The color, density, and smell of urine can reveal much about the state of your health. As a result, human urine has always been a useful tool of diagnosis since the earliest days of medicine. It can reveal what you’ve been eating, how much you’ve been drinking, and what diseases you have.
So what do the shades of the urine color mean?
1. Transparent
If your urine is completely clear, it may be a sign that you’re drinking excessive water. Contrary to popular belief, there are risks associated with drinking large amounts of water, including diluting the salts in your body.
In general, if you’re drinking so much that your urine looks like water, you probably are drinking more than you need.
2. Pale Straw/Amber/Honey
Lighter shades of yellow indicate that you are well-hydrated. But if the color darkens, it could be a sign that you need to refuel with fluids.
3. Brown Ale
If you notice shades of brown in your urine, it could simply be a sign that you are dehydrated. However, it could also be indicative of a problem in the liver.
4. Pink To Reddish
This is usually a warning sign. Some food and substances may cause a pinkish/red color. But if it occurs due to blood, then it’s a cause for alarm.
There’s a huge list of conditions both benign and malignant that can lead to the presence of blood in the urine, anything from medical kidney disease to a UTI, stones in the kidneys or bladder or the more serious cancers of the kidney, bladder, prostate.
5. Blue Or Green
Diseases like porphyria (an inherited enzyme condition) can result in a person having blue or green urine.
Sometimes, people can urinate in strange colors after eating dyed foods. It depends on how well the dyes are absorbed by the gut and how easily they pass into the kidney and make their way out of the GI tract.
However, for most people, food dyes don’t majorly affect them. Likewise, certain medications may also cause changes in urine color.
