Purple-red urine

Last night before going to bed, I went to the toilet for my usual before sleeping pee session. When I was about to flush the toilet, I was stunned to see that my urine was purple-red in colour. Haematuria? I don’t think so. This morning when I woke up, my urine was a rusty red. I thought to myself, I did not eat beet root or consume rifampicin so what’s with the odd colour??

Suddenly, it dawned upon me that perhaps it was from eating too much…

Dragon fruit?

Well, I ate about 6 pieces of dragon fruit after lunch yesterday, the type with red-coloured flesh, staining both my lips and fingers purple. I’ve heard that it can stain the stools purple (rather logical, since the colouring would just need to travel down the gut to come out with the shit), however for the colouring to appear in the urine, it would have to be absorbed into the blood stream and then filtered out by the kidneys. Does that mean that my blood is all purple now?

Anyway, to solve the mystery, I decided to google up “red urine and dragon fruits” and I found this post @ DocFiles.

So I guess it can be safe to conclude (based on personal experience as well as the testimony of others) that dragon fruit may stain the urine purple-red. Hah.