Is alkaline urine good or bad?

Are you tired of googling whether your urine is good for the 100th time? I feel you. Taking care of our body can be so confusing nowadays, as one day we should eat more protein and the next day carbs are back to being king. So today, I will tackle a topic on alkaline urine – is it good or bad? Let’s get into it!

What is Alkaline Urine?

Before diving into whether alkaline urine is good or bad, let’s first make sure we all understand what it really means.

Urine is actually a waste product made by our kidneys filtering out substances from our blood like excess water, salts (sodium and potassium), urea, creatinine, and other metabolic waste products. These filtered substances form the urine that exits our bodies through the urinary tract system (so glamorous).

Now here’s where things start to get interesting! The pH scale measures how acidic or basic (alkaline) a substance is with values ranging from 0-14. Our body maintains different pH levels depending on what part of our body it relates to.

The normal range for human urine falls between 4.5-8 with an ideal range between 7-7.5 (woo hoo knowledge!) which means slightly leaning towards alkalinity rather than acidity.

An informative chart about this can look like:

Acidic Neutral Basic (Alkaline)
0 – 7 > 7
Strongly Acidic 😡 Slightly Acidic Slightly Base

Crazy right?! Somehow I didn’t think science would play such a big role in discussing bodily fluids but here we are…ontopic sortof….

The Good and the Bad

So…what does this all mean for our urine? Is it good or bad to have alkaline urine?

GOOD: Protects against UTIs

UTI (Urinary Tract Infections) are common bacterial infections that cause pain and discomfort when peeing, frequent urges to empty your bladder, and lower back pain. Alkaline urine helps neutralize the acidity in the urinary tract and reduces inflammation which can help prevent infection.

In addition, some studies suggest that having more alkalinity in your diet may create a better environment for friendly bacteria to thrive along your urogenital area.

BAD: Indicates Kidney Issues(?)

Before we get too carried away with how amazing alkaline urine is, let’s not forget there could be negatives associated with it too. One potential outcome of constantly producing high levels of alkaline urine is its link with kidney stones.

Kidney stones are painful hard masses formed from crystallized deposits inside our kidneys caused by fluid loss or possible kidney damage (wait..you’ve had them before? 🤣 shh, whatever). Not everyone who has high levels of alkali will develop Kidney Stones but it’s worth keeping an eye on if you’re at risk!

Another reason why pristinely pure 7 pH is recommended

How Can We Achieve Healthy Urinary Levels(?)

Whether creating healthy acidic habits (taylor swift album plug!) like starting off each morning sipping on a big glass cold lemonade (and not gin,todd), or increasing food sources higher in sulfur amino acids such as eggs (yay brunch) which tend to make our bodies more acidic – there IS hope!

Similarly though depending on whether you seek for low/high alkali level changes within your body they differ quite drastically just looking at one end point (urinal tests!).

For higher levels than normal supplementation usually of potassium citrate is required alongside a water high/lemonade free diet. (sidenote: if you feel something coming on definitely go see doctor rather than drink gin, todd..).

Happy Peeing!

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