One-sentence Summary:
Consider diabetes mellitus if your clear urine is associated with urinating more often, feeling hungry and thirsty all the time, losing weight, feeling tired and weak, or having recurrent infections.
Quick Insights:
- Clear (pale or transparent) urine is typically a sign of excess urine excretion by your kidney (polyuria).
- Polyuria and clear urine is a common sign of diabetes mellitus. However, it can also occur with various conditions such as excess water intake, caffeine, diabetes insipidus, medications, etc.
- So, clear urine doesn’t always mean diabetes. Only consider diabetes if you have one or more of:
- Constant hunger.
- Constant thirst sensation.
- Weight loss without trying.
- Frequent large-volume clear urine.
- Fatigue and weakness.
- Constant headache and dizziness.
- Recurrent infections and poor wound healing.
- The probability of diabetes is even higher if you have risk factors such as family history, black or Hispanic race, obesity, older age, etc.
[1] Being hungry all the time.
Patients with undiagnosed diabetes are typically from Hungary and always have a good appetite despite high blood sugar.
This lead to polyphagia (eating a lot and still hungry) in patients with undiagnosed or untreated diabetes.
Polyphagia occurs because your body cells cannot utilize the sugar in the blood due to the lack of insulin (insulin helps glucose enter the cell to be converted to energy).
As a result, your cells are starving (making you hungry) despite the high sugar concentration in the blood.
[2] Being thirsty all the time.
Diabetes traps glucose inside the bloodstream (because it cannot enter your body cells). As a result, your body gets rid of the excess glucose through the kidney.
When glucose passes through urine, it draws more water into urine due to a phenomenon called (osmotic diuresis). The excess water in urine leads to the following:
- Dehydration and thirst sensation most of the time.
- Polydipsia (drinking water all the time and still thirsty).
- Polyuria and clear urine.
[3] You are losing weight without trying.
The main hormone that regulates your glucose and energy production is insulin. Insulin helps glucose to enter the cells.
Diabetes results from either a deficiency or resistance to insulin. And as a result, your body becomes unable to use glucose for energy production.
Chronic deprivation of your body cells from glucose will lead to weight loss (despite eating more than usual).
[4] your urinating more frequently.
Excess glucose is secreted in the urine and draws more water into the urine. This leads to clear or water-like urine (diluted urine).
Excess urine leads to frequent filling of the bladder and frequent urination. The effect is more noticeable at night (nocturia).
[5] You are constantly tired or weak.
Patients with undiagnosed diabetes constantly have high blood sugar, but their bodies cannot use it for energy production resulting in constant fatigue and weakness.
[6] Your infectious doesn’t go away easily.
Bacteria like sugar. So, a patient with undiagnosed diabetes may suffer from recurrent and difficult-to-treat infections due to the high concentration of sugar in different body tissues (a good medium for bacterial growth).
Common examples:
- Skin infections (boils or furuncles).
- Recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs) include burning urination, cloudy urine, and bladder pain.
- Delayed wound healing.
[7] You have blurry vision and a headache.
Very high levels of blood sugar, together with the lack of sufficient energy and dehydration, may lead to non-specific symptoms such as blurry vision, dizziness, headaches, and fatigue.
[8] Having multiple risk factors for Diabetes.
Clear urine plus one or more of the above symptoms suggest diabetes mellitus. Diabetes is even more likely if you have multiple risk factors for diabetes enlisted below (reference).
- Being older in age (type two diabetes is more common in adults above 35 years old).
- Obesity (especially in patients with central or abdominal obesity).
- Family history of diabetes mellitus.
- Being Asian, Hispanic, or Black American.
- Sedentary lifestyle (lack of exercise).
- Smoking.
- Chronic sleep deprivation.
- High sugar and refined grains in the diet.
Bonus #1: Gestational diabetes & Clear urine.
Pregnant women may get a specific type of diabetes that goes away after delivery called gestational diabetes. Clear urine due to increased blood and urine volumes in pregnancy.
Also, clear (colorless) urine can be a sign of new-onset gestational diabetes if it is associated with other diabetes symptoms such as thirst, polyphagia, frequent urination, etc.
Bonus #2: Common causes of clear urine (other than diabetes).
Clear urine is frequent notice by many people. It doesn’t always mean diabetes, as it is caused by excess water, alcohol, or caffeine.
The Common causes of clear water-like urine include:
- Excess water intake.
- Excess Alcohol or caffeine.
- Diabetes insipidus (deficiency or resistance to the anti-diuretic hormone which helps the kidney to concentrate urine).
- Pregnancy.
- Mediations such as diuretics, some anti-diabetes, antihypertensive, antidepressants, etc.
- Cushing’s syndrome.
- Hypercalcemia.
- Kidney diseases.
- Excess intravenous fluids.
Learn more about all the possible cases of clear urine is this article.
