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All humans urinate, but how often do we actually pay attention to our peeing patterns? The way your urine looks, smells and even feels can also say a lot about your body’s state of health.
Most people know that urine is warm, but urologists say there is a fine line between the temperature of your urine and other sensations like burning. Where the one may be no cause for concern, the other can be indicative of serious physical problems. We took a closer look at the difference.
Warm urine
Urine should be warm and you can blame your core temperature for that. Dr Ferdi Marais, an urologist from Cape Town, says that because urine is stored in the bladder, it is in equilibrium with the body temperature at approximately 37°C.
Other external factors can also naturally make your urine warmer. Intense exercise, for example, will likely warm up your body and your insides and consequently also your urine, according to Prof Keith Baar, associate professor of exercise biology at the University of California at Davis.
A burning sensation
“Warm urine is the way the urine feels once it has felt the body, while burning urine is the unpleasant 'hot' sensation a patient feels in the urethra when passing urine,” Dr Marais says.
If a person experiences an unpleasant burning, tingling or painful sensation of the perineum or urethra during or just after urinating, it is called dysuria. Dysuria should not be ignored under any circumstance because it may be a symptom of more serious diseases.
Dysuria can be caused by infectious STDs such as chlamydia and gonorrhoea or other non-infectious conditions like diabetes, but it is most commonly caused by bacterial infection of the urinary tract.
A urinary tract infection is an infection involving part or all of the urinary tract. The symptoms, course and severity of the infection will depend on the interaction between the bacteria and a person's immune system.
Although the incidence of urinary tract infections (UTIs) in South Africa is not known, UTIs are much more common in women. According to a Health24 article, 25–30% of women between the age of 20 and 40 years are likely to have had urinary tract infections
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