Last night I was peeing and suddenly noticed that the toilet bowl had turned a nasty shade of red instead of the normal yellow colour. This is not a good thing, thought I, and I immediately began to wonder if pissing blood was serious on the level of 'rush to the hospital' or the level of 'call the doctor on Monday'. Then I noticed that the colour wasn't exactly that of blood, but in fact a little more like purple. Now pissing red is bad news, but pissing purpleish red? Then I recalled that I had eaten a really large amount of beets in the 24 hours prior to this and that beet juice is really quite notorious for staining absolutely anything.
To the internet!
It turns out that Google defaults 'beets red' to 'beets red urine', which in itself is quite a reassurance. It turns out that not only is this a relatively widespread thing but the websites Google suggested tell me that it is linked to iron deficiency. I can't tell you *why* iron deficient people are apparently susceptible to having their juices stained purple by beets but the internet claims it is true and we all know the internet is never wrong. We all know for sure though that self diagnosis of medical problems via 'some guy said some stuff on a forum comment' is a path to hypochondria so I am going to haul my butt to the doctor to find out if this iron deficiency as revealed by beet consumption has any merit.
I don't have pictures to show you as I didn't have the presence of mind to take them at the time. This is probably a relief for the great majority of you.
If you give blood you get a free iron test.
ReplyDeleteI had a similar experience but with sickly-sweet smelling pee. Initial Internet diagnosis: diabetes... What was it? Too much asparagus
ReplyDeleteSnuggles