Urine

My esteemed colleague Tami Dennis recently wrote about “pine mouth,” the bitter flavor that can linger after some people eat pine nuts. That got us to wondering…What other strange taste things happen when people eat certain foods? And why do they happen, to the extent that scientists know? Two very obvious ‘strange things” — ones that would be hard to miss — are changes in the urine when a person has eaten asparagus or red beets. A nasty odor, in the first case.

A hotel room was left in such disgusting condition after February's NFL scouting combine that the manager took pictures and sent them to the event's organizer. National Football Scouting president Jeff Foster confirmed to Yahoo!Sports that a room in the Crowne Plaza in Indianapolis was found after the combine with feces and urine scattered in the bathroom, toothpaste on a mirror and garbage, including uneaten food, all over. "I can confirm that a room was left in an inappropriate condition and we're disappointed by both players who occupied the room," Foster said.

Martin Sheen's compassion "for people addicted to drugs and for their families" (Commentary, Aug. 7) is laudable, but his preoccupation with urine testing is not constructive. The bottom line: We must treat patients, not urines. Addiction is indeed a disease, but it is irrational to punish individuals for manifesting the behavior that defines that disease. It is particularly inappropriate to oblige treatment providers to notify law enforcement agencies of positive urine results, knowing that this will lead to incarceration.

We love a steaming hot bowl of soup -- ramen, pho, beef noodle soup, whatever. But scientists say that if the bowl is made with melamine, the melamine might be seeping into our bodies. Melamine is a flame-retardant chemical used to make adhesives, industrial coatings and some types of tableware and other utensils. A recent study of a group of soup eaters -- 12 men and women who ate noodle soup in either a bowl made of ceramic or melamine -- showed measurable levels of the chemical additive in the urine of those who slurped out of the melamine bowl.

An 18-year-old Manhattan Beach man was arrested at Pacific Elementary School on Monday after allegedly offering to pay a third-grader for his urine. Kevin Manuel Duron is believed to have entered a boys bathroom on the campus late last week and offered to pay a boy several dollars to urinate into a cup, Manhattan Beach Police Det. Sgt. Brian Brown said. When Duron failed to persuade the boy, police said, he apparently returned Monday for another try. He was taken into custody after reappearing at the elementary school, Brown said.

The urine of women who take the contraceptive pill is changing the sex of male fish and could also be making Englishmen less fertile, a newspaper reported. Fears for the sperm count, in decline for decades, arose after Environment Agency research showed that half of all the male fish in low-lying English rivers were changing sex as a result of water pollution, the Independent on Sunday said.

Joyce Brown is allergic to more than 65 substances, some of which cause allergy flare-ups so severe that her strategy for recovery was to "go to bed and wait until it went away." It wasn't until Brown underwent a controversial urine injection therapy prescribed by Dr. George R. Borrell that her condition improved. "I was pretty much incapacitated by my allergies until I was treated by him," said Brown, who attends law school in Brea. "Now, they don't bother me as much."

This is not a story for the faint of heart--or the weak of bladder. It's about those times when you really, really, really have to go and you're driving across South Dakota and the next rest stop is 95 miles away. One option, of course, is to pull over and relieve yourself behind a tree. Another is to find an empty container in your car--perhaps that super-sized soda you so regret swigging--and urinate in that. Far too many people these days apparently are choosing the latter.

The premise Twenty-seven-year-old Aron Ralston ( James Franco) is a mechanical engineer and thrill-seeker. He is in Utah's Blue John Canyon when he falls down a narrow canyon, and his arm is pinned by a large chalkstone boulder. He watches as his fingers turn blue and gray from insufficient blood flow (ischemia). Though he doesn't appear to be in pain, he is unable to free himself. He has very little food and water, and finally, as he grows dehydrated, he drinks his own urine.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin said last week that a simple, inexpensive urine test that can be done at home may help in mass screenings to find bladder and kidney cancer when they are still at a curable stage. The test uses inexpensive dipsticks that change color when exposed to microscopic amounts of blood in urine. In one year eight cancers and seven other serious kidney or bladder disorders were found in 235 men using the new test, the Wisconsin researchers said.

A Fox News producer got more than he bargained for this week when he confronted Ed Asner, the 83-year-old actor best known for his role as Lou Grant on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” on the street in New York's theater district. Rather than fighting back, Asner asked if he could could urinate on the man. Asner's request, while certainly bizarre, wasn't made entirely out of context. The reason for the confrontation, as Sean Hannity explained on his show, was a video Asner narrated on behalf of the California Federation of Teachers.

WASHINGTON - A Pentagon investigation into the burning of Korans at a U.S.-run prison in Afghanistan in February found that American soldiers ignored warnings from an Afghan officer and an interpreter and incinerated dozens of Islamic holy texts in a pit, sparking days of deadly riots across the country. Army Brig. Gen. Bryan G. Watson, who conducted the probe, sharply criticized U.S. military officers and senior enlisted personnel at the prison, and outlined how mistakes in the U.S. command and distrust between American and Afghan soldiers led to what he called a tragic incident.

At least the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency knows what it has to do right now. Apologize. Promise an investigation. Probably pay a tidy settlement. And another apology might be good. After all, it didn't know there was a young man in there, reportedly drinking his urine to survive. The agency somehow forgot about the UC San Diego student it had detained in a drug sweep along with several others. The others were either sent to a county detention facility or released. With only five cells, the DEA apparently couldn't keep tabs on what was happening in all of them.

In the Republican presidential debate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry used a question on foreign policy to assail the Obama administration's attitude toward the nation's military, criticizing the administration's response to a video showing Marines urinating on Taliban bodies. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta labeled the video, which surfaced last week, "utterly despicable. " Perry, mentioning that comment, said: “Let me tell you what's utterly despicable: Cutting Danny Pearl's head off and showing the video of it. Hanging our contractors from bridges, that's utterly despicable.” Daniel Pearl was the Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded in Pakistan in 2002.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has been campaigning furiously in South Carolina in an effort to revive his sputtering presidential campaign, said Sunday morning that the Obama administration has gone “over the top” in criticizing Marines who were videotaped urinating on Afghan corpses. “Obviously, 18, 19-year-olds make stupid mistakes all too often,” Perry said in an appearance on CNN's “State of the Union.” “... What's really disturbing to me is just, kind of, the over-the-top-rhetoric from this administration and their disdain for the military.” The Marines have not been charged with any crimes, but the Geneva Conventions forbid desecration of the dead.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has been campaigning furiously in South Carolina in an effort to revive his sputtering presidential campaign, said Sunday that the Obama administration had gone "over the top" in criticizing Marines videotaped urinating on Afghan corpses. "Obviously, 18-, 19-year-olds make stupid mistakes all too often, and that's what's occurred here," Perry said in an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union. " He likened the incident to Gen. George S. Patton urinating in the Rhine River and Winston Churchill supposedly doing the same on the Siegfried Line.

It's cheap (about $10), quick (usually about 10 seconds) and relatively painless. But a urine test can tell you a lot about your health. A Window to Your Inner Workings Nearly 100 tests are done on urine, providing information about almost every organ. The diseases the tests can detect include: diabetes, kidney stones, urinary tract infections, liver disease, gallbladder disease, hypertension and hormonal disorders (or hormonal changes indicating pregnancy).

State medical authorities have moved to revoke the license of a Canoga Park doctor who treated as many as 6,000 allergy patients by injecting them with their own urine. The practice represents an "extreme departure from the standard of care in California," authorities said. But Dr. Jorge R. Borrell has appealed the revocation order and a Los Angeles Superior Court judge last month temporarily blocked it.

Pentagon officials said Thursday they believed a video showing four Marines urinating on the corpses of Afghans was authentic, and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta promised to investigate the incident, calling it "utterly deplorable. " As outrage over the explicit video spread, the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan said the behavior was confined to "a small group of U.S. individuals" who committed a blatant violation of military standards. Those found responsible will be "held accountable to the fullest extent," Panetta said in a statement.

Say it ain't vrai ! The latest airline passenger to go rogue involves French actor Gerard Depardieu, who reportedly urinated on the floor of a plane before the Paris-to-Dublin flight took off Tuesday evening, media reports say. According to a passenger who was interviewed on French radio, Depardieu appeared to have been drinking and said he needed to go to the restroom. Cabin crew members told him to wait until after takeoff. To the astonishment of all, the female passenger identified only as Daniele said, "he stood up and did it [urinated]