Originally published October 21 2005
Hemorrhoids can be controlled with fiber laxatives
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Research suggests that 50 percent of Americans have hemorrhoids at some time in their life, most commonly between the ages of 20 and 50, and the condition can be relieved using fiber laxatives.
Laxatives in the form of fiber may help ease symptoms of hemorrhoids, especially bleeding, researchers report.
Hemorrhoids are swollen blood vessels in the rectum.
Some lie far enough inside the rectum that they don't hurt and aren't visible.
Others lie within the anus and are usually painful.
About half of people in the U.S. will have them at some point.
Most people are affected sometime between ages 20 and 50.
Hemorrhoids usually aren't a serious medical problem, but they can be painful.
They often are a cause of rectal bleeding.
More serious conditions (such as colon cancer and diverticulosis) can also cause bleeding.
See a doctor to rule out those problems.
"The initial approach is to increase the amount of water and fiber in the diet, or to introduce a laxative," write Pablo Alonso-Coello and colleagues in The Cochrane Library.
Alonso-Coello works at the Iboamerican Cochrane Centre at the Hospital de la Santa Creu I Sant Pau in Barcelona, Spain.
Surgery can also be done to treat more severe hemorrhoids.
Each study compared fiber laxatives with no treatment (placebos).
The laxatives contained fiber in various forms.
The reviewers found a "beneficial effect of laxatives in the form of fiber for improving symptoms of hemorrhoids, especially bleeding."
The patients who took fiber laxatives were about half as likely to have persistent symptoms as those who got the placebos.
There was no clear pattern for other symptoms, such as itching, pain, and prolapse (in which hemorrhoids slip down and out of the anal canal).
Most patients had relatively mild symptoms, the reviewers note.
"While fiber might also be effective in people with more advanced states of hemorrhoidal disease, this remains largely unaddressed," they write.
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