What Happens When Your Urine Smells Like Ammonia?

Regular waste elimination is a very important aspect to one’s health. This waste can be eliminated from the body by means of passing out stool, urine or even sweat. Of these 3 ways of elimination, urine play the most vital role.

Your pee can reveal important information about your body’s waste elimination process, it not only detoxifies your body off the wastes, harmful and unwanted substances but also directly reflects your overall health status.

What Happens When Your Urine Smells Like Ammonia?One of the most commonly reported problems is that when your urine smells like ammonia.

If your pee starts to smell very pungent and foul, that’s typically the ‘ammonia smell’. 

What causes our pee to smell like ammonia?

First, if you eat a lot of protein rich foods, it would probably lead to this situation. It is due to the nitrogen content in these protein rich foods leading to a pungent smelling urine.

Diabetic patients. If your urine smells pungent, ammonia like and at the same time you have lately observed feelings of dizziness, light-headedness and strong cravings for sweets; then it’s time for you to get yourself tested for diabetes. It is not the only but one of the very common reasons for the strong nail polish remover like smell in urine. 

Liver Disorder. In the human body, liver is responsible of breaking down ammonia. When there is a disorder in this organ, ammonia breakdown is stopped and this ammonia gets released into the urine, resulting to a pungent smell.

Menopause and pregnancy: Menopause and pregnancy both are associated with high levels of hormonal changes in a female’s body. In both the conditions urine may become rich in ammonia content and smell foul. During pregnancy the different medicines taken may also lead to pungent smelling urine.

What Happens When Your Urine Smells Like Ammonia?

Holding urine for too long. 

When you do not pee as soon as the urge is felt and then hold urine for long, urine becomes concentrated with waste products. This also increases the ammonia and nitrogen contents in it, hence the smell.

So folks, once you noticed and immediately act upon the strange smell in your urine, you may identify the underlying disease just in time when it can still be controlled.

 

 

Image Credits: insidetheclinic, gizmodo, healthtap, buzzle