Urine is something that most people tend to ignore or hardly talk about it. However, changes in the urine colour can speak a lot about your health, providing clues about various clinical conditions you might be suffering from. Not only this, it may also reveal a lot about what have you eaten in your meals, if your body is deprived of nutrients or water. Here we shed light on some common causes of dark colored urine that you should be aware of.
Urinary tract infection
Normally urine is straw-colored (slightly yellow); but the colour changes when a person suffers from any health complications. One such causes of abnormal or cloudy (milky) urine is urinary tract infection. Caused by bacteria or yeast infection, it is more common in women than in men.
Jaundice
One of the common symptoms of jaundice is dark-yellow colored urine, caused due to build-up of bilirubin in the body. Normally, RBCs are converted to bilirubin which in turn is excreted though the urine as bile pigment. However, with abnormal levels of bilirubin in the blood the amount of bile in the urine increases, leading to dark colored urine.
Dehydration
Another common cause of dark urine is dehydration, which is mostly ignored by people. In this case, the urine is slightly dark-yellow in colour. It is mainly due to the fact that you don’t drink enough water leading to concentration of urine and thus turn deeper in color. The condition can be reversed by drinking lots of fluids, which slowly causes your urine to turn lighter.
Medications
If you are on certain medications like rifampin and warfarin, the chances of your urine to turn dark in colour is very high. Apart from these, vitamin supplements that are commonly used by many also change the urine colour. There is no need to worry, as the urine colur is mainly due to pigments present in the drugs.
Certain foods/food colours
Most people might have noticed that eating certain type of foods such as beet root, black berries or fava beans, changes the urine colour. This is due to the presence of natural food colouring agents like anthocyanins and curcumins in foods or artificial food colours. Though it does not happen to everyone consuming colored foods, it is perfectly fine and do not indicate any health problem.
Anemia
In some types of anemia (such as haemolytic anemia), red urine or dark colored urine with traces of blood is commonly seen. This is a serious health complication and hence, requires urgent medical attention.
Alkaptonuria
It is a rare hereditary disease caused due to accumulation of homegentisic acid in the body. In this condition, the body is unable to convert tyrosine, an amino acid into its final component due to lack of an enzyme. This causes accumulation of the homogentisic acid that turns your urine to dark-brown in colour.
Liver disorders
Dark colored urine is one of the key symptoms of a liver disorder. The common liver diseases that result in dark brown urine and not a clear one include acute viral hepatitis or cirrhosis and liver failure due to excess excretion of bilirubin in the urine.
Other medical conditions
Apart from liver complications, UTIs and anemia, people suffering from hypercalcemia and kidney disorders also have dark colored urine. In some cases, bacterial infections as well as kidney stones also cause urine to appear slightly darker in colour.
Porphyria
A rare blood-related disorder, prophyria is a hereditary condition caused due to defect in haemoglobin synthesis. It is majorly characterized by other symptoms such as severe abdominal pain, sensitivity to light and neurological problems such as nerve damage, seizures and mental disturbances.
Cancer
In some serious yet rare cases, dark coloured urine is also a key sign of various types of cancer. It is common in people with bladder, kidney, pancreas or prostate cancer. Also, melanoma, a type of skin cancer, causes abnormal colored urine. - .thehealthsite
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