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Originally Posted by GangGreenWarrior  Do you think it's the drinking of urine that puts Machida over the top or the years of training in martial arts, the discipline and the inherent athletic ability?
It's more that those who do it think that it helps them than anything the actual drinking of urine does. |
As a Psychology major, I can vouch for this. You could compare this to a placebo effect. For example, imagine if a patient in a hospital were in pain and a doctor [or one looking like a doctor] came in and told the patient that (s)he was going to give him/her a dose or morphine. Meanwhile, nothing was done at all, it only looked like something was being done, the patient would likely experience a lessening of pain and would likely report that they were feeling slightly to moderately better. The belief that something is helping you, regardless if it is or isn't can have very strange and powerful affects on the body.
Assuming that drinking your own urine has no benefits for you whatsoever, if for whatever reason Lyoto Machida was restricted from drinking his own urine for the duration of a training camp, I am very confident his performance of an upcoming fight would be lackluster. Even though there was no physical change, the mental change in Lyoto Machida for thinking that he has now lost an important part of his preparation would effect him. Lyoto would likely think he will perform worse because he hasn't consumed his own urine and because of these thoughts, he would perform worse. I wish I could explain more in-depth, but without citing research or articles I don't think it's right to just dump information without any of you being able to access to reliability of my post.