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Clear beautiful glowing skin – all with a DIY treatment you make yourself each day. You with us? Well, hold up a second, because this could be the yuckiest beauty treatment we’ve heard of yet. Welcome to ‘urine therapy’ – or, using your own pee as a face serum.

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The general method is this. You pee into a container, use a cotton pad to soak some of the urine up, then wipe it across your face, leaving for 10 minutes before rinsing off with water and continuing your skincare regime. The theory is that it will input minerals and enzymes into your skin in a super natural way. We can definitely see how this became a trend – it’s your own bodily fluid, people totally drink wee when they’re stuck in the desert (hi, Bear Grylls!), so naturally someone has made a connection there. But Refinery29 decided to go deeper, consulting dermatologist Whitney Bowe MD on whether urine therapy was a health hazard, or actually beneficial.

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“It’s actually not as disgusting as it sounds!” Dr Bowe said of the beauty trend. “I recommend and prescribe different concentrations of urea, one of the main components of urine, all the time for my patients. It hydrates the skin and helps exfoliate away dead cells, giving skin a brighter appearance, smoother texture, and a healthy glow. Urine also has minerals, salts, hormones, antibodies, and enzymes, some of which might actually benefit the skin.”

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But as for whether it was a miracle treatment or not, Dr. Bowe is sceptical. “It’s probably not going to have any miraculous benefits, but it’s also unlikely to do much harm.” She also warned that, if you WERE to try urine therapy, you should only be using your own urine (that seems pretty obvious!), you must use it immediately to avoid bacteria development, and if you’re prone to UTIs, have diabetes, or take oral medications which can react with your skin, you shouldn’t give it a whirl.