It has always been a relieving feeling to urinate especially when you feel like you'd need to excrete all those waste products out of your system. However, do you ever check the color of your urine? Urine comes out in a variety of colors and hue, but excreting all those rainbow colors isn't actually healthy. The color, odor and consistency of your urine may provide important clues about the status of your body.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, the color of your urine can tell a lot about your health status. The urine color can in fact help health practitioners identify what might be wrong in your body. It can aid in people to identify if they are drinking enough water, find out a urinary tract infection and an underlying health problem.
According to a spokesperson of the clinic as reported by Mirror, "Human urine has been a useful tool of diagnosis since the earliest days of medicine.The color, density, and smell of urine can reveal much about the state of our health."
They have provided a chart for patients and health practitioners to easily identify what might be happening in their bodies as paralleled to the color of their urine they see. Here are the different colors and what they may mean.
1. No Color / Transparent
Hey, drinking too much water may not be as good as it seems. This means you're over-hydrated and you might want to cut back. Also, it may be a sign that you just took in a diuretic in the form of a medicine or caffeinated drinks like cola, tea or coffee that forces water out of the body through urinating.
2. Pale Straw To Dark Yellow
If the shade of yellow is lighter, it means you are a normal well-hydrated person. However, as the urine becomes darker yellow, you should drink more water.
3. Amber or Honey
If the urine is a dark yellow or amber, it means that you are not well-hydrated and it is recommended that you drink water as soon as possible to avoid any health problems.
4. Syrup or Brown Ale
This signals dehydration or an underlying liver or kidney disease. When the body is dehydrated, the kidneys make sure that the body will hold more water to compensate with the lack of water in the body. Thus, the urine is more concentrated. Blood in the urine can be seen as brownish in color signaling a kidney disease or urinary tract infection. Lastly, certain foods can turn the urine brown such as fava beans, berries, rhubarb, beets, and certain food colorings. Dr. Daniel Shoskes, a urologist at Cleveland Clinic said, "If there is liver disease or bile, some of the bile salts that the liver should be processing and eliminating through stool are hanging around in blood and ending up in urine-people with severe liver disease can have brown urine."
5. Pink to Reddish
If you notice your urine to be colored pink, you should seek medical attention as soon as possible. It could indicate traces of blood which could signal underlying diseases like prostate problems, urinary tract infections, kidney problems, bladder stones or worse, cancer. However, certain foods are the culprit in having pink urine namely, beetroot, rhubarb or blackberries.
6. Orange
If you're urine is colored orange, it can signal dehydration and your body is not getting enough water. Also, it could signal a liver or bile duct disease. However, certain food dyes and foods can turn the urine yellow like carrots, vitamin C, chemotherapy drugs, multivitamins, and warfarin.
7. Blue or Green
Of course, anyone who would see blue or green urine might be a shock. However, this is nothing to worry about. It might be caused by food dyes or coloring. Also, eating asparagus, or ingesting medicines like amitriptyline, indomethacin and cimetidine might turn your urine either blue or green.
Yet, it could be a sign of a rare inherited enzyme disorder called porphyria. Nevertheless, it is still recommended to visit a doctor for confirmation.