Bad Habits That Cause Hemorrhoids
If you have hemorrhoids, you know how uncomfortable these enlarged veins of the anus or lower rectum are. They often cause pain, itching, and bleeding with bowel movements, and theyre a common problem for people of all ages.
Up to 3 in 4 people get hemorrhoids at some point during their life. It can be an embarrassing topic to bring up with your doctor, but seeking treatment is the most effective way to manage hemorrhoids.
General surgeon Elvira Klause, MD, FACS, specializes in hemorrhoid care, offering treatment options from at-home sitz baths to minimally invasive rubber band ligation. Its not clear exactly what causes hemorrhoids, but certain lifestyle habits may increase your risk of this bothersome condition.
A few common bad habits that are linked to hemorrhoids include:
Preventing And Treating Haemorrhoids
Haemorrhoid symptoms often settle down after a few days, without needing treatment. Haemorrhoids that occur during pregnancy often get better after giving birth.
However, making lifestyle changes to reduce the strain on the blood vessels in and around your anus is often recommended. These can include:
- gradually increasing the amount of fibre in your diet good sources of fibre include fruit, vegetables, wholegrain rice, wholewheat pasta and bread, pulses and beans, seeds, nuts and oats
- drinking plenty of fluid particularly water, but avoiding or cutting down on caffeine and alcohol
- not delaying going to the toilet ignoring the urge to empty your bowels can make your stools harder and drier, which can lead to straining when you do go to the toilet
- avoiding medication that causes constipation such as painkillers that contain codeine
- losing weight
- exercising regularly can help prevent constipation, reduce your blood pressure and help you lose weight
These measures can also reduce the risk of haemorrhoids returning, or even developing in the first place.
Medication that you apply directly to your back passage or tablets bought from a pharmacy or prescribed by your GP may ease your symptoms and make it easier for you to pass stools.
Surgery carried out under general anaesthetic is sometimes used to remove or shrink large or external haemorrhoids.
Read more about treating haemorrhoids and surgery for haemorrhoids.
Can A Hemorrhoid Cause Constipation
It starts with a feeling of discomfort whenever you are sitting for a long time, then you feel a sharp pain whenever you are trying to sit. Then you know that this condition is hemorrhoids, a condition in which your veins in the lower rectum area become swollen. These swollen veins are similar to varicose, thus, it would be quite painful for someone with hemorrhoids to sit or excrete. Almost 80% of adults would have similar conditions or mostly just the symptoms of this annoying condition. However, there are also some people that relate hemorrhoids and constipation.
Hemorrhoids can cause constipation if you hold it back for several days if you are scared of the pain of going to the toilet. In severe cases of hemorrhoids when the veins in the rectal canal are so swollen that it makes it hard to make a bowel movement you may choose to hold it back because of the pain, this may lead to constipation.
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Constipationdefining Normal Is Not So Easy
When it comes to treating patients with constipation , Dr. Deutsch first asks a lot of questions.
I tell people that their normal may not be my normal or the next persons normal. We are all very different when it comes to bowel habits, she says. I need to know what the stool looks like, from the color to the length, and how long it takes you to go. If someone is only going once or twice a week and the stools are looking like little rabbit pellets, I need to tease that out.
To help explain, Dr. Deutsch often shows patients a bell-shaped curve from a study published in Gastroenterology. On the national average, people poop anywhere from three times a week to three times a day, she says. That is a huge range. I stress that if you dont feel good, we need to make you feel good. If you are worried that you are sitting on the toilet for an hour and passing small, hard pellets, we should see if you are getting enough fiber or physical movement every day. Or maybe we need an over-the-counter or even prescription-strength laxative.
Dr. Deutsch also doesnt shy away from sharing her own experiences. It can be TMI, but I let people know that we all deal with these problems once in a while, she says. If I dont go to the gym and I dont eat any fruits and vegetables for a week, my poop looks like something my cat would produce.
How To Prevent Constipation
The keys to preventing constipation are simple enough. You should drink adequate amounts of water. Six to eight glasses a day is a good rule.
There are many things you can do that may naturally help prevent constipation.
- Eat a well-balanced diet that includes foods high in fiber
- Drink plenty of water
- Exercise regularly
- Do not ignore the urge to have a bowel movement
Fiber is critical, because most of our stool is actually made up of bacteria, and fiber provides the bacteria a good place to grow. Sounds strange, but the interaction results in a larger volume of stool and better bowel function.
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How Do I Know It’s Hemorrhoids
If you are experiencing abnormal pains both externally and internally of your rectal wall, there are three possible culprits for this agony. First, lets identify which of these you are actually experiencing.
1. Hemorrhoids
Special hemorrhoid veins within the rectal wall and on the anus can become inflamed and engorged due to abnormal straining, pushing or downward pressure .
External swollen hemorrhoid veins can itch and cause a burning sensation.
2. Anal fissures
A completely different monster are anal fissures. They are simply tears in the anal lining, also caused by constipation, loose stools and child birth.
A tear in the lining can cause the presence of blood in the stool along with sharp and burning pain at the anal opening. I personally also experienced slight chills throughout my body upon getting an anal fissure.
3. Proctalgia Fugax
This condition is the seizing up of the muscles within the anal walls, causing extreme pressure and the urge to poop, even though there may be no actual stool present. Most that experience this have anal walls which have been thickened over time.
Having experienced this myself multiple times, it is a frustrating and very painful experience that normally hits during the night.
Feeling A Little Backed Up The Menstrual Cycle & Constipation
Another P word for you: Progesterone. Its one of the major sex hormones and it spikes during the second half of your cycle, just after ovulation, when the corpus luteum is formed out of the remnants of the ovarian follicle. From the time of ovulation until menstruation, progesterone levels gradually decrease .9
What does progesterone have to do with poop? Research shows that the hormone has a naturally constipating effect 10, especially when levels are high. This is why many women experience constipation around ovulation. Of course, it can happen during your period, as well.
If you experience constipation around or during menstruation, it might have more to do with your food choices than progesterone levels. Food cravings commonly accompany your period, possibly due to hormone fluctuations and an increase in amino acid bonds called endogenous opioid peptides .11 We fully support eating whatever youre craving but keep in mind, that double bacon cheeseburger might not register so well with your bowels.
Red meat, dairy, and fried foods some of our favorites are known to bring on constipation.12 If you were already somewhat predisposed to backing up, those indulgences could be making it worse.
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Hemorrhoids This Is The Cause Of Constipation Or Not
There are two main reasons for why hemorrhoids can cause constipation. First, because patients are afraid of defecation pain, so they would resist taking a dump. It would cause stool stay for a long time and water re-absorbed, which make the feces become dry and hard and thus lead to constipation. Second, it is prone to inflammation and infection around the anus of the hemorrhoids patients, or because of perianal itching scratch can lead to the formation of scar, resulting in anal tissue hyperplasia and stenosis. At the end it would cause poor bowel movement, and can cause constipation. That is why hemorrhoids can cause constipation.
Summary of can hemorrhoids cause constipation
Experts say the latter has a fairly high percentage of patients with a history of hemorrhoids. And IF this problem is not resolved, hemorrhoids will aggravate or relapse due to constipation. Thus, it will form a vicious circle. Similarly, the single patients with pure constipation would become refractory due to the anal stenosis after a long time history. Therefore, these patients must solve the problem of anal stenosis, or both constipation and hemorrhoids are hard to be cured. For constipation due to anal stenosis and recurrent symptoms of hemorrhoids, the better clinical surgery is the anal expansion , which is the best surgical approach to solve the poor defecation, so as to achieve good therapeutic purposes.
Can You Have Hemorrhoids Without Constipation
A lot can go wrong in that seemingly simple process, though, leading to conditions from irritable bowel syndrome and constipation to age-related maladies like hemorrhoids. absorbed by the colon walls most commonly when.
External hemorrhoids have a rich nerve supply and often present as a painful swelling, known as thrombosis. The pain typically lasts a few days and slowly subsides. Bleeding can occur once the swelling softens the blood is often dark.
Some of the problems are merely nuisances, while others are life threatening, but the one thing that can be said for certain is that none of them need be tolerated as a normal part of life. The criterion I use for deciding what is normal is that the stool should be moderately soft and easy to pass without pain or strain.
Talk to a doctor about a treatment option. Use an interactive guide.
If you often find yourself straining to poop, youre probably wondering what it does to your butt. Here, experts discuss.
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No. If they bleed, are inflamed or thrombosed , see a doc. For the time being, avoid being constipated so not having to strain on your stools. It will burn like hell for a minute, but the combination of ingredients will prevent infection and dry up the hemorrhoid pretty quickly, usually in less than a week.
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What Medications And Other Products Treat Hemorrhoids
Medications are used to control symptoms by softening the stool, decreasing the inflammation of the hemorrhoids, and treating the pain. Stool softeners work by increasing the water and fat content within the stool allowing it to be passed more easily. Docusate sodium is the most often recommended drug in this class .
Inflammation can be controlled with over-the-counter creams or suppositories. Some brand ingredients include low dose topical anesthetics to help with symptoms. Others contain astringents that help shrink the swollen tissues. Both may contain low dose steroids to decrease inflammation. People with diabetes should check with their pharmacist or health care professional before using OTC hemorrhoid treatments. If the medication contains a vasoconstrictor it may elevate blood sugar levels if absorbed in large amounts. Prescription-strength lidocaine or hydrocortisone may be offered by the health care professional.
Grade 2 and 3 hemorrhoids are initially treated the same way, using techniques to destroy hemorrhoids. These include injecting the hemorrhoid vein to make it sclerose or harden, using rubber bands to choke off the blood supply and make the hemorrhoidal tissue shrivel, or other procedures that cause the mucosa to shrivel and die.
Six Kinds Of Food Can Effectively Prevent Constipation
So, after we know the reasons why hemorrhoids cause constipation, we need to find the solution for the question of Can hemorrhoids cause constipation? How to solve the constipation so that we can prevent the hemorrhoids from burgeoning? This is a difficult assignment because if we prevent the hemorrhoids from forming successfully, then the chance of suffering constipation is less or rare for patients. So, we need to solve the problem of how to get rid of constipation firstly? Then we can get rid of hemorrhoids adversely. Lets begin with foods.
Constipation is shameful disease for many people, previously high incidence in the elderly, and now young people are also susceptible to such a disease.
After Japanese MSN Website interviewed some nutrition experts, the author pointed out that there are six categories of food that can effectively prevent constipation, patients can eat frequently.
Sesame, almonds and other foods that is rich in magnesium.
A joint study of Japan National Institute of Health Nutrition and Womens Nutrition University shows that people with low magnesium intake is easy to get constipation. Magnesium has a laxative function that can soften the feces. Adequate intake of magnesium will help purge. Magnesium-rich foods conclude peanuts, brown rice, walnuts, bananas and so on.
Pickles, fermented soy sauce and other foods that is rich in plant lactic acid bacteria.
Asparagus, onions and other foods that is rich in oligosaccharides.
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How To Treat Constipation
Diet has a big deal with hemorrhoids. you should avoid the kind of food that makes hemorrhoids worse. The first treatment that you can try to do is to drink more water in a day. You can add up three up to four glasses in a day. The next treatment that you can do is to drink warm water, especially in the morning.
Then, you can also try to eat more fruits and vegetables. The next thing that you can do is to take laxatives.
You have to be careful about consuming this. Do not drink it for more than two weeks because it can only worsen if it is not being recommended by the professional doctor. Lets jump into can hemorrhoids cause constipation.
Dont Turn The Bathroom Into A Reading Room
Think of your time in the bathroom as a necessity, not an extended escape. If your toilet has stacks of magazines or books on the water tank, consider moving them to another room. Dont take your phone into the toilet area no browsing Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter or playing games.
Why? The more time you spend on the toilet, the more likely you will strain for bowel movements. Also, the seated position puts extra stress on your anal blood vessels. Both of these factors boost your risk of hemorrhoids.
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How To Poop With A Hemorrhoid
The obvious cause of constipation while suffering from hemorrhoids would be a pain. In severe cases of swollen veins around the lower rectal and anal area, the patient would feel unbearable pain while having bowel movements. The fear of pain makes them unconsciously hold onto the stool, hence would increase the pressure inside the intestine and make the swelling even worse.
While trying to avoid the disturbing pain, the patient might develop constipation instead. The two conditions are truly a bad match for your body, for one could only make the other worse vice versa. So, patients with hemorrhoids often take painkillers to help them ease the pain during bowel movements. This could also prevent the condition from getting worse because of holding the stool.
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Complications Of Chronic Constipation
Some of the complications of chronic constipation include:
- Faecal impaction the lower bowel and rectum become so packed with faeces that the muscles of the bowels cant push any of it out.
- Faecal incontinence an overfull bowel can result in involuntary dribbling of diarrhoea.
- Haemorrhoids constant straining to open the bowel can damage the blood vessels of the rectum.
- Rectal prolapse the constant straining pushes a section of rectal lining out of the anus.
- Urinary incontinence the constant straining weakens pelvic floor muscles. This makes the involuntary passing of urine more likely, especially when coughing, laughing or sneezing.
Dietary Changes And Self Care
If constipation is thought to be the cause of your haemorrhoids, you need to keep your stools soft and regular, so that you don’t strain when passing stools.
You can do this by increasing the amount of fibre in your diet. Good sources of fibre include wholegrain bread, cereal, fruit and vegetables.
You should also drink plenty of water and avoid caffeine .
When going to the toilet, you should:
- avoid straining to pass stools, because it may make your haemorrhoids worse
- use moist toilet paper, rather than dry toilet paper, or baby wipes to clean your bottom after passing a stool
- pat the area around your bottom, rather than rubbing it
Read more about preventing constipation.
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