When you go to a doctor and undergo a general checkup, one of the things that you will be required to do is to provide a urine sample. The same is true when you go for a pre-employment medical examination. Most companies also require all their employees to undergo annual medical checkup, and again, a urine sample will be required.
You might be wondering, what is the importance of doing so? What are urine tests for? Read and learn more.
Urine test
A urine test or urinalysis can be conducted for several reasons. But most of the time, it is to check if an individual has a bladder infection or probably a kidney disease. It can also be used to know if somebody is pregnant. In some cases, urinalysis is done to detect the presence of toxins or illegal substances in one’s system.
Let us have a better understanding of what urine tests are for.
To detect infections or underlying health conditions
Urinalysis is used to detect the presence of different diseases or health conditions such as Urinary Tract Infection or UTI, bladder infection, diabetes, kidney disease, liver disease, and much more.
Moreover, a set of urine tests can help detect if someone has an underlying health condition. This is exactly the reason why urine samples are needed in almost every medical examination that one has to go through. If a certain disease is detected at its early stage, then it will be so much easier to treat.
To detect drug abuse
Another purpose of a urine test is to check if someone is using prohibited substances. This is usually done by schools prior to admission of students. A lot of companies do the same thing before they hire people. They even subject their employees to random urine drug tests to catch those who are using drugs.
The thing is, people have found a way to cheat on a urine drug test, and that is by using synthetic urine. You need to be extra careful though when using such products because not all of them are effective.
Pregnancy test
A urine test can also be used to check if a woman is pregnant or not. You can even make use of pregnancy test kit that you can use to test yourself at home. All you need to do is to have a few drops of your urine on the test stick. If you get two red lines, then that means that you are pregnant. On the other hand, if there is only one line then it is negative.
When doing this yourself, make sure that you use a good brand and follow all the procedures so you can ensure that you get accurate results.