What Is The Importance Of Urine Test To Detect Diseases?

Often times, doctors request for urine samples and that’s for a reason. The kidneys are organs in the body, which deal with excretion of waste from the body. When doctors ask for urine, chances are that they want to know the state of your body. The urine can reveal a lot when it comes to your health. This implies to the importance of urine test to detect diseases.

Importance Of Urine Test To Detect Diseases

Doctors test your urine through the process called urinalysis to diagnose and cure different health conditions such as infections, kidney problems and more.

Testing the urine is known as “urinalysis” (analysis of the urine). The most common use of urinalysis is to detect substances or cells in the urine that point to different disorders. Sometimes urine can help to detect illegal drug use and for women, it can be tested for pregnancy purposes.

In fact, doctors can tell a lot from the smell and looks of your urine. Sometimes the color of the urine is related to a certain disorder, for instance, dark urine could indicate you are dehydrated and reddish urine shows the presence of blood it in.

There are plenty of health issues a doctor can detect after doing urinalysis for instance; it could help to detect the presence of pus, bacteria, and diabetes. Some diseases that can be detected once urinalysis is done are harmful to your health and could lead to loss of life. For instance, the presence of a trace one type of protein shows signs of kidney diseases. When the quantities of proteins present in the urine are too high, it’s an indication that the kidney is damaged.

However, urinalysis might also detect nothing at all. Some factors could affect urinalysis, especially medicines and exercise. In such a scenario, a doctor will ask you to bring your urine samples another day.

To know your overall health, it is advised to get your urine tested periodically. In some cases, urinalysis could be used to monitor a certain health problem. For example, diabetic or people with chronic kidney disease will be required to have their urine tested periodically so that doctors can know the state of their health at different intervals.

The Process

According to Test Country, the first step of urinalysis starts by a doctor colleting a urine sample. A doctor might ask you to collect a urine sample immediately you wake up in the morning. This is because the morning urine is more concentrated and thus it is easy to detect any health abnormalities. To test for the presence of glucose in the urine, a doctor will request you to collect a urine sample after a meal.

The urine sample is then examined for color and clearness. When there is the presence of blood in the urine it will look reddish. In the case of a bacterial infection, the urine looks cloudy.

The doctor may also conduct a dipstick examination where a chemically treated strip is used. The strips are used to detect a variety of health problems apart from protein and glucose such as pregnancy in case a hormone that is detected when a woman is pregnant, illicit drug use. When the PH (a measure of the amount of acid in the urine) is high, you may be suffering from kidney stones urinary tract infections or other health problems that may affect the reproductive system.

In other complicated cases, urine samples may be examined under a microscope. The microscope will help to examine red blood cells which may indicate a sign of kidney problems that can make the kidneys not to perform its functions properly.

When blood is found in the urine, the doctor may want to examine more to detect any signs of infections, blood disorders, and bladder cancer.

The presence of white blood cells indicates an infection or inflammation in the bladder or kidneys.

The presence of bacteria in the urine indicates an infection in the body.

Final Words

It is worth noting that urinalysis may not detect all the abnormalities. However, it provides results that can give a clue about your general health. It may help a doctor to know what further tests to conduct. When the tests return a normal urinalysis that does not mean you are not suffering from any health problems. Sometimes protein may not be found but chances are that it might be released occasionally. In fact, when you take large amounts of water before taking urine samples, chances of getting any signs of abnormalities are low. I hope you now know the importance of urine to detect diseases.

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