BEIJING More than three million Chinese drink their own urine in the belief it is good for their health, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.

Participants at a recent seminar on the practice in the northeastern city of Shenyang were told that urine contains many active ingredients which strengthen the immune system, Xinhua said.

"Urine contains no bacterium and is more sanitary than blood," Yang Liansheng, a professor from the Liaoning Institute of traditional Chinese medicine, was quoted as saying. Engineer Zhu Jinfu told the seminar he had been drinking his own urine since he was 13 and had lived a healthy life for the last 58 years, Xinhua said.