Have you ever eaten asparagus and then went to the bathroom to relieve yourself,
only to find the smell horrifying? Well, interestingly, maybe half of you
haven't. Stick around till the end because I'm going to tell you exactly why asparagus
makes some of our urine smell horribly rancid and others not. I'm Dr. Rena Malik, urologist,
and pelvic surgeon, and today I'm going to talk to you about why does your urine smell stinky.
The number one thing that people think about when their urine stinks is that they might
have a bladder infection or a urinary tract infection. And yes certainly that can be a
sign of a urinary tract infection, if you have symptoms that include pain with urination pain
in your lower part of your belly maybe you need to go to the bathroom very urgently or frequently and
sometimes having pain in your upper back or flank pain which might be an indicator that you have an
infection in your kidney. If you don't have any of those symptoms and you just have smelly urine,
what else could it be? Well, the most common cause of smelly urine is dehydration and dehydration
is basically when you're not drinking enough fluids so if you check out my video on
urine color it'll tell you exactly what the right color of urine is. The first thing you should do
if you suspect that you might have an infection but you're not really sure because all you're
noticing is smelly urine is to drink lots and lots of water and make sure you flush out anything
that's causing an odor. Some other things that can cause odor, coffee! So interestingl,y coffee
beans have an ingredient called caffeiol which is released from the coffee bean when you drink
it and it's insoluble which means that it doesn't get dissolved and go straight through your body
and you pee it out so in some people when you drink a very concentrated amount of coffee and
maybe don't drink enough water you might notice that your urine actually has an odor like coffee
another thing that can cause your urine to smell a different color is different sorts of vitamins
specifically vitamin b6 and vitamin d can cause a change in the odor of your urine so if you're
taking a multivitamin that may be the reason that your urine is smelling a little bit different
what about when your urine smells sort of sweet well if you're on a ketogenic diet or if you have
diabetes you could be releasing ketone bodies in your urine this is not necessarily a physiologic
process that occurs normally but when those ketone bodies are released in your urine they can make
it smell a little bit sweet smelling like fruit however if you are not on a ketogenic diet and you
are noticing that in addition to having the sweet smelling urine you're also drinking lots of fluids
you're feeling like you're rushing to the bathroom very frequently you should go see your doctor and
get checked to see if you might have diabetes because this might be a sign that you do all
right and lastly let's talk about food how can food affect the smell of your urine specifically
asparagus so as far back as 1781 benjamin franklin quoted a few stems of asparagus eaten shall give
our urine a foul odor so clearly this has been documented for a long period of time and why
is that well asparagus contains an active ingredient called asparagusic acid and what
that is is a sulfur containing product and when your body metabolizes that it breaks it down into
a number of sulfur containing products and sulfur is the kind of smell that you get when you smell
rotten eggs one of these compounds that's commonly cited is called methane ethyl which is actually
very commonly a smell that you smell in flatus or farts and bad breath and so this is why it can
make your urine smell really bad but if you ask maybe two or three of your friends you might say
that some of your friends actually don't notice that asparagus makes their urine smell i in fact
don't ever notice that my urine smell changes after i eat asparagus but my husband will often
comment on asparagus and coffee changing the smell of his urine why is that well in 2016 they did a
study where they surveyed people and asked them if they ate asparagus and then asked them a question
if they noticed a characteristically bad odor after they have eaten asparagus what
they found was that nearly 60 percent of people couldn't smell anything different in their urine
after getting asparagus now why is that well there's two different theories for this
one is that you might actually have a different metabolic process meaning that you're not breaking
down the asparagus in the same way in your gut which then doesn't create these sulfuric
by-products in your urine the other theory is that there are genetic variations in people in the way
our brain perceives smells and because of these genetic variations people can't actually smell the
metabolites that are created by asparagus and the sulfur containing products that are in the urine
what is the truth well right now we don't really know but there's other foods that also similar
to asparagus can create this sort of rancid smell in your urine cabbage garlic brussels sprouts all
of these things can create this sulfur-containing products in your urine which can make the smell be
somewhat off-putting so don't worry about it make sure you drink lots and lots of fluid after
you eat those vegetables it doesn't mean that you should stop eating those vegetables it's
not creating you any harm it's just a normal process that our body's doing alright thank
you so much for watching and always remember to take care of yourself because you're worth it