IF you ever travel to Europe you will always be surprised at the amount of constant attention given to the road network. You will not travel a full day without finding some part of the road closed off for repair works.
Now, I have always wondered to myself if this is because of shoddy workmanship but I have discovered rather, that it is called preventive maintenance. This is the realisation, that no matter how good the workmanship, every road has a life span.
When this life span is exceeded the road begins to fail, that means potholes to you and me. In contrast, when you travel around Africa, it is amazing to see the size of the potholes on the roads. Many of them can swallow a small truck. In many instances you have to travel off the road for long distances to keep your car safe. It is interesting to compare the life span of roads in Africa to those in Europe.
Many roads in Europe were built before many African countries got their independence, and are still there. A little bit of the philosophy of preventive maintenance will probably go a long way in keeping not only our roads healthy, but our bodies healthy too. Many of us, no matter how recklessly we live, are always checking our body for signs of good health.
Have you ever wondered why women love mirrors so much? They will flock to any place where they are mirrors, including the toilet (more politely, the ladies room). There is an examination of the hair, the nails, the teeth, the skin and the eyes. If they don’t measure up, by the way they are artificially enhanced, with a bit of hair dye here and there, Brazilian extensions, a bit of nail polish, a bit of mascara and some skin make-up.
Everybody is secretly checking themselves out to make sure they look as healthy as they can. Or perhaps more correctly as beautiful as they can be. However, to get to the destination of beauty the path that leads there is called health. The body is mostly made of water upward of 65 per cent. One of the elements that baths the body and cleans it out is water. This element, once it has travelled throughout the body comes out as urine. The urine tells the story of the health of the body.
So one of the most neglected measures of the health of our bodies is the state of our urine:
1. How does urine reflect our health?
2. How is urine made and how does this relate to health?
3. How can I monitor my healthy through this method?

1. How does urine reflect our health?
Some friends of mine were visiting Ndola. I said to them, as we were touring the city, “Many European cities have rivers running through the centre of the city. In Ndola we have the Kafubu River which runs through the city as well.” They seemed pretty impressed by this and so they were very keen to see the river. When we got to the river, one of them simply said, “This is not a river it is a swamp.”
The Kafubu River, like the Kafue river has been overgrown by an aggressive river weed, and you can hardly see the river itself. In the same way that the River, that runs through a city reflects the health of the city, the water that comes out of the body reflects the health of the body. It is common for doctors to ask a person who is sick for samples of their urine, then they will be able to determine the state of health of the organs of the body.
There are at least four parameters that can be looked at, namely, the volume, the colour, smell and content. The body produces about one litre of urine every day depending on the weather and the volume of water taken. When the volume is too much or too little it suggests something is wrong in the body. The kidneys are the body’s filters, they clean out the blood and the filtrate is called urine. When these filters are damaged (or the filtration holes are too big), then too much urine is produced, when they are blocked then too little is produced.
The normal colour is amber or a light shade of yellow. This is determined by the density or concentration of the urine. When the water content is low then the urine takes on a deeper shade of yellow. The colour is determined by the main material found in urine, which is called urea. This is the end product of the breakdown of proteins in the body.
When there is blood in the urine it takes on a red colour. Other things that will cause changes in the urine colour are pus (makes it turbid, or milky), drugs, foods (like beetroot) and liver disease gives the urine a deep yellow colour. Normally urine will have no smell. When it is left to stagnant either in the body (in the storage bag, the bladder) or outside, it decomposes, releasing ammonium gas which has a rather putrid smell (the one you commonly get around public toilets).If you are taking some antibiotics you can smell them off the urine. When the urine has a lot of sugar like in sugar disease or diabetics mellitus, it creates a map on the floor and will attract ants. Almost the same as if you spilled syrup on the floor.
2. How is urine made and how does this reflect on our health?
The simplest way to understand this is to think of the blood circulation, like the fuel system in a car. It runs throughout the body, but passes through a series of sieves or filters. These ensure that only good fuel gets to the engine.
In the same way the kidney filters out harmful materials in the blood that get in from the things we eat, drink and from the body’s normal maintenance work. What is not needed is expelled as urine. Urine is produced in three steps as it goes through the Kidney, which is the urine production system. The first step is a filter called the Glomerulus.
This is a series of small grape-like blood vessels, under the weight of the bloods’ pressure(hydrostatic pressure)water is squeezed out of the blood together with any small particles that can enter  through the small net like filters. No blood cells are normally able to pass through these filters, only chemicals and water. Think of the blood as being rinsed the way you do clothes with a hand wash.
The waste water from the rinse is collected in a cup called the Bowman’s capsule. When this very dilute urine is collected it goes through 2 further steps. The two steps occur in a series of small tubes which eventually connect to the kidney funnel called the pelvis. The second step is where the blood system exchanges excess salts and acids between the blood and the waste water.
This ensure a good balance of any important body salts and acids in the blood depending on the body’s needs. The last step just before the urine is sent out of the kidney funnel, is the recycling of any excess water. This fluids is now sent to the storage bag for urine called the bladder, where it is periodically expelled when it reaches maximum capacity.
The first important thing, which is worth noting, is that the filtration process of the kidney depends on the force of the blood pushing the urine through the kidneys.  When the blood pressure is too low no urine can be produced. So very sick patients with low blood pressure cannot make urine.
If you can make urine it means your Blood pressure is at least normal. The kidney filters can get damaged or clogged by chemical substances within the body. Many traditional drugs, herbal medicines as well as beauty products may contain heavy metals which can clog the kidney filters. This can shut down the kidneys altogether or damage the filters. Urine that looks abnormal suggest something is not right in the body or the kidney itself.
Among common abnormalities of appearance are bright red urine(blood in the urine), urine which looks like coffee or tea(old blood in the urine), pink urine(usually due to TB drugs), urine that looks like chicken curry soup(common in liver disease) and frothy urine(Gas in the urine, suggests infection or abnormal communication between urinary system and the bowels).
Some abnormalities of smell include sweet smelling urine(suggestive of Sugar disease), bad smelling urine(pus in the urinary system), hospital smelling urine(someone on antibiotics), cloudy urine(pus or proteins in the urine) and urine that has a smell of something rotting(cancers of the urinary system).Passing urine is normally painless, if you have pain passing urine, then there is something wrong in the urinary system itself.

3. How can I monitor my health?
Many people spend lots of time in the mirror looking for beauty in themselves as well as health. However, this is only a skin-deep assessment of health. To tell the health of the internal organs of the body we should really ask the urine.
Very few of us pay any attention to our urine. It is probably a good habit to take a look at the bottom of the toilet bowel, before you flash it down. It will tell us something about the state of our health. You should get familiar with how it looks normally, so that you can quickly detect when something has gone wrong. When you pass too much urine something is also wrong. When you pass to little you will start to swell something is wrong there too. Urine normally has no smell, except if it is left to stand.
So smelly urine suggests things are not right. Take at least two litres of water every day, this wuill help get your body cleaned out. Do not take drugs you do not need to take. Avoid herbal or traditional medicines. Do not take recreational drugs (blue diamond, valium, barbiturates, etc) when they are not medically indicated. Reduce your alcohol intake, it overworks the kidney.
Eat as much natural and unprocessed plant foods, these are the easiest foods for the body to process.