Urine Colour - What It Says About Your Health?

Changes in the colour of your urine can reveal important information about your health. If your urine takes on a hue beyond what's normal, it can be indicative of something wrong with your health. In general, the normal urine colour varies from pale yellow to deep yellowish-brown, which is a result of a chemical pigment in the urine called urochrome.

1. Red or Pink

• When your kidneys, urethra, bladder or any other urinary tract organ gets infected or inflamed, blood cells get leaked into the urine, giving it a red hue. The causes behind the presence of blood can be urinary tract infections, kidney cysts, kidney stones, enlarged prostate and even cancer. Taking blood thinners can also cause you to have blood in your urine.
• Certain foods like blackberries, rhubarb and beets can cause your urine to turn pink.
• The use of certain medications like a particular class of antibiotic used in the treatment of tuberculosis can turn your urine red. Likewise, a drug used to numb discomfort in the urinary tract can cause a red/pink discoloration of your urine.

2. Blue or Green

• The consumption of coloured food dyes containing green or blue pigments can cause you to pass urine of such hues.
• Certain anti-depressant and anti-inflammatory medications can turn your urine green/blue.
• A very rare medical condition called familial benign hypercalcemia (fbh), characterised by high levels of calcium in the blood and low levels of the mineral in the urine can cause your urine to turn blue.
• Green urine can also occur if your urinary tract gets infected by the pseudomonas bacteria.

3. Dark Brown

• Having large amounts of these foods - aloe, rhubarb (a type of leafy green) and broad beans can cause you to pass dark brown urine.
• Certain anti-malarial drugs, laxatives and muscle relaxants can darken the colour of your urine as well.
• Dark brown urine can also be caused by disorders of the kidney or liver as well as infections of the urinary tract.
• Injury of the muscle as a result of excessive training can result in dark brown urine.

4. Orange

• Problems with the bile duct (the duct through which bile from the gall bladder and liver passes before entering the duodenum) or liver along with the passing of light coloured stools can result in orange urine.
• A cause of orange urine may also be dehydration as fluids bring about a decrease in the concentration of compounds present in the urine.

5. White

• The presence of calcium or phosphate sediments in the urine can give it a white hue.
• White urine can also be a result of funguria infection (a form of fungal urinary infection wherein the fungus produces white sediments) or a bacterial infection.

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