Hemorrhoids Health Video

Video Transcript

JUSTIN C. K. DAVIS: Hi! I'm Dr. Justin Davis and today I'm going to tell you about the condition called hemorrhoids. Hemorrhoid also known as piles is a condition that describes when the vein around the rectum or anus becomes swollen, engorged, and inflamed. Hemorrhoids, while often embarrassing topic for many, is actually a very common condition and generally by the age 50, most people will have experienced the unpleasant condition of hemorrhoids at least once in their life. Hemorrhoids can be broken down into two main types. There's internal hemorrhoid and there's external hemorrhoid. Internal hemorrhoids occur inside the rectum and are often less painful or difficult to feel but may cause more symptoms of bleeding. On the other hand, external hemorrhoids are often the ones that cause more irritating symptoms like pain and itching and tend to be more visible or palpable, meaning you can feel them. The major causes of both types of hemorrhoids are things that cause blood to go down and go into those veins in that area. So this will be increased pressure to the area which can be a caused often by straining of bowel movements but also other conditions such as pregnancy, jobs that cause you to sit for a long periods of time, or certain kinds of trauma like can be experienced with anal intercourse for example. The symptoms of hemorrhoids well again, for the internal hemorrhoids primarily the symptoms will be bleeding that you may notice particularly after having a bowel movement, you may noticed a little bit of blood in the toilet or on the bowel movement itself, or in your undergarments afterward. Sometimes there can be some pain involved with this but usually not so much. Occasionally, also, if there is sufficient pressure, an internal hemorrhoid can actually be pushed out of the anal sphincter and become an external hemorrhoid. On the other hand, external hemorrhoids, the main symptoms as many of you may have experienced is that sort of chronic itching and irritation, and sometimes extreme pain and discomfort as well. Particularly, there's a condition known as a thrombosed hemorrhoid where in an external hemorrhoid, it actually gets a blood clot in it and this can be extremely painful condition. Treatment for hemorrhoids is aimed first at preventing them so if there's something that you are doing that you know that you can stop for example, straining with bowel movements then that's a good way to prevent it, so a normal healthy diet, high in fiber and lots of fluids, can help you to have normal bowel habits which can prevent hemorrhoids. Additionally, its important that you don't want to strain so when you know that you have to have a bowel movement, don't wait when you have the urge, go ahead and its also you've seen sometimes your grandfather sitting for a long time on the pot with a newspaper reading, well actually well this may relax you and help you to have a bowel movement, because of this prolonged sitting position it can actually make the condition worse and make you more likely to have hemorrhoids, so you want to be relaxed but you don't want to spend and excessive amount of time on the toilet. Other treatment for hemorrhoids if you have an external hemorrhoid that has thrombosed, so has that blood clot and is a very painful, if you present to your doctor in a timely fashion, we can actually take out, remove that blood clot and that instantly will relieve a lot of the pain of the hemorrhoid. For chronic hemorrhoids, there are many different ways to deal with them. Probably the simplest which many of you have tried are the over-the-counter remedies such as those pads or witch hazel which you can apply, which can temporally helped with some of the symptoms until the hemorrhoid goes away by itself. There's also prescription medicines such as cortisone creams that doctors can prescribe for you that may help as well. For people that have more chronic problems with the hemorrhoids or don't like how they look or feel, there are certain kinds of injections or phototherapy or even surgeries where they can actually be removed or small little bands can be placed around the base of the hemorrhoid which will make it eventually fall off. There are a lot of potential treatments for hemorrhoids so there's no need to suffer needlessly with the symptoms of hemorrhoids. Now the one thing to keep in mind is that if you know for certain you have a hemorrhoid then there's no harm in trying first some of the over-the-counter medication and seeing that this helps a lot of times hemorrhoids will come and go. However, if it's a new symptom and you are not sure exactly what it is or if there is any kind of rectal bleeding, this is very important to notify your physician of because there are some other kinds of conditions that are more dangerous that can cause rectal bleeding so if it been diagnosed by your physician as an internal hemorrhoid, nothing to worry about but until then, make sure you let somebody know.