HOW COLORFUL DOES URINE GET?
"Color, shape, and size, are just god's or mother nature's way of showing off". With that said, the color of your urine has meaning, sometimes good meaning, and sometimes bad meaning. Let's use this post to decipher what urine color means, and find out which uri-nation you are part of ...
Human urine comes in multiple colors such a yellow, orange, red, brown, purple, white, and while not exactly a color, transparent urine. Moran, did you mean to write purple urine??? - yep, purple!
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Changes to urine are an indication of changes in the concentration of certain substances compared to the volume of water within urine. The darker the urine, even on a relative scale for the same color, (for example light yellow vs dark yellow), the greater the concentration of the substance "coloring" the urine, and the less water the urine includes. And vice versa.
The healthiest urine is transparent (not the same as white urine), while the second best is white urine (often mistaken to be the best for the lack of people's ability to distinct between white and transparent). The more a person is dehydrated (lacks water compared to the wanted or needed volume), the more urine becomes yellow at first, and then orange (from light colored to darker).
Red urine is indicative of blood within urine. Never a good sign as a matter of principle, the more blood in urine, and the darker the urine is, the worse of the person is hemorrhaging (leaking blood from an injury/cut). If your urine has but a few drops, there is no need to panic, yet if your urine is constantly red or dark red, see a physician immediately (without panicking since panicking never helps).
Purple urine is very interesting to see, and equally entertaining, since it is simply the result of eating a lot of beets (the vegetable). Yep, beets color urine purple, yet the color bears no clinical or bad meaning to it. How and why the urine turns purple you ask? - Beets me!
Brown urine is the result of abnormally extensive breakdown of proteins, known as Rhabdomyolysis. This is a pathology that could lead to severe liver damage and even death in extreme and untreated cases. Please note that carbonated beverages can "mask" dehydration by causing urine to seem lighter in color.
Proper hydration: as a rule of thumb, a person is advised to drink the equivalent of half their body weight in oz of water per 24 hours. For example, if a person weight 150lbs, they should consume 75 oz of water per 24 hours (while using 29mL as the equivalent of 1oz). In order to use litters and kilograms instead of pounds and oz, multiply your body weight in kilograms by 0.033. The outcome is already in litters of water advised to consume per day.
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