Hemorrhoids can be controlled with 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.