Measuring Sugar In Urine: Know About Test Procedure And Result
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A urine sugar test is a simple and rapid method of checking for unusually high glucose levels in a persons urine. The body needs glucose and makes use of it for energy. The body converts the carbs a person consumes into sugar. Consuming an excess of sugar by a person may indicate a health issue. If a person fails to receive suitable treatment and his or her sugar levels remain high, he or she can develop severe complications. In the urine sugar test, a sample of urine is taken.
Once the sample is provided, a small cardboard device called a dipstick will be used for measuring the sugar levels. The dipstick changes the color based upon the amount of sugar in a persons urine. If a moderate or high quantity of sugar is present in the urine, the concerned healthcare provider would carry out added testing for determining the basic reason for this.
A diabetic person must always have a urine test if they observe blood in their urine, or to measure high blood glucose, diabetic ketoacidosis, or any underlying urinary tract infection. This test is completely non-invasive. Individuals frequently use this test at home. But doctors might use a urine test if they a vein cant be accessed for a blood test, or if an individual suffers from anxiety or has a fear of needles. The outcomes might be less precise as compared to those of a blood test, but urine tests still play a key role. This article explains the urine tests for diabetics and how to understand the results.
Cause #: Too Little Protein
Why do people eat more sugar than is good for them?One reason is that they dont eat enough meat, fish, or eggs. Your brain needs a strict amount of protein. If you dont get the right amount, you will continue being hungry.
When theres little protein in your diet, you stay hungry and keep on eating.In most cases, thats unhealthy . If you usually eat lots of carbs and sugar, then, unfortunately, thats what youll continue to do.There are some proteins in the average carb or sugar-rich product. But not many.
This makes it so easy to overeat sugars if youre hungry. Your body doesnt care much about the sugars themselves its merely trying to ingest more protein.Conversely, you can prevent this by providing your body with enough protein. This quickly solves the problem. The best way to do it is described in this article.
How Glucose Gets Into Urine
It’s normal for there to be glucose in your blood which can also end up in your urine. Small organs called kidneys are responsible for filtering blood and removing waste. The cleaned blood is transferred back to the body. The leftover waste goes to the bladder, which collects urine, and is released when you pee.
Most healthy people won’t have much, if any, glucose in their urine. The normal range for glucose in urine is 0 to 0.8 mmol/l .
While most of the sugar is reabsorbed by the kidneys and put back into the bloodstream, some sugar may remain. This sugar travels with the rest of the fluid to the bladder, leaving the body with your urine.
Glycosuria can occur if the kidneys don’t remove enough sugar before it leaves your body as urine. When the amount of sugar in urine is greater than 25 mg/dL, it is considered glycosuria.
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Early Signs And Symptoms Of Diabetes
1. Frequent urination
When your blood sugar is high, your kidneys expel the excess blood sugar, causing you to urinate more frequently. One of the early warning signs of diabetes is frequent urination that is urgent enough to wake you up to go to the bathroom during sleep.
2. Increased thirst
While your kidneys are working overtime and youre urinating more frequently, valuable fluids will be pulled from your tissues. Frequent urination will make you feel constantly thirsty.
3. Fatigue
When your blood sugar is high, your body works hard to get rid of the excess sugar. Not only does this process take a toll on your body, but it also alters the way that your body uses glucose for energy. Excessively high blood sugar, or hyperglycemia, has fatiguing effects among other symptoms. Additionally, the dehydration that accompanies more frequent urination is a common cause of fatigue in diabetics.
4. Blurred vision
High blood sugar can cause damage to the small blood vessels of the eye, resulting in a swollen lens that can cause blurred vision. As blood sugar levels rise and lower, your vision may return to normal or worsen, respectively.
5. Increased hunger
When you have high blood sugar, your body is actively looking to get rid of it. Because your body expels so much of the glucose you’re getting from your food, you may have increased feelings of hunger.
6. Unexplained weight loss
7. Slow healing cuts and wounds
8. Tingling or numbness in the hands or feet
9. Skin discoloration
Choose Fruits Over Desserts
Most desserts like ice-cream, cake, or cookies are filled with crazy amounts of sugar. It causes a blood spike, one reason you feel tired, hungry, and craving more sugar. Choose healthier alternatives like easy to pack apples and mandarin oranges.
Fruits not only bring down your sugar cravings but also increase the fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants in your diet. Berries such as raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, pears, and plums are the lowest in natural sugar.
But if you are craving a sweet dessert, you can binge on a few chunks of dark chocolate. It has high cocoa content that makes it relatively less sugary yet tasty. You can also enhance foods with spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, or lemongrass instead of sugar.
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Dr Chris Reveals How ‘healthy’ Urine Should Look Like
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If youve been unlucky enough to have a urinary tract infection then you dont need to stress out, youre not alone! Urology Health recently reported that around 60 percent of women and 12 percent of men will have at least one UTI during their lifetime.
Cause #: You Eat Too Many Fast Sugars
Think of products such as:
- Sugar-rich low fat dairy products
All these foods cause your blood sugar to rise quickly. If you have diabetes, your body is unable to make enough insulin to absorb all that glucose.
The result is the glucose remains in your bloodstream and eventually gets excreted. But, in the meantime, it has already caused a lot of damage to your body. And it might, therefore, be too late to repair it.
You do not want to eat too much of these products
It is possible that the types of sugar you eat are absorbed more slowly than so-called fast sugars nevertheless, they are still extremely harmful to your body. Think of products such as:
- Sugar-rich fruits
Eating bananas all day will have some very unpleasant consequences on your blood sugar levels. And I havent even started on the pasta and bread, which are even worse.
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Increase Your Protein & Fat Intake
Eat right for your breakfast it has a significant influence on the rest of your day. Having protein in your meals gives you lasting energy and reduces your cravings for sugary food. Eggs, peanut butter, beans, legumes, protein smoothies, fatty fish, and nuts are all high in protein.
An increase in healthy fat intake also helps in sugar detox. Healthy fats include avocado, unsweetened coconut products, grass-fed butter or ghee , nuts, and seeds. Aim for 1-2 tablespoons of healthy fat with each meal.
What Is The Prognosis For Glycosuria
Your outlook with glycosuria depends on what may be causing it. If there are no other conditions present, symptoms or complications will be rare.
If a condition is causing high levels of glucose in your urine, you will need to be monitored by your healthcare provider. Your doctor will create a treatment plan that works best for your needs. Getting treated as soon as possible may help reduce the chance of complications if your condition progresses.
Keep in mind that some conditions can trigger serious complications. For example, conditions associated with high blood sugar levels can lead to complications like:
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Youre Getting Yeast Infections More Often Than Usual
Hyperglycemia may lead you to get more frequent genital yeast infections. The culprit is often a type of yeast known as Candida albicans, per the ADA. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in females the symptoms can include: vaginal itching, redness or soreness pain during sexual intercourse pain or discomfort during urination and thick, abnormal vaginal discharge. While yeast infections are common in people who dont have diabetes, having more glucose in your blood puts you at higher risk of getting them. The yeast feeds off the glucose, and if your blood sugar is high theres more glucose in the urinary tract, explains Bandukwala. Uncircumcised men with hyperglycemia are also at risk, he says.
Were also seeing this happen a little more now with patients who take SGLT-2 inhibitors, which force the body to expel more glucose through the urine, the endocrinologist adds. The FDA has added a warning to the prescribing information for SGLT-2 inhibitors about a far more rare and potentially fatal genital condition, known as necrotizing fasciitis of the perineum, or Fourniers gangrene .
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What Is Urine Glucose Test
This is a test that is performed to measure the sugar quotient of a urine sample. The presence of sugar in the urine is referred to as glucosuria. Usually, urine has a negligible amount of glucose but if your blood has excess sugar in it, then your body will get rid of the extra amount through urine. To undergo a sugar in urine test, you have to provide your urine sample to your healthcare expert who will test it immediately. The expert uses a dipstick that changes its color when tested in the urine to show the sugar levels of your urine sample. Your healthcare expert may also give you some instructions which you must abide by to get accurate results.
You must prepare yourself before undergoing the test as consumption of certain medicines can affect the results. Talk to your doctor before undergoing the preparation of the test. Once your test is done, your results are studied as per the urine glucose levels chart to conclude. In the past, this test was done to know if glucose in the urine is in the normal range or elevated to diagnose diabetes. However, currently, a blood sugar test is done for the same. If your results lay between 0-15 mg/dl then the glucose content in urine is normal. If you get abnormal results it may signify you have diabetes, renal glycosuria, or you may be pregnant. Fortunately, there are no risks or discomfort associated with the procedure of undergoing this test.
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Causes Of High Glucose Levels In Urine
High glucose levels in urine can be caused by medical conditions, a genetic mutation, certain medications, and pregnancy.
Keep in mind that some people with high sugar levels in their urine dont show any symptoms. Even when caused by medical conditions, high sugar levels in the urine may go undiagnosed until the underlying condition progresses or is found during normal screening.
Is Hyperglycaemia Serious
The aim of diabetes treatment is to keep blood sugar levels as near to normal as possible. But if you have diabetes, no matter how careful you are, you’re likely to experience hyperglycaemia at some point.
It’s important to be able to recognise and treat hyperglycaemia, as it can lead to serious health problems if left untreated.
Occasional mild episodes aren’t usually a cause for concern and can be treated quite easily or may return to normal on their own. However, hyperglycaemia can be potentially dangerous if blood sugar levels become very high or stay high for long periods.
Very high blood sugar levels can cause life-threatening complications, such as:
- diabetic ketoacidosis a condition caused by the body needing to break down fat as a source of energy, which can lead to a diabetic coma this tends to affect people with type 1 diabetes
- hyperosmolar hyperglycaemic state severe dehydration caused by the body trying to get rid of excess sugar this tends to affect people with type 2 diabetes
Regularly having high blood sugar levels for long periods of time can result in permanent damage to parts of the body such as the eyes, nerves, kidneys and blood vessels.
If you experience hyperglycaemia regularly, speak to your doctor or diabetes care team. You may need to change your treatment or lifestyle to keep your blood sugar levels within a healthy range.
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What If It Goes Untreated
Hyperglycemia can be a serious problem if you dont treat it, so its important to treat as soon as you detect it. If you fail to treat hyperglycemia, a condition called ketoacidosis could occur. Ketoacidosis develops when your body doesnt have enough insulin. Without insulin, your body cant use glucose for fuel, so your body breaks down fats to use for energy.
When your body breaks down fats, waste products called ketones are produced. Your body cannot tolerate large amounts of ketones and will try to get rid of them through the urine. Unfortunately, the body cannot release all the ketones and they build up in your blood, which can lead to ketoacidosis.
Ketoacidosis is life-threatening and needs immediate treatment. Symptoms include:
- Shortness of breath
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Measuring Sugar In Your Urine Yourself
You can also measure the blood sugar levels in your urine on your own. Having sugar in your urine is usually a sign of very high blood sugar levels. The extra sugar in the bloodstream is usually only removed via the kidneys at blood sugar concentrations of about 10 mmol/l and above. In order to measure the amount of sugar in your urine, you need a urine test strip and a container for collecting urine.
Its important to talk with your doctor about the best time of day to do the urine test, and whether to do it before or after eating. When measuring sugar in your urine yourself, you need a sample of urine that hasnt been in your bladder for long. So you wouldnt use morning urine which has collected overnight. Instead, its more typical to urinate and collect a sample about an hour after the last time you went to the toilet. The test strip is then dipped into the sample. After about two minutes, the color pads on the test strip show the results.
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Cause #: You Eat The Wrong Carbohydrate Sources
Earlier, I mentioned the fast sugars you get in things like cookies and sweets, and the slightly slower sugars in bread, pasta, etc.
Unfortunately, the crooked food industry has found several ways to transform foods from the second category into those in the first.
Through these processes, they can turn relatively slow sugars into quick sugars without you noticing. This works in their favor because:
- You will eat more of it
- The product has a longer shelf life
- It becomes cheaper to produce
The most important example is white bread.
The flour they use to make white bread is milled and filtered until there is hardly any fiber left. And fiber helps to slow down the absorption of sugars in a significant and effective way. This is the case with wholewheat bread.
Beware
Thus, white bread causes a much faster increase in your blood sugar level, which can cause dangerously high values. And if your blood sugar level is too high, a test is highly likely to show sugar in the urine.
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What Is The A1c Test
The A1C test is a simple blood test that measures your average blood sugar levels over the past 2 or 3 months. The test is done at a lab or your doctors office in addition tonot instead ofregular blood sugar testing you do yourself.
A1C testing is part of the ABCs of diabetesimportant steps you can take to prevent or delay health complications down the road:
- A: Get a regular A1C test.
- B: Try to keep your blood pressure below 140/90 mm Hg .
- C: Manage your cholesterol levels.
- s: Stop smoking or dont start.
The A1C goal for most adults with diabetes is between 7% and 8%, but your goal may be different depending on your age, other health conditions, medicines youre taking, and other factors. Work with your doctor to establish a personal A1C goal for you.
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What Are The Warning Signs Of Dka
DKA usually develops slowly. But when vomiting occurs, this life-threatening condition can develop in a few hours. Early symptoms include the following:
- Thirst or a very dry mouth
- Frequent urination
- High blood glucose levels
- High levels of ketones in the urine
Then, other symptoms appear:
- Constantly feeling tired
- Dry or flushed skin
- Nausea, vomiting, or abdominal pain. Vomiting can be caused by many illnesses, not just ketoacidosis. If vomiting continues for more than two hours, contact your health care provider.
- Difficulty breathing