Why is our urine yellow?
Why is our urine yellow?
Excellent question! Urine is yellow due to chemicals known as urobilins. These come about when bilirubin, another chemical in our body, is broken down. It’s the same chemical that makes people yellow when they have jaundice too.
Now you’re probably wondering : What’s bilirubin?
Fair enough. Bilirubin is a chemical that is a byproduct of yet another broken down chemical in our bodies : hemoglobin! Yes, the famous component of red blood cells which carry oxygen all around our bodies. So when RBCs get worn down, in roughly 120 days, they have to get degraded.
Now wrap your brain around this : A single RBC has 270 million hemoglobin molecules, and an adult may have roughly 2–3 × 1013 red blood cells at any given time! That’s a lot of yellow!
Interestingly enough… Alchemists in the “dark ages” thought that there was gold in our urine that turned it yellow. I can’t imagine the length that people must have gone through to try to prove that 
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