What is a 24-Hour Urinalysis?
In a 24-Hour Urinalysis, a urine sample undergoes extensive laboratory tests to assess how a patient’s system is working to manage the various environmental and nutritional stresses that contribute to a variety of health conditions. The UA can be considered a “Body Audit” to determine how a patient’s body is using energy and other resources. It can reveal underlying causes of symptoms and help to find the correct treatment to restore normal function and/or prevent disease.
The History of 24-Hour Urinalysis?
Extensive urine sample testing was once a staple of every comprehensive physical exam. Today, an abbreviated urine test is used to screen for serious illness such as diabetes and kidney infection. Because of advances in other types of testing, urinalysis became less routine, but physicians still recognize the value of urinalysis, as urine provides direct physical evidence of what a patient consumes and what waste the body expels. As such, it can help to predict health problems early on, before they turn into serious conditions.
Importance of a 24-Hour Urinalysis
“Blood work is not helpful because the body is required to maintain the blood within normal limits as long as possible. In other words, the body will compensate for any deviation in the contents of the blood by pulling what it needs from its tissues. For example, in the condition known as osteoporosis, mineral levels remain normal in the blood while the body gradually removes them from the bones. Putting it another way, blood tests are used to find objective evidence of deviations from normal function, thus indicating disease. They do not serve as an early warning sign that some problem is beginning to develop. By the time blood tests are abnormal, the body has already exhausted its ability to compensate.”
- Dr. Howard F. Loomis, Jr.
What can a 24-Hour Urinalysis Tell Us?
The UA results provide crucial information about how your body handles environmental and other stresses and how these might contribute to your condition:
- Is your body using the food you eat efficiently?
- How fully does your body digest food?
- Are you absorbing nutrients from your food?
- Does your body eliminate waste efficiently?
- Where is your system over-stressed or over-worked?
How is the 24-Hour Urinalysis different than a standard Urine test?
Hospitals today routinely use a dipstick urine test, which allows quick diagnosis of diabetes and other conditions. A 24-Hour Urinalysis, by contrast, consists of over two dozen unique physical and chemical tests that are often too time-consuming for hospitals to run. The UA goes beyond basic diagnosis to evaluate metabolism, digestion, and other daily processes to determine where problems may exist or arise in future. It gives us a comprehensive picture of the body’s relationship to its environment.