5 weird health crazes we will never understand

We love it when new trends emerge in the health and fitness world, but there and some things we just can’t get our heads round. Here are 5 weird health crazes we will never understand

1. Urine therapy

Walking like an Egyptian is one thing but I doubt The Bangles would’ve drunk their own wee. Urine therapy or urotherapy dates back to the ancient Egyptian times and even the Bible in which Proverbs 5:15 says to ‘drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.’  Urine is a bi-product of blood filtration – 95 percent water and five percent nutrients packed with goodness. Those who dare to swallow claim it cures all sorts, but nothing is proven. Perhaps they’re simply taking the piss… #bladdered

2. The Geisha Facial

If it’s good enough for Harry Styles and Victoria Beckham then we have to have it, must try it, when, where, how? The Geisha Facial leaves your skin with a healthy shine and hails from Japan where they call it uguisu no fun – translated: nightingale faeces. Great, I can do next Tuesday. WAIT – bird poo?! Seriously? Named the Geisha Facial because geishas used it to remove their heavy zinc and lead-based make-up and found that it softened the skin. How? How do you realise poop from a Japanese nightingale softens the skin? Perhaps they were lucky and got dumped from above. Some say being pooped on is a sign of good luck and major wealth is being dropped on you from heaven. Perhaps smearing bird poo on your face means super-pooper wealth – a lottery win, maybe? You’d need it for this treatment at £180 a plop.

3. Massaged kale

Feeling a little stressed at the thought of all that bird poo? How about a massage? Release the tension, tenderise those veins, breakdown the cellulose structure, rub until the leaves darken, shrink and look silky. What? Leaves? We’re no longer just being told to eat our greens, but now we have to massage them? Massage your kale and it’ll be you who reaps the benefits turning this bitter veg into something sweet and silky. Hmm.

4. Eating placenta

So many decisions when having a baby. Home birth? Water birth? Drugs or all-natural? Baby name? Placenta smoothie or placenta burger? Yes, just what you need when you’ve spent hours pushing out something too big for a small hole – afterbirth! The health benefits? There’s no proven reason to eat your afterbirth but people who have a taste for placenta believe it helps keep post-natal depression at bay. I’d suggest a box of Maltesers might do the same job.

5. Other weird facials

Back to facials. Kim Kardashian loves a Vampire Facelift, where they take your blood, play with it and then inject it back in your face. Rumour has it that Simon Cowell loves a sheep placenta facial, too – enough with the placenta already! I find this one particularly hard to swallow though – a semen facial. Life coach Stella Ralfini swears by it and in her YouTube video she tells us that all we need is a clean and healthy lover so that we can ‘scoop’ up the semen after our ‘beautiful love-making’ is finished and rub on our face every 10 days.