The Significance Of Other Abnormal Colors of Urine

An amazing number of teenagers have asked the writer of this article about the following urine color.

Why do you have bright yellow urine?

Sometimes the urine is bright, taking on an almost "neon" yellow. Usually, this is a result of taking vitamins in nutritional supplements. The body cannot store large amounts of vitamin B2, so it spills into the urine where it has a very noticeable color. As an isolated chemical compound, vitamin B2 is more orange than yellow, but because it also absorbs blue light, it has a bright yellow appearance in the urine. Vitamin B2 is poorly soluble in water, so the color is usually noticeable the first urination after taking the supplement. The excess tends to be excreted all at once. [7]

Why do you get blue urine?

If you have blue urine, the most likely explanation is that you have consumed food made with blue dyes, such as frosting or candy. The liver processes the blue dye and sends it more or less directly to the kidneys to be excreted when you pee. [8] Blue urine is also caused by the use of methylene blue, which is injected in case of accidental poisoning with cyanide or used to treat urinary tract infections. [9]

Green urine: Why?

Green urine most commonly is a byproduct of a species of bacteria called Pseudomonas aeruginosa. [10] This bacterium lives in the bowel, but can be transferred to the urinary tract when toilet tissue is applied with a forward motion rather than with a backward motion — when you wipe back to front. Some people who have liver cancer can also have green urine [11], as can some people who drink huge amounts of green tea. Green urine is sometimes noted after toxic exposure to the pesticide paraquat. [12]

The anesthetic propofol can cause green urine [13], as can certain medications for Parkinson's disease.

Reasons for purple urine

Purple urine usually results from a rare disease called porphyria [14], which affects about 30,000 people, mostly in the UK and South Africa. Porphyria was the cause of the infamous "madness of King George" III of Britain, although it is now treatable.

Red or pink urine: Causes

Most people are alarmed by red urine in the toilet bowl. Sometimes the discoloration is caused by plant pigments, notably from beets, but more often red or pink-tinted urine is due to bleeding somewhere in the urinary tract [15]. You may be surprised to learn that it just takes 1 ml of blood to turn the urine pink, so the bleeding is not necessarily very heavy.

Bleeding in the urinary tract can be caused by kidney stones, blows to the kidneys or bladder, or, in rare cases, cancer of the bladder or kidneys. [16] Some young women may, however, notice a pink tint in the toilet bowl and assume it to come from the urine when it, in fact, originates from a first menstruation.

READ Blood in Urine: Causes & Treatment

Who develops brown or black urine?

Also alarming is the presence of brown or black urine in the toilet bowl. Fortunately, brown or black urine usually has a benign cause. Eating certain kinds of beans, especially fava beans (broad beans) or velvet beans, causes a darkening of the urine because of their content of dopamine. [17] Certain medications for Parkinson's disease likewise have this effect. Taking laxatives made with Senna (in the US and UK, Sennecot) can also darken the urine.

Cloudy or white urine: Why is this happening?

Cloudy urine usually indicates a bacterial infection. When the urinary tract is infected, the immune system sends out white blood cells to attack the germs. Some of them get flushed out with urine, which can manifest as cloudy pee. [18]

Men sometimes have cloudy or foamy urine after sexual intercourse, or when they are abstinent from ejaculation for long periods. The sperm gets flushed into the urinary tract from the prostate and appears cloudy or white in the urine. [19]

Foamy urine

Foamy urine can result from the same causes as cloudy or white urine, or it can indicate spillover of protein from severely diseased kidneys. If kidney disease is the problem, there will be other symptoms besides foamy urine.