Why Is My Pee Suddenly Red?
Am I gonna die?
Red urine strikes!
Have you looked down and noticed that your urine was red? Ack! What a startling thing to see! But wait — think back….. Did you eat beets recently? Ahhhhhhhh. That can do it.
You’re more or less OK.
A consistently red color in the urine is something to be watchful of, unless you eat beets frequently. For that, go to your doctor. This article addresses sporadic red urine that happens after eating beets: the condition is called beeturia.
But what does it mean when you see the red urine only after indulging in the crimson tuber? It does not happen automatically, and only in fourteen percent of the population.
It is actually a test your urine has given you. One of the test questions is raises:
Are you are deficient in iron?
If you have sporadic red urine: it may be Beeturia. What is Beeturia?
Medical conditions
Beeturia may at times occur because of pernicious anemia, which is a chronic condition caused by gastric atrophy which leads to deficient intrinsic factors to process B 12.
On the other hand, beeturia may be genetic, as the capability to metabolize the betalaine, or betaine, the red pigment, is a recessive gene, and with two recessive genes, a person would inevitably pee red each time he or she ate beets.
If it happens every time, even if you make a concerted effort to ingest enough iron, it may be because you have one of these conditions.
It might not be iron deficiency, because eating beets while eating a lot of other oxalic acid containing foods such as spinach, rhubarb, or chocolate has been said to cause sporadic red urine as well.
However, the majority of the time, if you are surprised by red urine, the beeturia is a convenient hint that you simply should be getting more iron. Notice if you have had heart palpitations recently. Look in the mirror and pull down your lower eyelid. If it is very pale, you may be low on iron. Your gums may also be pale if you’re anemic.
Get your iron
Try eating more foods that contain iron, or take supplements, and then eat beets again for another test. Vegetable soup, heavy on the beets, is a hearty, enlivening food. The soup comes out a vivacious color, and you can keep it around for days in the refrigerator. Eat a bit each day to test your iron level, as the beets themselves will raise it if your digestion is working well enough.
Once you urinate a normal color after eating the beets, you can feel proud that you discovered what may have been making you tired for awhile, and now you are regaining more nutritional balance with more iron. It’s a good feeling.
Iron deficiency can lead to anemia, headaches, feeling weak or passing out, pale skin, lips, and fingernails. Children in school with iron deficiency score lower on math tests than those with enough iron. (Pediatrics, 6/01) Iron carries oxygen to the cells, forms collagen, aids the immune system, and more.
Excellent sources of iron are nettles, burdock root, raisins, apples, molasses, pumpkin seeds, and yellow dock. Animal protein foods, including fish and eggs, contain the heme form of iron, which is more easily absorbed than plant sources, which are non heme. Eating plant sources with vitamin C or animal protein will help bring out the iron in them, as it is beneficial to get a variety of sources.
Taking an iron supplement would make a good absorption tool as well. Iron absorption can be inhibited by eating foods with oxalic acid, but primarily, only if they are uncooked, and they are generally foods that are not eaten raw. Cooking acidic foods in cast iron pots can increase the iron in your food as much as thirty times.
The other test question is:
How is your digestion?
If eating more iron-containing foods or supplements doesn’t stop the red urine after eating beets, you could improve your body’s ability to break down the iron. And that in turn will help you break down the beet substances, leaving yellow urine flowing once again next time you do the beet test.
Do you have poor stomach acid? Do you gain weight and feel tired and bloated?
Take probiotics, eat raw fermented foods, drink kefir.
Drink a little apple cider vinegar with meals.
Relax when you’re eating, and avoid too much of the blue light from a screen, as that’s not good for digestion.
Eat beets
Beets have more minerals than just iron; they also contain calcium, magnesium, potassium. They are high in the vitamins C, thiamin, folic acid, riboflavin, beta-carotene, A, and K. The betaine detoxifies the liver and thins the bile. Eating beets encourages the production of more antioxidant enzymes, more immune cells, and it lowers cholesterol. Beets have also proven to inhibit stomach cancer caused by nitrates, which people consume in many processes foods.
The color makes beets fun to cook with, though be careful, as betaine does make them stain. Steamed beets are good with flax oil and lemon. They go quite well in stir fries. If you are working hard to bring your iron levels up, don’t eat beets raw.
Because of their oxalic acid content, beets should be avoided by people with kidney or gallbladder problems. Oxalic acid containing foods have the unfortunate drawback of interfering with calcium metabolism, so if you are eating something high in calcium, eat the beets at a different meal. However, it doesn’t interfere with absorption from dairy. This is a good fact to know, as many people eat raw spinach, which is high in oxalic acid, thinking they are getting a healthy dose of calcium. People with Inflammatory Bowel Disease should avoid oxalic acid because they are more likely to end up with kidney stones from it.
So, unless you have kidney or gallstones, or need to focus heavily on calcium absorption, eating beets from time to time cleanses and heals. And it is also a relatively good test for iron deficiency because of the phenomenon of beeturia. Handy.