A video ‘guide’ has explained what the color of your urine says about your health and when there should be a cause for concern.
While you may not think twice about the color of your urine when emptying the bladder how many times a day, it can say a lot about your health.
A video uploaded by medical expert Kieram Litchfield documents the ‘urine color guide’, which can certainly prove useful if you’re concerned about your health.
Red or pink urine
The video begins by showing how passing red urine can be due to kidney damage, while pink may be due to the consumption of blackberry.
Brown urine
Passing brown urine could be a sign of severe dehydration and/or liver or kidney problems, according to the video.
Yellow urine
As we all know, light yellow is deemed as ‘normal’, while medium yellow could be a sign of ‘slight dehydration’, and strong-looking yellow as ‘dehydration’.
Orange or green urine
If you’re passing orange urine then that means you could be dehydrated or even have a potential liver problem, while the extremely rare green urine could mean an individual is suffering from a urinary infection.
What have the experts said about the different colors of urine and what they mean?
While the video is a brilliant visual representation of what the color of your urine says about your health, Healthline provides a handy urine ‘color chart’, which can determine whether you need to pay the doctors a visit.
The chart pretty much repeats what is said in the video, as well as stating that passing cloudy urine could be a sign of a urinary tract infection, while white or milky urine could be a sign of a condition known as chyluria.
According to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, chyluria is a ‘rare condition in which lymphatic fluid leaks into the kidneys and turns the urine milky white.’
Healthline went on to state your urine may vary in shades of dark amber, red, or even brown if you’re kidney failure.
Last year, new research debunked a 150-year mystery as to why urine is yellow.
The team of experts discovered bilirubin (BilR) as the key enzyme that makes urine the color we are all familiar with.
Well, the process happens when red blood cells reach the end of their life cycle at six months, later becoming the bright orange pigment bilirubin.
The pigments then typically seep into the gut, where they are either excreted or partially reabsorbed.
“Gut microbes encode the enzyme bilirubin reductase that converts bilirubin into a colorless byproduct called urobilinogen,” Brantley Hall, an assistant professor in the University of Maryland’s Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, told Maryland Today.
“Urobilinogen then spontaneously degrades into a molecule called urobilin, which is responsible for the yellow color we are all familiar with.”
The more you know, eh?
