Strong urine odors

Hi, and thanks for your medical question on eHealth forum!

Generally, bad odor is due to infection, mainly by E coli. This can be diagnosed by a urine culture. Strong fruity odor is due to uncontrolled diabetes. Interestingly, urine odor changes in menopause too. Urinary bladder infection and kidney infections do produce strong smelling urine. Another reason is dehydration. A strong ammonia smell is due to protein breakdown. A routine urine examination along with a urine culture will be able to detect the problem. Drink plenty of fluids and water and see if that helps. Also, if you are on crash diets then protein breakdown can cause an ammonia smell. Also, a diet rich in protein can be the cause.

The other possibility is the presence of sulfite in urine which causes a smell of rotten eggs. You can test its presence by test strips available OTC. If this is positive and you have a smell of rotten eggs in the urine then you need to cut down on food items that contain sulfites. Most of this gas comes from sulfites a person consumes, which is a part of all preservatives. Sulfites are present in all juices, molasses, yellow dye in ready-made food stuffs, and red wine. Sulfites are present in lesser amounts in mashed potatoes made from dry powder, pickles, tinned shrimp, cookies, crackers, and ready-made pie dough.

Since a confirmed diagnosis cannot be given on the internet please discuss these possibilities with your doctor and see what tests need to be done. Hope this helps. Take care!