It can be alarming to see blood-red urine the toilet bowl, or green, blue, cloudy, or foamy liquid coming out of your body. Most of the time, however, there's a non-threatening explanation for urine that comes in all the colors of the rainbow.
The experts tell us that urine coming from a healthy body is straw-colored. It's just a little yellow and transparent. From time to time, however, urine comes in different colors. Usually, strangely colored urine is of benign origins, but now and then it is a signal that it is time to go to the doctor. Here's a rundown on the meanings of different colors of pee.
Pale Yellow Urine
Healthy urine is 96 percent water, with just a few other waste products. The body excretes an acidic nitrogen compound called urea when excess amino acids have to be converted into sugar. The sugar stays in the body, and the urea, which would otherwise cause the pH of the bloodstream to fall, goes out.
Urea itself is colorless. The tiny amount of yellow pigment in healthy urine is a compound called urochrome, which is made from recycled bile salts. Bile is the liquid the liver makes to dissolve fats in the digestive tract. Excess bile salts are removed both in urine and in the stool.
Also read: Is smelly urine a symptom of Urinary Tract Infection? [UTI]
If your urine were in a bottle, you should be able to read a paper or a pad computer you hold on the other side of it. If you have dark urine, it's possible that you just aren't drinking enough water.
If your urine were in a bottle, you should be able to read a paper or a pad computer you hold on the other side of it. If you have dark urine, it's possible that you just aren't drinking enough water.
Completely Clear Urine
Completely clear urine is extremely dilute. It usually is the result of drinking too much water. Athletes who drink too much water during sports competitions, for example, and people on ten-glass-a-day regimens tend to have clear urine. Clear urine usually just means that the urochrome is so dilute that it's not visible. Don't drink so much water, and color comes back.
Clear urine is also common in people who take "pee pills," or diuretics, usually for high blood pressure or edema. When the medication is discontinued, color comes back. The doctor will probably take a urine sample as part of ordinary health monitoring.
In rare instances, clear urine can result from diabetes insipidus, the failure of the pituitary gland in the brain to make a substance called anti-diuretic hormone. This is caused by injury to the brain or certain metabolic conditions. The kidneys don't get the message to hold it in at night, so sleep becomes difficult, and dehydration, despite the clear urine, is a constant concern. The condition increases thirst as it increases urination, but it becomes very difficult to keep up with the overactivity of the kidneys. Diabetes insipidus is diagnosed by depriving the patient of water, which should not reduce the production of urine as much as otherwise expected.
Orange Urine
Orange urine can be tinted by beta-carotene, the antioxidant compound most abundant in carrots. People who eat large amounts of carrots can have orange urine. Orange urine can also be a sign of hepatitis, as swelling in the liver causes bile to travel directly to the kidneys. However, the most common cause of orange urine is dehydration. The kidneys work all night, when you don't get up to drink water, and keep removing urochrome (mentioned above) without removing the water to dilute it.
Bright Yellow Urine
Sometimes the urine is bright, almost "neon" yellow. Usually, this is a result of taking vitamins in nutritional supplements. The body cannot store large amounts of vitamin B2, so it spills into the urine where it has a very noticeable color. As an isolated chemical compound, vitamin B2 is more orange than yellow, but because it also absorbs blue light, it has a bright yellow appearance in the urine. Vitamin B2 is poorly soluble in water, so the color is usually noticeable the first urination after taking the supplement. The excess tends to be excreted all at once.
Blue Urine
If you have blue urine, the most likely explanation is that you have consumed food made with blue dyes, such as frosting or candy. The liver processes the dye and sends it more or less directly to the kidneys to be excreted. Blue urine is also caused by the use of methylene blue, which is injected in case of accidental poisoning with cyanide or used to treat urinary tract infections.
Green Urine
Green urine most commonly is a byproduct of a species of bacteria called Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This bacterium lives in the bowel, but can be transferred to the urinary tract when toilet tissue is applied with a forward motion rather than with a backward motion. Some people who have liver cancer can also have green urine, as can some people who drink huge amounts of green tea. Green urine is sometimes noted after toxic exposure to the pesticide paraquat.
The anesthetic propofol can cause green urine, as can certain medications for Parkinson's disease.
Purple Urine
Purple urine usually results from a disease called porphyria which affects about 30,000 people, mostly in the UK and South Africa. Porphyria was the cause of the infamous "madness of King George" III of Britain, although it is now treatable.
Red or Pink Urine
Most people are alarmed by red urine in the toilet bowl. Sometimes the discoloration is caused by plant pigments, notably from beets, but more often it is due to bleeding somewhere in the urinary tract. It just takes 1 ml of blood to turn the urine pink. Bleeding in the urinary tract can be caused by kidney stones, blows to the kidneys or bladder, or, in rare cases, cancer of the bladder or kidneys.
Brown or Black Urine
Also alarming is the presence of brown or black urine in the toilet bowl. Fortunately, this usually has a benign cause. Eating certain kinds of beans, especially fava beans (broad beans) or velvet beans, causes darkening of the urine because of their content of dopamine. Certain medications for Parkinson's disease likewise have this effect. Taking laxatives made with senna (in the US and UK, Sennecot) can also darken the urine.
Cloudy or White Urine
Cloudy urine usually indicates a bacterial infection. When the urinary tract is infected, the immune system sends out white blood cells to attack the germs. Some of them get flushed out with urine.
Men sometimes have cloudy or foamy urine after sexual intercourse, or when they are abstinent from ejaculation for long periods. The sperm gets flushed into the urinary tract from the prostate and appears cloudy or white in the urine.
Foamy urine
can result from the same causes as cloudy or white urine, or it can indicate spillover of protein from severely diseased kidneys. If kidney disease is the problem, there will be other symptoms besides foamy urine.
Sharing is Caring
Follow scarletinfo on Twitter @SuccessMaduka
Also Subscribe to our Newsletter in the link at the top of the page
Comments
Post a Comment