TORONTO — It’s something we all get rid of several times a day — and sometimes in the middle of the night — but it’s not exactly a topic of everyday or, let’s face it, polite conversation. Still, urine, pee — call it what you will — can tell a lot about a person’s health, especially when it comes to colour. Urine is comprised of waste products and excess fluid that are filtered from the blood by the kidneys. When healthy, these twin fist-sized organs filter up to about 150 litres of blood each day, producing one to two litres of urine that is passed through the tube-like ureters to the bladder for elimination through the urethra. How much urine an individual produces depends on many factors, including the amount of liquids and types of foods ingested and how much fluid is lost through perspiration and respiration. Ever wonder why urine can look amber-coloured in the morning, but range from straw to sunshine yellow at different times throughout the day? ‘People may wonder why their urine is a little dark or a little lighter’ It’s all to do with the amount of water and other liquids a person consumes at any given time, says urologist Dr. Daniel Shoskes of the Cleveland Clinic, which has created an online chart entitled “The Colour of Pee.” “People may wonder why their urine is a little dark or a little lighter,” says Shoskes, who served as a consultant on the project. “What the chart sort of helps with is first of all with all the variations of yellow, from very pale to very dark,” he says. “It’s a measure of hydration. So certainly the more you drink, the closer to water it’s going to look like.” Indeed, if the urine is colourless, doctors at the Cleveland Clinic who created the chart suggest the person is drinking a lot of water and “may want to cut back.” Pee that’s reminiscent of pale straw or a transparent yellow is considered normal. A slightly darker sunshine yellow is also in the normal range, but the chart recommends drinking some water “soon.”
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 13:48:12 +0000
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