CHINA: A village in Xian has become famous because a good portion of its inhabitants believe that drinking urine will make them healthier.

The village has a total population of 1500, and about one fifth of the inhabitants practise urine therapy.

Hu Wubin is one of the villagers who believes in the medicinal properties of urine.

"I smoke cigarettes all the time, but I don't suffer any ill effects because I also drink lots of urine too!" Hu said.

Stunned reporters watched as he downed three glasses of steaming piss, one after the other.

"Nowadays, don't youngsters like to drink beer? I'm not used to that stuff, so I don't touch it myself. But when I drink this urine, it tastes better than beer to me."

Other uropaths (practitioners of urine therapy) in the village were also eager to share their experiences.

One man said he "had suffered from high blood pressure and blocked blood vessels in the brain" and that drinking urine over a long period of time had cured him.

An 80 year old said that drinking urine kept him fit as a fiddle. According to him, he was still able to work in the fields despite his advanced age because of urine therapy.

However, doctors advise against drinking urine because it has no proven medical benefit and could actually be harmful.

For instance, if the person the urine came from had an infected urethra, then those drinking the urine would be ingesting harmful bacteria as well.