Everyone has their own type of morning routine they like to stick to. Some of us like to get up early in order to have a refreshing shower, others hit snooze five times before rolling out of bed only a few minutes before they're due to leave the house; most of us have breakfast in the AM, some folks like to wait until lunchtime before chowing down on their first meal of the day; and the most committed amongst us will hit the gym before going to work, meanwhile everyone else is still half asleep during their commute.
Very few people, however, can claim to start the day in the same way as Kayleigh Oakley... because she likes to kick things off with a glass of her own urine.
Not long ago, Oakley was struggling with a variety of health problems. Her immune system was weak, she was easily exhausted, and she suffered from Hashimoto's disease since she was around 15 years old. Two years after that, she was told she had chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.
"I was ill a lot of the time and life felt like really hard work," she explains. "If someone became unwell around me, my immune system would be so weak that I would get sick, too.
"It was so draining. If I did any strenuous activity I would be in bed for week, and life became pretty miserable."
After starting to drink her own urine, however, the 33-year-old claims that her health has vastly improved, and that the change she saw in herself was "almost instant".
"Drinking urine can’t harm you and I view it as a medicine," she says. "We don’t think twice about taking drugs bought over the counter, with side-effects, yet urine has no side-effects and it works really well. A lot of expensive skin brands contain urea, which is excreted in urine, so I have also got a really expensive product for free."
Oakley discovered the controversial health treatment two years ago while researching alternative treatments for medical ailments.
"I was studying natural healing and medicine and was fascinated by the success stories other people shared about it," she says.
"I had been on a long journey, trying to improve my health. I changed my diet and lifestyle, trying to introduce more holistic things and not taking any pharmaceutical medicines. I heard that urine can reset the immune system, promote general good health, and is good for the skin. It is also an ancient yogic technique, so thought I would give it a go."
And, by her account at least, it seems to have worked a charm.
However, there is no real proof that urine is especially beneficial to the human body. In fact, it could be harmful.
As Aisling Pigott, a dietician and spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association, explains: "There is no evidence or advice which would encourage anybody to drink their own urine. The body, in particular the kidneys, does an effective job at removing toxins and excretes urine. Therefore, drinking this again is not beneficial, could potentially be harmful and could cause infection."
Still, Oakley is confident in her routine, and says that her life has improved greatly because of it.
"We have an epidemic of treating the symptoms, not the cause," she says. "I have tried to look at my body as a whole, see what’s missing and lacking due to nutrient deficiencies. This means I can then start treating it a bit more holistically."
She continued: "If I hadn’t gone down the path of healing myself with different therapies, I would be on more medication. There’s a lot of misinformation out there, but you won’t know if drinking urine will help until you try it."
Oakley also took up veganism and yoga in order to combat her chronic health problems, so if you're tempted to follow in her footsteps, you might want to start with the processes that don't involve drinking your own urine.