Hmm.
This might be *TMI* but mine has always been a medium yellow. But I never gave it much thought until yesterday...
My mom has been scolding me about not going to the doctor, so two weeks ago, I finally acquiesced to getting my first annual physical check-up in... 5(?!) years. Frankly, I was not too excited for this because I eat horribly and I know it. Plus, I never go outside. Consequently, the last time I was at the doctor (half a decade ago), my lipids were through the roof and my vitamin D ... well, what Vitamin D?
So I fasted and then I went to get prodded and poked. They took my blood and urine. And gave me an electrocardiogram (Is this standard now?! Have I really been avoiding the whitecoats so long that EKG's are now part of check-ups?)
My heart seemed fine, since they whisked the readout away and never mentioned it to me again. (Dude, why do they always do this with medical results? It's my beats-per-minute ... or whatever the EKG measures ... Don't I deserve to know?)
But then, yesterday, my lab work came back...
And my blood urea nitrogen to creatine ratio was really elevated, several standard deviations above the normal range. UH-OH.
Of course, I immediately consulted my handy-dandy WebMD app. Yes, I know you're not supposed to do that and WebMD is like the leading cause of insomnia but I couldn't stop myself.
My boyfriend is convinced that WebMD sorts their results from most-to-least fatal. He might be right. Because the first thing the symptom checker found for me was "Kidney Failure."
AHHH!
You know what my immediate thought was, though?
IS IT BECAUSE MY PEE IS TOO YELLOW?! WAS COACH TAL RIGHT ALL THESE YEARS? AM I DYING?
It turns out, urine's color comes from "urochrome," or "urobilin," which is a product that results from the breakdown of heme. Structurally, urochrome is a tetrapyrrole, meaning it has four pyrrole rings. Heme is more familiar in the word hemoglobin," the oxygen-binding protein component of red blood cells. Of course, red blood cells get a lot of use and turns over pretty quickly. Did you know that RBC's, when matured, also do not have nuclei, like other mammalian cells? This is because years of evolution have streamlined it to have one function - a very important function - to carry hemoglobin so that it can deliver oxygen to all the other cells that require it. Red blood cells do not divide - they're made in bone marrow. And they live for about 150 days.
Kidneys are there to filter out waste products that occur in all the processes that keep you alive... like the production of new and destruction of old blood components. Which includes urochrome, or the waste product of hemoglobin.
And that's why pee is yellow.
I'm going to go back to the doctor to get this all straightened out, and will keep you all in the loop!
xoxo,
the closing belle
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BLOGTOBER: Blogging every other day in October!
