What Are Piles?
Piles or hemorrhoids are swollen veins in your anus or rectum. They can remain hidden inside or protrude outside looking like a lump of flesh. They are caused due to over-straining during bowel movement and can be quite painful in advanced stages. They can cause bleeding and lead to infections. It is a very common lifestyle disease, affecting about one-third of the global population.
What Causes Piles?
Technically speaking, straining irritates the veins and causes them to swell. But what irritates them? Let’s look at some causes:
- Chronic constipation
- Diarrhea
- Sitting for long periods
- Spending too much time on the toilet
- Anal intercourse
- Pregnancy or obesity that exerts pressure on the veins
- Thinning of the skin around the anus due to advanced age
- A genetic predisposition to developing piles
What Are The Symptoms Of Piles?
Watch out for the following experiences if you doubt you may have piles:
- Itching in the anal region
- Swelling in the anus
- Piles (feels like lumps or skin tags) in the anal area that hangs out or moves in with muscle contraction
- Mild to severe pain during bowel movement
- Bleeding while defecating or bloody stools
- Mucus discharge from the anus
- A feeling of fullness in the rectum
How Are Piles Treated?
There are several ways to treat piles depending on how severe the condition is. For example, in the initial stages, they can be managed with lifestyle changes and healthy toilet habits. You can eat a high-fiber diet, drink plenty of water, avoid alcohol and caffeine, avoid straining in the toilet, and spend no more than 5 minutes in the toilet.
If the condition advances to moderate, the doctor will prescribe you stool softeners, topical painkillers, and hemorrhoid creams to help soothe dryness and reduce inflammation. Plus, to soothe discomfort you can also take sitz baths.
In case your piles are severe, more aggressive treatments may be needed. For example, in a ligation procedure, the doctor will tightly tie your piles with a rubber band to cut off the blood flow that will cause them to fall out eventually.
There are two more minimally invasive procedures called sclerotherapy and infrared coagulation. They use a chemical solution and infrared light respectively to shrink the size of the piles, while lifestyle adjustment can keep the condition controlled.
Surgical intervention is reserved only for the most critical cases. In these cases, first, the tru extent of the condition is mapped using imaging tests called sigmoidoscopy and colonoscopy. These tests and any follow-up surgery are performed under general anesthesia. The doctor will surgically cut out any growths on the inside (hemorrhoidectomy) and then staple the blood vessels (stapler surgery) so that piles cannot reoccur. If the eternal piles are too bothersome, they can also be cut out surgically in a procedure called thrombectomy. However, the recovery after this procedure is notoriously known for being painful, so doctors only suggest this as a last resort.
Those who get piles once run the risk of developing them again in the future. So, it is crucially important to maintain healthy eating and toilet-going habits to mitigate the risk.
