Don’t Stay All Yellow With Jaundice

(Newswire.net — August 15, 2018) Cheyenne, Wyoming — Jaundice is most common heard of with newborn babies but it actually can occur among adults as well. The medical term jaundice gets its name from the French word for “yellow” (jaune) because it causes the skin and/or eyes to develop a yellow hue and that’s due to issues surrounding the organic process of red blood cells degenerating. 

“Jaundice is a yellow discoloration of the skin, mucous membranes, and the whites of the eyes caused by increased amounts of bilirubin in the blood,” states eMedincineHealth.com. “Jaundice is a sign of an underlying disease process. Bilirubin is a by-product of the daily natural breakdown and destruction of red blood cells in the body. The hemoglobin molecule that is released into the blood by this process is split, with the heme portion undergoing a chemical conversion to bilirubin.” 

It’s the liver’s job to metabolize and get rid of bilirubin via bile but sometimes things don’t go according to plan. If the process of breaking down and excreting bilirubin gets thrown off course anywhere along the way, it is possible for jaundice to be developed. So monitoring the volume of bilirubin present in urine is always helpful information regarding the possibility of an issue anywhere along the process of discarding obsolete red blood cells. 

“Bilirubin is an orange-yellow pigment that occurs normally when part of your red blood cells break down,” explains WebMD.com. “Your liver takes the bilirubin from your blood and changes its chemical make-up so that most of it is passed through your poop as bile. If your bilirubin levels are higher than normal, it’s a sign that either your red blood cells are breaking down at an unusual rate or that your liver isn’t breaking down waste properly and clearing the bilirubin from your blood.” 

It’s possible to detect bilirubin with a urinalysis. If found in high concentrations then it suggests there’s an issue that needs to be addressed by a medical professional with some deal of urgency. There are three stages in which jaundice can occur: before, during or after the production of bilirubin. The HealthyWiser™ Complete 10 Parameter Urinalysis Reagent Strips are an ideal way to detect abnormally high levels of bilirubin anywhere along the process. 

“I kept having problems with my urine and kidney-area pain but every time I went to urgent care tests came back clear,” shares a verified HealthyWiser™ Complete 10 Parameter Urinalysis Reagent Strips customer on Amazon. “This helped me confirm something has been wrong and showing a doctor the result helped them pay attention to me. Finally, a culture came back for a rare, antibiotic resistant type of strep and I am finally able to get treated after several months. It might have taken several more months or my situation to have gotten worse to get the sneaky bacteria or blood/bilirubin I was seeing to show up when I went to the clinic.”