Cloudy Urine: What Could Be Wrong With Me?

Cloudy Urine Culprit #3: Conditions Of The Urinary System

A wide variety of conditions of the urinary system, besides urinary tract infections, can cause cloudy or murky urine. They include bladder cancer, kidney stones, a kidney infection, acute kidney failure, and bladder stones. One thing these conditions have in common is that they all lead to pelvic pain, which, together with the cloudy urine, should alert you that it is time to seek medical assistance. 

Prostate inflammation or infection, too, can lead to cloudy urine. 

Conditions That Can Cause Proteinuria 

Proteinuria is the medical term for "protein in the urine", a problem that causes your urine to become cloudy or murky. Healthy kidneys filter the bulk of protein out, while diseased kidneys may not be able to catch proteins like albumin, making them appear in the urine an affected person later passes. It is no surprise, then, that cloudy urine often has kidney disease as its underlying problem, but that kidney damage may have been caused by something else that also requires treatment.

Cardiovascular conditions including hypertension and heart failure can lead to kidney damage, in turn causing proteinuria and thus cloudy urine. Proteinuria can also be caused by diabetes, sickle cell anemia, lupus nephritis, leukemia, multiple myeloma, and lymphoma, and preeclampsia, a condition unique to women that causes both dangerously high blood pressure and proteinuria. Toxins and trauma can further be responsible for your cloudy urine.

That's Scary! Should I Freak Out Over My Cloudy Urine Now?

Yes, you're right — it is scary, isn't it? To be absolutely fair, Googling pretty much any symptom can lead you to conclude you are halfway to a hospice bed, if you look in the right (or wrong!?) places.

At the same time, we would like to remind you that urinary tract infections are still the most common cause of cloudy urine. In addition, it is completely possible for other bodily excretions, like semen and vaginal discharge to get into your urine sample, which means that while your sample contains "cloudy urine", your urine was not originally that way. Yet another possible culprit is dehydration — which, simple though it may sound, can also be pretty dangerous, yet has a straightforward cure. 

The moral of the story is quite obvious: don't panic if you have cloudy urine, and don't even worry enough to see a doctor if it happens only once or twice, but don't ignore this problem if it has been going on for a while. Proper treatment, should you need it, requires a proper diagnosis.