12 Things Your Urine Says About Your Health (Test At Home)
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Urine has been used to assess health since Ancient Egypt (fun fact: because of Egyptian language having multiple sounds that get transliterated to “a” in English, the condition of passing blood in one’s urine was known as “Aaaaa” ← this word has three syllables; “Aa-a-aa”).
Modern techniques are more advanced than those of times past (for example, diabetes is no longer diagnosed by a urine taste-test), but basic urine inspection is still a very useful indicator of many things. Recognizing changes in urine can even help detect life-threatening conditions early:
Traffic lights?
How urine works: water that we consume is absorbed into the bloodstream and filtered by the kidneys. Urine is essentially blood with actual the blood cells filtered out and/or broken down. The yellow color comes from urochrome, produced during red blood cell breakdown. Here’s how things can happen a little differently:
- Fluorescent yellow: caused by excess vitamin B2 from supplements; harmless.
- Red urine: can indicate blood (bladder cancer, UTIs), hemoglobin, or myoglobin; seek medical attention.
- Dark brown/tea-colored urine: may result from muscle damage or blood cell destruction; requires evaluation.
- Orange urine: caused by dehydration, medications, or liver/bile duct issues (if paired with pale stools).
- Purple urine: UTI bacteria produce pigments that can cause this; treatable with antibiotics.
- Green urine: rare; caused by medications or dyes like methylene blue.
- Frothy/foamy urine: indicates high protein levels, often from kidney damage (e.g. per diabetes and/or hypertension).
- Crystal-clear urine: suggests overhydration, which can dangerously lower sodium levels.
- Dark yellow/amber urine: may mean dehydration; drink more water to maintain a light yellow color.
- Not peeing enough: may indicate severe dehydration or kidney failure; urgent medical attention needed.
- Peeing too much: often linked to diabetes or excessive water intake; can lead to dehydration or low sodium.
- Color-changing urine: port wine color signals porphyria; black urine indicates alkaptonuria (oxidation of homogentisic acid). Both are serious.
Bonus: if you eat a lot of beetroot and then your urine is pink/red/purple, that’s probably just the pigments passing through. If it persists though, then of course, see above.
For more on each of these, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Why You Don’t Need 8 Glasses Of Water Per Day
Take care!
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Rehab Science – by Dr. Tom Walters
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Many books of this kind deal with the injury but not the pain; some source talk about pain but not the injury; this one does both, and more.
Dr. Walters discusses in detail the nature of pain, various different kinds of pain, the factors that influence pain, and, of course, how to overcome pain.
He also takes us on a tour of various different categories of injury, because some require very different treatment than others, and while there are some catch-all “this is good/bad for healing” advices, sometimes what will help with one injury with hinder healing another. So, this information alone would make the book a worthwhile read already.
After this two-part theory-heavy introduction, the largest part of the book is given over to rehab itself, in a practical fashion.
We learn about how to make an appropriate rehab plan, get the material things we need for it (if indeed we need material things), and specific protocols to follow for various different body parts and injuries.
The style is very much that of a textbook, well-formatted and with plenty of illustrations throughout (color is sometimes relevant, so we recommend a print edition over Kindle for this one).
Bottom line: if you have an injury to heal, or even just believe in being prepared, this book is an excellent guide.
Click here to check out Rehab Science, to overcome pain and heal from injury!
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No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness
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What’s on your mind, really?
We hear a lot about “the evidence-based benefits of mindfulness”, but what actually are they? And what is the evidence? And, perhaps most importantly: how do we do it?
What are the benefits?
The benefits of mindfulness are many, and include:
- reducing stress
- reducing pain
- improving quality of life
- reducing fatigue
- providing relief from digestive disorders
- reducing symptoms of sleep disorders
- improving immune response
- providing support for caregivers
The evidence is also abundant, and includes:
- Effects of mindfulness exercises as stand-alone intervention on symptoms of anxiety and depression: Systematic review and meta-analysis
- Fusing character strengths and mindfulness interventions: Benefits for satisfaction and performance
- Evidence for the Role of Mindfulness in Cancer: Benefits and Techniques
- Effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction on anxiety symptoms: A systematic review and meta-analysis
- The benefits of meditation and mindfulness practices during times of crisis such as COVID-19
Sounds great… What actually is it, though?
Mindfulness is the state of being attentive to one’s mind. This is at its heart a meditative practice, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be sitting in the lotus position with candles—mindfulness can be built into any daily activity, or even no activity at all.
An exercise you can try right now:
Take a moment to notice everything you can hear. For this writer, that includes:
- The noise of my keystrokes as I type
- The ticking of the clock on the wall
- The gentle humming of my computer’s processor
- The higher-pitched noise of my computer’s monitor
- Birdsong outside
- Traffic further away
- My own breathing
- The sound of my eyelids as I blink
Whatever it is for you, notice how much you can notice that you had previously taken for granted.
You can repeat this exercise with other senses, by the way! For example:
- Notice five things you can see in your immediate environment that you’ve never noticed before. If you’re at home reading this, you probably think you’re very familiar with everything around you, but now see that mark on the wall you’d never noticed before, or a quirk of some electrical wiring, or the stitching on some furnishing, for example.
- Notice the textures of your clothes, or your face, or perhaps an object you’ve never paid attention to touching before. Your fingertips, unless you have some special reason this doesn’t apply to you, are far more sensitive than you probably give them credit for, and can notice the tiniest differentiation in textures, so take a moment to do that now.
- Mindful eating can be an especially healthful practice because it requires that we pay every attention to what we’re putting in our mouth, tasting, chewing, swallowing. No more thoughtlessly downing a box of cookies; every bite is now an experience. On the one hand, you’ll probably eat less at a sitting. On the other hand, what a sensory experience! It really reminds one that life is for living, not just for zipping through at a speed-run pace!
What about mindfulness as a meditative practice?
Well, those are meditative practices! But yes, mindfulness goes for more formal meditation too. For example:
Sit comfortably, with good posture, whatever that means to you. No need to get too caught up in the physical mechanics here—it’d take a whole article. For now, if you’re sitting and comfortable, that’s enough.
Notice your breathing. No need to try to control it—that’s not what this is about today. Just notice it. The in, the out, whether you breathe to your chest or abdomen, through your nose or mouth, don’t worry about doing it “right”, just notice what you are doing. Observe without judgement.
Notice your thoughts—no need to try to stop them. Notice noticing your thoughts, and again, observe without judgement. Notice your feelings; are you angry, hopeful, stressed, serene? There are no wrong answers here, and there’s nothing you should try to “correct”. Just observe. No judgement, only observe. Watch your thoughts, and watch your thoughts go.
Did you forget about your breathing while watching your thoughts? Don’t worry about that either if so, just notice that it happened. If you have any feelings about that, notice them too, and carry on observing.
We go through so much of our lives in “autopilot”, that it can be an amazing experience to sometimes just “be”—and be aware of being.
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Cannabis & Heart Attacks
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For many, cannabis use has taken the place that alcohol used to have when it comes to wanting a “downer”, that is to say, a drug that relaxes us as opposed to stimulating us.
Indeed, it is generally considered safer than alcohol ← however this is not a strong claim, because alcohol is much more dangerous than one would think given its ubiquity and (in many places, at least) social acceptability.
We’ve talked a bit about cannabis use before, in its various forms, for example:
Cannabis Myths vs Reality ← a very good starting point for the curious
And one specifically about the use of THC gummies (THC is the psychoactive compound in cannabis, i.e. it’s the chemical that gets people high, as opposed to CBD, which is not psychoactive) as a sleep aid:
Sweet Dreams Are Made of THC (Or Are They?)
And for those skipping the THC, we’ve also written about CBD use, including:
CBD Oil: What Does The Science Say? and Do CBD Gummies Work?
So, about cannabis and heart attacks
Alcohol is a relaxant, and yet it can contribute to heart disease (amongst many other things, of course):
Can We Drink To Good Health? ← this is mostly about red wine’s putative heart health benefits, how the idea got popularized, and how it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny when actually looking at the evidence.
And cannabis, another relaxant? Not so good either!
New research has shown that cannabis users have a higher risk of heart attacks, even among younger and otherwise healthy individuals. This is based on analyzing data from 4,636,628 relatively healthy adults.
Specifically, the data showed that even young healthy cannabis users get:
- Sixfold increased risk of heart attack
- Fourfold increased risk of ischemic stroke
- Threefold increased risk of cardiovascular death, heart attack, or stroke
We mention the otherwise “relatively healthy” nature of the participants, because it’s important to note that less healthy people (who were perhaps using cannabis to self-medicate for some serious condition) were not included in the dataset, as it’d skew the data unhelpfully and it’d make the risk look a lot higher than the risk levels we mentioned above.
The mechanisms by which cannabis affects heart health are not fully understood, but hypotheses include:
- Disrupting heart rhythm regulation
- Increasing oxygen demand in the heart muscle
- Causing endothelial dysfunction, which affects blood vessel function
Further, heart attack risk peaked one hour after cannabis use, and while this doesn’t prove causality, it certainly doesn’t make cannabis look safe.
You can read the paper in its entirety here:
Want a safer way to relax?
We recommend:
- No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness
- Meditation Games That You’ll Actually Enjoy
- Which Style Of Yoga Is Best For You?
- 7 Kinds Of Rest When Sleep Is Not Enough
- Better Sex = Longer Life (Here’s How)
Enjoy!
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Ageless – by Dr. Andrew Steele
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
So, yet another book with “The new science of…” in the title; does this one deliver new science?
Actually, yes, this time! The author was originally a physicist before deciding that aging was the number one problem that needed solving, and switched tracks to computational biology, and pioneered a lot of research, some of the fruits of which can be found in this book, in amongst a more general history of the (very young!) field of biogerontology.
Downside: most of this is not very practical for the lay reader; most of it is explanations of how things happen on a cellular and/or genetic level, and how we learned that. A lot also pertains to what we can learn from animals that either age very slowly, or are biologically immortal (in other words, they can still be killed, but they don’t age and won’t die of anything age-related), or are immune to cancer—and how we might borrow those genes for gene therapy.
However, there are also chapters on such things as “running repairs”, “reprogramming aging”, and “how to live long enough to live even longer”.
The style is conversational pop science; in the prose, he simply states things without reference, but at the back, there are 40 pages of bibliography, indexed in the order in which they occurred and prefaced with the statement that he’s referencing in each case. It’s an odd way to do citations, but it works comfortably enough.
Bottom line: if you’d like to understand aging on the cellular level, and how we know what we know and what the likely future possibilities are, then this is a great book; it’s also simply very enjoyable to read, assuming you have an interest in the topic (as this reviewer does).
Click here to check out Ageless, and understand the science of getting older without getting old!
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The 5 Training Rules To Build Your Metabolism (Not Just Lose Weight)
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Cori Lefkowitz of “Strong At Every Age” shows us how:
Strong body, strong metabolism
Diet is an important factor in whether you lose weight, but strength training determines what you lose—fat versus muscle—and that distinction shapes how lean you actually look.
A mistake that many people make: heavy cardio plus calorie restriction makes your body more efficient (yay) by shedding metabolically expensive muscle (oh no), slowing your metabolism, and stalling fat loss over time, and/or increasing it as soon as you eat more food than is required to survive (at which point, we’re rescinding the “yay”).
In contrast, resistance training preserves and builds muscle, thus supports hormones and insulin sensitivity, raises resting metabolic rate, and pushes your body to burn fat instead of muscle during a deficit. So that’s what we’ll be doing instead.
Five tips to do it right:
- Prioritize compound lifts: base workouts around big movements like squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, lunges, and pull-ups to maximize muscle recruitment and long-term metabolic impact.
- Train the system, not body parts: use full-body or functional splits instead of traditional body-part days to train muscles more frequently, and thus create stronger metabolic signals with less gym time.
- Increase training density: use supersets, circuits, and paired exercises to do more meaningful work per minute—but still without turning strength training into pure cardio!
- Chase stimulus, not just load: muscle growth comes from mechanical tension, metabolic stress, and muscle damage (the body will not adapt if it’s not given a reason to adapt; it’s efficient like that, so we need to give it a compelling reason to adapt, and that compelling reason is (small, manageable!) damage to muscle fibers), so make sure to vary tools, tempos, ranges of motion, and positions, instead of only adding weight.
- Use activation in your warm-up: short activation drills before lifting improve muscle recruitment, stability, and hypertrophy potential, making each workout more effective.
Some myths to not fall for
- “Lifting makes you bulky”: true muscle gain requires years of structured training and sufficient calories; most “bulk” fears are bloat, inflammation, or fat masking muscle.
- “Soreness equals success”: soreness reflects novelty, not effectiveness; consistent, repeatable stimulus drives real progress.
- “The numbers on the scale don’t lie”: fat loss is a body composition change, so measurements, photos, strength gains, and how clothes fit matter more than scale weight.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Burn! How To Boost Your Metabolism
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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Life Extension Multivitamins vs Centrum Multivitamins – Which is Healthier
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Our Verdict
When comparing Life Extension Multivitamins to Centrum Multivitamins, we picked the Life Extension.
Why?
The clue here was on the label: “two per day”. It’s not so that they can sell extra filler! It’s because they couldn’t fit it all into one.
While the Centrum Multivitamins is a (respectably) run-of-the-mill multivitamin (and multimineral) containing reasonable quantities of most vitamins and minerals that people supplement, the Life Extension product has the same plus more:
- More of the vitamins and minerals; i.e. more of them are hitting 100%+ of the RDA
- More beneficial supplements, including:
- Inositol, Alpha lipoic acid, Bio-Quercetin phytosome, phosphatidylcholine complex, Marigold extract, Apigenin, Lycopene, and more that we won’t list here because it starts to get complicated if we do.
We’ll have to write some main features on some of those that we haven’t written about before, but suffice it to say, they’re all good things.
Main take-away for today: sometimes more is better; it just necessitates then reading the label to check.
Want to get some Life Extension Multivitamins (and/or perhaps just read the label on the back)? Here they are on Amazon
PS: it bears mentioning, since we are sometimes running brands against each other head-to-head in this section: nothing you see here is an advertisement/sponsor unless it’s clearly marked as such. We haven’t, for example, been paid by Life Extension or any agent of theirs, to write the above. It’s just our own research and conclusion.
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