Sooner or later we’re faced with passing a urinalysis (UA).
In more than 90% of cases, medical experts will require of us to pass a urine drug analysis, and luckily the ‘pee test’ is the easiest one to prepare.
Here is a full list of types of drug check-ups:
- Urine drug analysis – UA.
- Hair or hair follicle drug test.
- Saliva or mouth swab tests
- Blood testing for drugs.
With a thorough cleansing, the 30 days it takes for urine to clear of THC, can be significantly reduced, even to few days.
With a hair test, the chances of reducing the detection time after last use are tenfold more challenging.
In Which Body Parts Does THC Store Itself?
When cannabis enters the body (either via the pulmonary system or via gastrointestinal tract), it is readily absorbed into the bloodstream. From there it travels throughout the body and cements itself in fat cells, saliva, hair follicles, and eventually, its derivatives such as THC-COOH are found present up both in urine and excrements.
Drug tests for weed are designed specifically to detect the presence of THC and THC-COOH in urine, saliva, hair and in the bloodstream.
The biggest storage of THC are the fat cells. From there, they are readily re-introduced into the bloodstream where they can be excreted via:
- Urine (via liver which attached carboxylic group in order to form water-soluble THC-COOH. This molecule is filtered through the kidneys to produce urine. Urine tests detect the newly formed THC-COOH to produce a ‘marijuana positive’ test result.)
- Feces (transported via bile from the liver to the gastrointestinal system and are excreted as THC via feces.)
- Sweat (small amount of cannabis-related molecules can be excreted via sweat.)
- Saliva (directly from the bloodstream.)
- Hair (via the bloodstream.)
Urine Drug Test
If you’re looking to detox from THC, the chances are you’re likely facing an imminent urinalysis. Testing urine for drugs such as cannabis is by far the most popular way of determining if an individual has used weed in the past month or so.
The procedure for the ‘urine-giver’ is surprisingly simple. An individual is usually scheduled to show up at a medical facility that performs the urine drug test. After the standard paperwork, he or she is required to provide a urine sample.
What are they looking for in your urine?
From the investigator’s side, it is a bit more complex as far as the analytics go. In most cases, the provided cup of urine goes to a laboratory where a laboratory technician uses a urinalysis panel (basically a stick, covered with a reagent, inserted into the pee cup) in order to determine if individual’s urine contains traces of weed.
The drug testing panel that is using cannabinoid immunoassays is designed not to detect THC; it detects it’s metabolite delta9-THC-COOH (11-nor-delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol-9-carboxylic acid).
Cut-Off Rates For THC Urine Test
It is very interesting to see how urine tests with different cut-off rates work. The lower the cut-off rate, the higher is the possibility that a person’s urine will produce a ‘weed positive’ drug test result.
A study by National Institutes of Health found surprising results while investigating how long after the last use can cannabis use still be detected via urine; they have compared urine drug testing methods with different cut-off rates.
Each of the test subjects was given a marijuana cigarette and was tested how long they can detect the weed via urine with different methods. Here are the results for one-time users:
- 100 ng/ml cut-off rate – 1.5 days.
- 50 ng/ml cut-off rate – 2 days.
- 20 ng/ml cut-off rate – up to 6 days.
- Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) – up to 12 days.
If you smoke 1 blunt one time, how long can you still be positive on a urinalysis?
In standard circumstances, an investigated individual won’t be facing the monstrously accurate GC-MS machine. Most of the laboratories use cannabinoid immunoassays with 20 or 50 ng/ml cut-off rates. That, by the way, means that they can detect weed in one urine even if you only have 20 nanograms (1 billionth of a gram) in 1 ml of urine.
That’s why the detoxification process has to be as thorough as possible to pass a drug test.
Tip For Passing A Urinalysis – Use Middle Urine
Before we go into different methods to detox; here is a drug testing tip that anybody can use:
When you start urinating, the biggest load of THC is concentrated in the first and last drops. The first drops have the highest concentrations of THC because they’ve soaped up all the urine in the final path of the urinary tract (penis or end of the female urinary tract).
The last drops are usually the slowest and the slow-flowing urine with again soap up more urine that fast-flowing urine.
The middle urine is usually the fastest flowing and it contains the lowest concentration of THC metabolites. The difference may be small but it could be the difference between passing and failing a drug test.