Unusual urine color or tablets in stool can be normal for people taking medication and not a cause for alarm, a pharmacist said.
Drugs come in many forms and vary with pharmaceutical advances, such as sublingual tablets that introduce effects rapidly, coated tablets that ensure medication is released in the intestines and time-released tablets, Changhua Christian Hospital pharmacist Tsai Min-fang (蔡旻芳) wrote in an article published on April 2 in the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper).
Certain time-release tablets use specific coatings so that the medication slowly “seeps” through, giving it a steady and long-term effect, she said.
Ultimately, this coating is ejected from the human body along with excrement, which is why some people might see medication tablets in their waste, she said.
These include medications used to treat prostate hypertrophy, hypertension or cardiovascular diseases, she said.
She also said that medication processed by the human body could change the color of urochrome, the main chemical that affects the color of urine.
Tsai said that ingesting vitamin B often results in bright yellow urine, and urethritis drug phenazopyridine and rheumatoid arthritis medication sulfasalazine can turn urine orange.
Other medication, such as amitriptyline, used to treat depression and anxiety, and cimetidine, to treat digestive issues, could turn urine green, she added.
If a change in urine color is a result of medication, it would not be lasting and would revert to normal once the patient has stopped taking the medicine, she said.
People should not be alarmed when they see a change in the color of their urine and should instead pay attention to how they feel, Tsai said, adding they should also read carefully the directions and warnings provided with the medication.
If concerned, they should contact their doctor or pharmacist to verify that they are not experiencing complications from the medicine, she said.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS