Essential information about urine and how it's made.
What is Urine?
At its most basic definition, urine is a liquid or water waste product that passes through your urinary tract and is expelled from your body through your urethra. For a male, the urine exits the urethra at the tip of the penis, and for a woman, the urine exits the urethra opening located south of the clitoris and north of the vagina. Many people already know this, so let’s delve a little deeper to discuss exactly what is urine, how urine is made, what purpose it serves, and other facts about urine.
What Purpose Does Urine Serve?
Now, urine production serves a greater purpose than just dumping excess water from you body. This is how you dump chemicals, dead blood cells and more from your body. Urine is actually composed of many components with water mainly being the vehicle to carry the waste out of your body.
What is Urine Made of? What is the composition of urine?
Urine is mostly water (about 95% water), however, the rest of the contents of urine can vary depending of what you've eaten, drank, breathed or been exposed to. The remainder of urine usually consists of urea, uric acid, ammonia, hormones, dead blood cells, proteins, salts and minerals, and toxins.
How is Urine Made?
Urine is created by your kidneys. There, for anyone who didn't know before, now you know one of the things your kidneys do. So, how is the urine formed? Your kidneys process waste from your blood. Essentially, the blood is filtered through the kidney where wastes and water, minerals, salts, sugars, etc are removed. Some of the sugars and such are reabsorbed back into your blood. What’s left in the kidney after filtration of the blood; the toxins, salts, urea, ammonia, excess water, etc becomes urine.
The Urinary Tract
Now, while the kidneys create the urine, there are many more parts of the urinary tract involved in the process of creating and expelling urine. The four main components of the urinary tract are 1)Your kidneys, 2) the ureters, 3) the bladder and 4) the urethra.
How Does Urine Pass Through the Body?
So, as we’ve already discussed, the Kidney creates the urine. The urine then passes from the kidneys to the urinary bladder by way of the two ureters. The ureters are basically muscular tubes which pass the urine to the bladder, and the primary function of the ureters. The urine then collects in your bladder until… you feel the urge. As you urinate, the urine then leaves the bladder and expels from your body through your urethra. As we stated earlier, the urethra opening to expel the urine is located in different places for men and women. For men, the urethra opens at the tip of the penis. For women, the urethra opens between the clitoris and the vagina. As the urine leaves your body, it interacts with the air and can release odors and even become bubbly depending on what is contained in your urine.
Is Urine Sterile?
Ok, the short answer is yes, urine is sterile. Now, wait. Before you go pour yourself a nice big bubbly glass or urine, you should be aware of the risks. Just because urine is technically sterile, doesn’t mean it’s advisable to drink it. Urine can be toxic. Keep in mind, when creating urine, your body is trying to get rid of chemicals that are not usable by your body and can sometimes be harmful. Generally, a healthy individual would survive the experience of drinking urine, but … do you really want to? Some people insist that urine has some cleansing properties, but when the urine irritates your eyes and even your skin, we have to wonder if it’s just hype. To be safe, we recommend you only drink urine in case of an emergency.