WHAT YOUR WEE COLOUR MEANS
RICHARDthe Bladder VINEY, Clinic,a urologicalexplains what thesurgeon at colour of your urine may mean. Beetroot and rhubarb can turn urine red. It could be caused by blood from a UTI , prostate or kidney issues or cancer. It usually shows a minor condition but 20 per cent of people with painless blood in urine receive a cancer diagnosis. Infections are usually painful. Always ask your GP.
ASPARAGUS may make urine look green because, as with beetroot, some of us may not break down the pigmented compounds in it. The sedation drug propofol can also turn urine green. This is due to the way the liver processes it in some people. The same colour change may be due to an infection caused by a bug called pseudomonas bacteria, which can cause complications with wounds.
THE antidepressant amitriptyline and the painkiller indomethacin can turn urine blue. The colour can occur with an inherited condition, familial benign hypercalcemia, where gut bacteria break down an amino acid, creating bright blue ‘waste’. Food colourings may have this effect but it’s more common with drugs as the body has not evolved to process these colours. ORANGE urine be can a warning sign of liver and/or kidney problems, such as obstructive jaundice. This causes bile to be excreted through the urine, rather than the stools, perhaps due to a gallstone, or pancreatic or bile duct cancer. The bile is forced into the bloodstream and excreted in the urine. Depending on the concentration, the colour may be orange or brown. A BROWN ale hue could be a sign of severe dehydration. It could also signify liver disease or a kidney disorder. A rarer cause is rhabdomyolysis — the destruction of muscle, for instance by intensive weight training. Medications such as levodopa, one of the main drugs for Parkinson’s disease, and certain antibiotics can darken the urine, sometimes to this shade. THIS colour could be a sign of purple urine bag syndrome, which can occur when patients with a catheter develop a UTI. Purple urine is a characteristic of porphyria, a blood disorder associated with King George III, who some believe inherited it from Mary, Queen of Scots. It causes the body to make too much porphyrin, the substance that gives blood its colour.