Urine

When you ingest substances, you have to have someway of removing the digested breakdown products from your system, preventing them from building up and becoming harmful. Your body has 2 main ways of doing this, these being defecation and urination. Urine is produced in the kidneys, which are 2 organs located inside your rib cage, either side of your spine (the long set of bones up the centre of your back) which in essence filter your blood. Urine is vital in helping us to remove waste products from the blood such as urea, which is formed when protein is broken down in the muscle and liver. This urea is yellow and gives urine its characteristic colour. As well as removing urea, the urine is also able to remove any other water soluble breakdown products such as drugs, alcohol and other harmful substances. Sometimes, your doctor may wish to take a sample of your urine to test for various conditions which can alter the composition of your urine. In the case of diabetes, as there is too much glucose in the blood, your body begins to excrete it in the urine which should not normally happen. By testing your urine for glucose the doctor can tell if you have diabetes or not. In the same way they can test for diabetes, they can also test for a number of other conditions which are easily treatable.