposed this way would be unlikely to cause disease.”

Handsfield’s statements are backed up by his own experience as the former STD program director for the Seattle-King County Department of Public Health and recent CDC guidelines for disease transmission of common viruses like cytomegalovirus (CMV) and other STDs.

According to Handsfield, deriving sexual pleasure from urine or urine-related acts– known by sexual psychologists as urolagnia– can easily be included along the normal spectrum of human sexual behavior, even if golden showers aren’t for you.