1. Find the Cause
If rectal bleeding is due to hemorrhoids, there are several ways to treat this situation. You may want to seek the help and advice of a physician as to whether or not surgical removal of these varicose veins is needed to stop the bleeding.
If surgical intervention is not warranted or desired at this point in time, you’ll want to evaluate lifestyle aspects to help reduce the potential for bleeding from this area. Be sure you have adequate water or fluid intake. This helps promote softer stools that are easier to pass. Straining can irritate fragile vessel walls causing them to bleed. Proper hydration helps to maintain adequate levels of water in the stool, thus reducing the need to strain from hard stools.
Obesity also plays an important role in the cause of rectal bleeding, because of the increased pressure exerted on the rectal veins by the added weight accumulation.
Other potential causes of rectal bleeding may not actually be from the rectum at all. One example of this would be bleeding gastric ulcers. In the instance, by the time the blood reaches the rectum and eventually outside the body, it is a very dark brown, "coffee-ground" color and texture. Other potential causes could be diverticulitis, intestinal tumors, severe colitis and ulcers in the duodenum portion of the small intestine.
2. Change Your Dietary Habits
Diets that are proportionately higher in fiber and water content produce softer stool formation. Consequently, maintaining these high levels helps produce fecal material that is easier to pass, and much less irritating and pressure-inducing that harder, drier formed stool.
Vegetable consumption, as well as consuming many fruits, can fulfill your daily fiber requirements in a healthy, tasty manner and also serve to promote bowel motility and soften stool. Salads, fruits and vegetables enhance good food consumption habits and are also useful in hydrating and softening stool.
3. Look for Supplemental Help
Use topical steroids to decrease inflammation that can stimulate bleeding. When hemorrhoidal veins around the rectum become swollen and irritated, they become much more susceptible to tearing and bleeding. Steroid creams and pads decrease swelling and inflammation, thus promoting healing of the veins.
Rectal bleeding can also be treated with the use of suppositories that may or may not contain steroids. Insertion of these suppositories can allow for the placement of medication in direct contact with the inflamed vessel tissue.
Believe it or not, bowel and toilet habits can play a role in rectal bleeding. Too much time spent on the toilet can result in a significant increase in venous pressure in the hemorrhoidal veins, causing them to leak or even bleed openly. Frequent trips to the bathroom with prolonged stays on the toilet are recipes for increased risks of bleeding.
4. Surgical Removal may be Necessary
If all conservative measures fail to significantly reduce or stop rectal bleeding, surgical removal of the offending tissue may be necessary. If this becomes the case, advice from a qualified surgeon is needed.
There are several different procedures that can be employed in the removal of bleeding tissue, which is mainly from hemorrhoids. They can range from “banding” of the veins, using special small rubber bands placed over the veins to occlude them, causing them to clot off and stop bleeding, to formal surgical excision. Another procedure that can be used is the formal hemorrhoidectomy. This procedure involves the actual surgical excision of the veins themselves. They are removed as well as the "beds" where they originate, and are sutured closed.
A word of caution; surgical intervention and removal of hemorrhoidal veins is basically a curative procedure, for the problem at hand. Failure to augment this treatment type with proper dietary and bowel and toilet habit changes can increase the potential for recurrence of additional varicose hemorrhoidal veins.
5. Get the Right Diagnosis
To adequately treat rectal bleeding, regardless of the cause, it is imperative that the causative factor(s) be established so that proper treatment can be implemented.
Several diagnostic studies are available to help find the answers, such as colonoscopy, which is a very frequently performed procedure, and should be performed on everyone over the age of fifty. Various x-rays studies are also utilized, such as barium enemas in which liquid material is inserted into the rectum and intestinal tract to look for ulcers and tumors.
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