What Causes Bright Yellow Urine
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While were not going to debate the claims that this can be a symptom of early pregnancy, its important to consider that bright yellow urine can stem from several things aside from pregnancy.
When To Seek Medical Attention
If you suspect that something is off, it’s important to talk with your healthcare provider sooner rather than later. There are many signs and symptoms to be aware of if you have protein in your urine during pregnancy, says Dr. Wetter. Most of these signs and symptoms are associated with preeclampsia as this diagnosis is generally what we are most concerned about developing.
Signs of preeclampsia to look for include elevated blood pressure detected at home or at your healthcare providers office, sudden weight gain, swelling in your extremities or face, nausea or vomiting, vision changes, upper right adnominal pain, and severe headaches.
Many times, patients have related to me that they just started feeling off without a specific symptom, therefore I implore women to listen to their bodies and if they feel something is wrong, to call their healthcare provider, Dr. Wetter advises.
How Is The Cause Of Cloudy Urine Diagnosed
To diagnose the cause of cloudy urine during pregnancy, your doctor will likely ask you to give a urine sample. The urine test done during your routine prenatal appointments isnt necessarily detailed enough, so you may be asked to do whats called a clean catch.
Youll be given instructions on how to provide the sample so it does not get contaminated. For women, this means washing your hands thoroughly and using special wipes to clean the labia and urethra from front to back. After cleaning, you may pee a small amount into the toilet before catching your sample in the provided cup.
The results from your test may help identify different bacteria or other substances, like blood, present in your urine. You doctor will also take into account other symptoms youre experiencing before ordering further testing and ultimately making a diagnosis and treatment plan.
other important symptoms
The treatment youll receive for cloudy urine will also depend on the cause. Some conditions may respond well to home treatment. Others will require the care of your doctor.
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Is Bright Yellow Urine A Sign Of Pregnancy
by Amber Dixon
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Your body does a lot of crazy things when youre pregnant. Youll notice a few symptoms, and one of them might be bright yellow urine. The thing is, bright yellow urine can be a symptom of pregnancy.
However, it can also be a symptom of other things too. Were going to cover the basics of both to make sure youre not taking one test after another because you had bright yellow pee.
What Causes Cloudy Urine
The most common cause of cloudy urine is the presence of alkaline. Urine is comprised of water, salts and waste from the kidneys and the balance of these components affects the alkaline or acidity in urine. Normal urine acidic-to-alkaline levels range from 4.5 to 8 pH. Urine that is under 5 pH is considered acidic, with urine measuring at 8 pH or higher is alkaline . High alkaline causes cloudy urine.
Other possible causes for cloudy urine include:
If you experience repetitive, cloudy or discolored urine, or have any symptoms like headache, blurry vision, abdominal pain or swelling, visit your healthcare provider for further examination.
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How Is Preeclampsia Diagnosed
Regular prenatal care is the best way to catch preeclampsia in its early stages. Being alert to preeclampsia symptoms and alerting your practitioner if you notice them, especially if you have a history of hypertension before pregnancy, helps your doctor diagnose the condition sooner.
Your doctor is not looking for one symptom but a pattern of symptoms. Protein in the urine, for example, is a symptom but it doesnt necessarily mean you have preeclampsia.
If your practitioner suspects you have preeclampsia, he or she will give you blood and urine tests. Your doctor will also check to see how well your blood clots and may perform an ultrasound and fetal monitoring to ensure the health of your baby.
To make a preeclampsia diagnosis, your health care provider will look for the following symptoms:
- High blood pressure
- Protein in your urine
- Other signs of kidney problems
- A blood platelet count of less than 100,000 mL
- Abnormally high liver enzymes, suggesting impaired liver function
- Fluid in the lungs
- New headaches or visual disturbances
Clear Urine: Go Easy On The Water
Its a common belief that clear urine is the optimal color, but this isnt always true. While clear urine isnt necessarily unhealthy, it can indicate that youre a little too hydrated, which can imbalance your bodys electrolytes and salt levels.
If your urine is consistently clear and never yellow, consider scaling back your water intake until a pale yellow color becomes your new normyour baby will still get the hydration needed.
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What Causes Dark Urine In The Morning
Dark urine first thing in the morning is most commonly caused by lack of hydration. While you sleep, youre not intaking fluids, which can cause your urine to be more concentrated. Thus, your first urination in the morning will appear the darkest and gradually lighten as you consume more fluids throughout the day.
The Importance Of Urine Testing During Pregnancy
Your healthcare provider will conduct a urinalysis at your first prenatal appointment and then several times throughout your pregnancy. Testing may be done to monitor for bladder or kidney infections, dehydration, and diabetes.
High protein levels in your urine may indicate that you have a urinary tract infection or more serious kidney disease. Your healthcare provider may also screen for high levels of proteins and sugars in your urine to test for preeclampsia, a condition marked by high blood pressure that can cause damage to the liver and kidneys. Additional signs of preeclampsia might include swelling of the hands and face.
Large amounts of sugar in the urine may indicate gestational diabetes, which typically develops in the second trimester. Additional signs of gestational diabetes may include fatigue, excessive thirst, and weight loss.
The level of ketones in urine may also be evaluated during pregnancy. Ketones are chemicals produced by the liver when the body lacks sufficient energy to convert sugar into energy. If you have a high level of ketones in your urine when pregnant, you may not be getting sufficient nutrition or may be experiencing dehydration.
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Feeling Faint In Pregnancy
You may feel faint while pregnant. This is due to hormonal changes. Fainting happens if your brain is not getting enough blood and, therefore, not enough oxygen.
You are most likely to feel faint if you stand up too quickly from a chair or out of a bath, but it can also happen when you are lying on your back.
Here are some tips to help avoid feeling faint:
- try to get up slowly after sitting or lying down
- if you feel faint when standing still, find a seat quickly and the faintness should pass if it doesn’t, lie down on your side
- if you feel faint while lying on your back, turn onto your side
It’s better not to lie flat on your back in later pregnancy or during labour. You should avoid going to sleep on your back after 28 weeks as it has been linked to a higher risk of stillbirth.
Rose Green Or Blue: Switch Up Your Diet
If your urine color ranges far beyond the yellow sector of the color wheel, it may be time to revise your diet.
Beets and asparagus may tint your urine rose and green , but if their shade shifts from Easter egg hues towards more solid colors, it means youre consuming too much of a good thing. Blue urine resulting from sugary, dyed snacks may be your cue to scale back your sugar intake.
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What Does The Urine Color Typically Mean
First, it is important to understand what the color of urine normally means.
The yellow color in your urine is due to the pigment Urochrome. The appearance of this pigment depends on the consistency of your urine.
When you are hydrated, the pigment in your urine will be of a lighter shade. However, if your urine is in concentrated form, the pigment will have a darker shade.
Is dark yellow urine a sign of pregnancy? Its a general question. The color and smell of your urine can also tell you a lot about your health, especially when you are pregnant. Lets distinguish between normal and pregnancy urine color.
How The Woman Is Carrying
The way a woman carries is also very important in predicting if it will be a boy or girl. This is an interesting way to predict a babys sex, but its also eerily accurate. What is believed is that a woman will carry low with a boy or have a belly that looks like a basketball. It is strange, but true in most cases.
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What Causes Dark Urine During Pregnancy
If your pregnancy urine color is dark these days, youre most likely just dehydrated. The color of urine varies among individuals significantly but is highly regulated by the amount of water you drink, says Temeka Zore, MD, a California-based ob-gyn and reproductive endocrinologist with Spring Fertility in San Francisco. Urine should usually fall into the yellow spectrum and may vary in terms of how bright or yellow it appears based on hydration status. Darker yellow urine is common when youre dehydrated because the urine is more concentrated. For example, your first pee of the morning tends to be more concentrated and therefore looks darker than it would later on in the day. When you dont drink enough water, she explains, your body retains more water and excretes less of it into urine, causing your pee to appear darker.
Staying hydrated is important for everyone, but moms-to-be need to drink even more water than they did pre-pregnancy. Thats because your body needs water to form amniotic fluid, produce extra blood volume, build new tissue, carry nutrients, help indigestion and flush out your wastes and toxins. Even if you think youre drinking a lot, you may not be drinking enough, says Karen Deighan, MD, FACOG, department chairperson of obstetrics and gynecology at Gottlieb Memorial Hospital of Loyola University Health System. Aim to drink at least eight to 10 glasses of water each day.
The Color Of Healthy Urine
Healthy urine looks like a light pale straw-colored liquid to a golden color. The typical yellow color of urine comes from a pigment found in urine. Differences in the shades of yellow range from very light yellow to amber depending on the concentration of urochrome.
According to doctors from the Mayo Clinic, there is a lot you can tell about your health from the color of urine. For example, dark yellow urine may be an indicator that you are not drinking enough fluids. However, if you are drinking too much water or have an electrolyte imbalance, you can have a clear or transparent urine that looks like water.1
Very often, your first pee in the morning will produce urine that is darker than normal because it is more concentrated. This type of dark, gold-colored urine in the morning is usually perfectly normal. This is especially true if your urine throughout the day is pale yellow.
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Express Your Concerns About Dark Urine While Pregnant
Changes in the shade of the yellow color of your urine during pregnancy is rarely a cause to worry. However, don’t hesitate to express your concerns to your prenatal care specialists. In between your prenatal care visits, feel free to call your providers for advice about your urine color, any urinary symptoms, or any other problems.
There Are Always Exceptions
Although all of the evidence points to bright yellow urine not being a symptom of pregnancy, there are always exceptions. There are plenty of questions on forums from pregnant women trying to determine what has caused this.
Typically, its blown off as too much vitamin B due to prenatal vitamins, but these women insist they were taking vitamins before they got pregnant. So, although this isnt typically the case, you might be the exception.
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Pregnancy And Group B Strep Disease
Sometimes a urinary tract infection can be a sign that a woman has group B streptococcus , a bacterium that often lives in the intestines or lower genital tract. Though GBS is less likely to cause infections in adults, it can spread to infants during delivery and cause group B strep disease in newborns.
Sometimes GBS has an early onset, with newborns experiencing symptoms like fever, lethargy, and difficulty feeding within a week after birth. Or the newborn can develop late-onset symptoms of group B strep disease within a few weeks or months after birth.
Pregnant women are tested for GBS in late pregnancy, typically between weeks 35 and 37, via a vaginal and rectal swab. If a woman tests positive, the antibiotic penicillin is given to her during labor to prevent early-onset GBS infection in newborns.
What Does Protein In Urine Mean
In a non-pregnant individual, a normal amount of protein in urine would be about 150mg/day. But when you are pregnant, that number can increase to up to 300mg/day.
Our bodies go through various changes during pregnancy, says Jee Shim, MD, an OB/GYN at Long Island Jewish Forest Hills Hospital in New York. One of the normal/expected changes is increased levels of protein in the urine.
Whether or not your healthcare provider would be concerned with the amount of protein during pregnancy would depend on the amount, says Dr. Shim.
If the levels are higher than 300mg/day, it will need further evaluation by your OB/GYN doctor, she explains. Less than 300 mg/day is considered normal.
It also depends on where you are in your pregnancy. Elevated levels of protein in urine in early pregnancy may not be as much of a concern as higher levels later on in pregnancy.
For the most part, having a small amount of protein in early pregnancy is considered either normal or may be indicative of a minor infection in your urine, says Amy Wetter, MD, OB/GYN at Northside Womens Specialists, part of Pediatrix Medical Group.
Further investigation of the cause might be indicated in this case, says Dr. Wetter, but its not typically something that worries her. On the other hand, elevated protein in the urine after 20 weeks is usually more concerning.
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How To Deal With Frequent Urination In Pregnancy
You may be wondering whether peeing a lot is a sign of pregnancy or whether this urge to pee so often will ever go away. Frequent urination is a common early pregnancy symptom, but it can also reappear later on during pregnancy as your uterus and baby grow, putting pressure on your bladder. Although it can definitely be annoying, in most cases, it’s nothing to worry about. Read on to find out what causes frequent urination during pregnancy, get some tips to help you manage it, and learn the signs that indicate it may be linked to another condition, like a urinary tract infection.
How Prenatal Urine Tests Are Done
You provide the sample, so strategically up your water intake before each visit. For the most accurate results, practitioners recommend that you:
- Wash your hands and wipe the labia clean from front to back .
- Start peeing in the toilet.
- Catch the urine midstream with the collection cup.
- Continue filling to the mark indicated by your practitioner .
A nurse or technician will insert a dipstick into the sample or place a few drops of urine onto testing strips to check for sugar, protein or blood cells. A color change indicates a positive test.
Urine is also sometimes analyzed under a microscope to check for red and white blood cells.
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Is There Any Change In Urine Color During Pregnancy
Normally, the color of urine can be light yellow or yellow to transparent. But for a pregnant woman, this change is more prominent and noticeable. The urine color can change from light yellow to dark yellow. It can go to an orange-yellow shade too.
Urochrome, also called urobilin, is the component that renders urine its color. When the hemoglobin in our body breaks down from dead erythrocytes, urobilin is produced.
When our body is hydrated, and the urine is in a dilute form, the concentration of urobilin decreases, and the urine is lighter in shade. On the contrary, if there is a lack of water in your body and you are dehydrated, the concentration of urobilin increases, and the color of urine becomes dark yellow. There many more reasons for the change in urine color during pregnancy.
Pregnancy has a significant effect on the working of kidneys. Also, the intake of vitamins and routine medication that is taken during pregnancy along with the changes in diet affect the color of urine.
