"Health Articles"

Using digestive enzymes when you have hemorrhoids is a good idea. Digestive enzymes help reduce inflammation, reduce fibrin, and clean the blood of foreign particles. These enzymes activities strengthen your immune system and give it more power to work on your hemorrhoids.

Bromelain

Bromelain is a digestive enzyme that is found in pineapple. It’s capable of reducing inflammation and swelling and for this reason has been used to treat hemorrhoids.

Bromelain also activates a chemical that promotes the breakdown of fibrin. Fibrin is a chemical that repairs open wounds, internal wounds and weak tissue by creating fibrin deposits. If you are over 35, fibrin is not balanced with your body’s enzymes. This results in excess fibrin deposits at inflamed locations, eventually causing more sickness and disease. Disease.

To balance and control excess fibrin activity, you need to take digestive or systemic enzymes. Systemic enzymes are enzymes that work throughout the body to attack blood impurities and dissolve fibrin.

As a supplement take 500-750 mg a day. You can also add fresh pineapple to your diet since it is high in fiber and other nutrients.

Digestive and Systemic Enzymes

Digestive enzymes are used to help you digest your food and improve your assimilation. Systemic enzymes are found deep into our body. They are in your tissues, organs, and cells where they help in all types of chemical reactions that your body is involved in.

Both types of these enzymes are available in capsules so you can easily supplement your diet. Digestive enzymes help to reduce the stress you get in the rectum when your food is not properly digested. Undigested food reaching the colon eventually leads to constipation.

Take a good digestive enzyme that you can get at health food store. Take 2 capsules with each meal.

Systemic enzymes help reduce swelling, inflammation, improve circulation, and speed the healing of tissue. One important fact about systemic enzymes is they eliminate fibrin, which is at center of most inflammatory conditions and illness.

Take systemic enzymes between meals. This allows them reach the small intestine and get absorbed into the blood stream where they can do their work.

Some systemic enzymes are enteric enzymes, which means they are coated so they will not dissolve in the stomach. This allows them to move into the small intestine where they will be absorbed into your blood stream.

The brand Vitalzyme contains serrapeptase, a systemic enzyme that is mix with other nutrients and enzymes. Just put Vitalzyme or serrapeptase into the goggle engine. This will bring in a flood of sites for you to chose a good systemic enzyme.

Comfrey Herbal Salve

Here is an herbal combination that contains herbs that promote the healing of skin wounds and blood vessel, is antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, soothing, and antiitching.

Here is what is in it:

* Comfrey root
* St. John’s Wort flower and bud
* Calendula flower
* Plantain leaf
* Chickweed herb
* Mullein leaf

Here’s how to use it:

Clean the area where you want to apply the salve. Apply the salve to the anus or slightly into the rectum by rubbing to soften the salve. This application can be done at night so you get a good dose of this salve as it passes through the skin. Use for 6 days, then rest one day. Use for 6 week, then rest one-week.

When using any kind of salve and herbal extracts, keep them in the refrigerator. This keeps them fresh and gives your hemorrhoids a “cool relief ” feeling.

Veri-Gone salve

Veri-Gone is a salve that was made for varicose veins and has been used for general cases of hemorrhoids.

* Witch Hazel
* Echinacea Extract
* Calendula Extract
* Chamomile essential oil
* Alcohol
* Distilled water

Here’s a link where you can find this salve. This site has variety of salve formulations.

http://oldetimersherbals.com/salves.htm

Ghee - Turmeric Salve

Here’s a Ghee mixture that is listed in, New Choices in Natural Healing, 1995, by prevention magazine health books.

Combine 1 teaspoon of ghee with 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric powder. Apply some of this mixture onto your hemorrhoids just before you go to bed.

Here’s how to use it:

* Apply it for 3 nights in a row
* Stop for two nights
* Resume for three nights
* Continue this cycle until your hemorrhoids are gone

Wear old clothes when you use this combination since the turmeric will stain your clothes. The discoloration on your skin will clear after two-three weeks or sooner.

Zinc Oxide Ointment

Zinc Oxide is readily available in a drugstore or throughout the Internet. It is useful in reducing hemorrhoids symptoms, since it is astringent, antiseptic, and antibacterial.

Zinc oxide will keep the area dry from moisture and will help to reduce itching and chafing. Use it as often as you like and, of course, when you go to bed.

Pilewort Ointment

Pilewort is an herb that has a history of being used for hemorrhoids. It is a fast acting hemorrhoid remedy. It is an astringent, tones the blood vessels, and stops bleeding. You can use it as frequent as you like. Just apply to the anal area.

Do not take pilewort internally.

Calendula Ointment

Calendula flower has been extensive used in China to heal hemorrhoids. It has a soothing effect and reduces inflammation. Its other characteristics are,

Antibacterial
Analgesic
Antiseptic
Astringent
hemostatic (stops bleeding)
styptic (contracts blood vessels)

Calendula ointment helps to form new tissue and for that reason is used for cuts, burns and other skin disorders. Apply the ointment directly on your hemorrhoids. Use it daily and as often as you like.

To relieve hemorrhoids first look for ways to get your bowels moving easier and more frequently so they produce softer stools. I have suggestion ways, in other articles, to do this by changing your diet.

Any straining and puffing you do to push hard or even soft stools out during a bowel movement will aggravate your hemorrhoids and can lead to bleeding and pain.

When completing a bowel movement, make sure you are using the softest tissue available so that when you clean yourself you don’t scrape or aggravate your hemorrhoids. You can also use pre-moisten tissue. Just make sure that the tissue you use is not colored or scented because these chemical additives can aggravate your hemorrhoids.

You may have to take a shower a couple times a day to keep your rectum area clean.

Here are three natural remedies that you can use to aid in eliminating your hemorrhoids.

Aloe Vera

Aloe Vera gel is an astringent that helps to heal open wounds. It is useful in hemorrhoids by applying the gel directly onto your anus. The best type of gel for this is directly from the aloe plant. If you don’t have one, then 100% organic whole leaf aloe gel is second best. You can get this organic aloe at a health food or nutrition store.

If you have a fresh plant, wash a leaf thoroughly with distilled water. Peel it on one side, bend it with the peeled side outward, and slip it into your anus. This will provide you with pain relief and reduce your hemorrhoid bleeding. Just trim down the leaf so it slides into your anus easily.

Aloe Vera juice, that you drink, is also good for hemorrhoids. It helps to soften your stools and to activate peristaltic action. If you like aloe juice, then drink around 1/2 a cup of Aloe Vera juice three time a day.

You can add 1/4 or 1/3 part aloe juice to a cup of apple juice to make the taste easier to handle. To make this aloe-apple juice more effective, add 10 drops of barberry extract.

Barberry is an astringent for blood vessel congestion along the colon and rectum. It will improve blood circulation; it stimulates the immune system to resist disease, and will tone body tissues. It also is capable of stopping bleeding hemorrhoids.

Bilberry

Bilberry’s active ingredients are flavanoids. Bilberry contains chemical called “anthocyanosides.” This fruit like herb has been used in Europe for a long time. In clinical studies, it has shown to be effective in treating weak capillaries by strengthening their walls.

Buy the 25% standardized formula and take 100 mg three times a day of bilberry. Bilberry will give you hemorrhoid relief.

Butcher’s Broom

Butcher’s broom, an evergreen bush, has a history of being used for varicose veins and hemorrhoids. As an extract, it contains “ruscogenins”, which can narrow blood vessels and decrease their inflammation and swelling. It strengthens and tones veins and capillary walls.

Take 100 mg of butcher’s broom three times a day. Use the type that has 9-11% ruscogenins.

Now you can use either of the three herbal remedies for hemorrhoid relief. If one is not working to good, try the other. Once you have gotten the hemorrhoid relief that you want stop using the herbal remedy.

A lot of people don’t even know they have hemorrhoids. The rectum is not an area you can readily see. Some times you don’t know you have hemorrhoids until you see blood in the toilet water after a bowel movement, when you start to have pain or discomfort in the rectum, or when you feel extra tissue around the rectum.

So how do you develop hemorrhoids? For sure, constipation is not the only way you can get hemorrhoids. Here are some additional ways:

Alcoholism or drinking to many alcoholic drinks

Being pregnant and not eating enough fiber

Doing daily heavy lifting and holding your breath while you do it

Eating excessive processed foods, which are low in fiber and move slowly through your colon.

General body weakness, which will affect the colon function

Having a predisposition to constipation or inheriting a weakness in the colon and rectum area * Holding fecal matter too long in the rectum causing pressure to buildup in the rectum veins - postponing a bowel movement

Having a weak liver, which reduces the amount of bile released into the intestines. Bile helps to active peristaltic action.

Having inflammation in the rectum that causes you to have constipation

Irregular eating patterns

Lack of protein leading to weak tissues and slow healing of wounds

Not eating foods that keeps you constipation free such as fiber, vegetables, essential fatty acids, protein, water.

Not getting the right vitamins and minerals in your food.

Being overweight

Poor muscle tone in the anal area from lack of exercise

Pressure on rectum veins from cysts or tumor in the colon

Sitting in a chair at home, at work, in a car, or in a truck for long periods

Using laxatives to the point where your colon no longer works properly and you end up with constipation
As you can see there are many reasons that you can develop hemorrhoids. And most of them relate to the function of your colon. If you want hemorrhoid relief look at the list and see which condition or situation relates to you and try to make changes in these conditions. In addition to changes add new foods that will help your colon to work better.

There are many drugstore and alternative Internet products for treating hemorrhoids. Most of the products are not made to cure or eliminate hemorrhoids but to give you temporary relief of itching, pain, swelling or bleeding. I don’t recommend using any type of product that is not natural or that comes from a drugstore.

If the product contains petrochemicals, additives, coloring, dyes, or other chemicals, which enhance its appearance and feel, I would not use them. Most, if not all, of these chemicals will be absorbed into your body where your organs of elimination will have to deal with eliminating them.

All products whether drugs, drugstore medications, or natural formulations use chemicals, substances, oils, and herbs that have the following properties:

Anesthetics – suppresses pain and gives relief…any name with the suffix “caine” like tetracaine

Analgesics – suppresses and give pain relief – some of them are Anacin, Tylenol with Codeine, OxyContin, Darvocet, Ultracet

Vasoconstrictors – helps to narrow or constrict hemorrhoidal veins…any name with the suffix “rine” like phenylephrine

Lubricants – provide lubrication in the colon to relieve constipation – mineral oil, flax seed oil, castor, oil olive oil

Astringents – help to tighten tissue, which have been pushed out by hemorrhoid action – zinc oxide, witch hazel, calamine

Keratolytics – help to remove excess hemorrhoidal tissue. They are compounds of sulfur and salicylic acid
Many of the drugstore medications have anesthetics. They can aggravate and irritate the hemorrhoids you’re trying to eliminate. If you are using one of these drugstore medications, consider using a more natural remedy.

In 1975 Carl I. Flath, wrote a book called The Miracle Nutrient – How Dietary Fiber Can Save Your Life. In his book he talks about the effectiveness of drugstore suppositories,

“Suppositories quickly work their way up in the rectum beyond the location of most internal hemorrhoids, and so are of limited value in reducing local pain. As antiseptics they are essentially worthless, since the surface areas they are supposed to protect are under constant exposure to new bacteria….

Anesthetic agents do offer temporary relief from local irritations and pain… Neither the suppositories nor the ointments, however, do anything whatever to correct the basic cause of hemorrhoids—constipation.”

Constipation, Hemorrhoids or Piles, and inactivity go hand in hand. If you have been constipated for quite a while, chances are you have hemorrhoids. If you are inactive because you just like sitting around or are confined to a bed or chair, then you will have constipation and hemorrhoids.

So if you want to get rid of hemorrhoids, you need to take 3 steps. These three steps can be done at the same time, especially if you have hemorrhoids that are itchy, painful, and are in need of attention.

First you need to do something about your hemorrhoids. There are many different natural remedies for reducing, relieving, and eliminating hemorrhoids. Since everyone is different in his or her chemical make-up and nutritional requirements, one remedy will not work for everyone.

Each of you has to find out what remedy works best for you. Use the remedy that feels right for you, the remedy where you have the ingredients, or that one based on the severity of your hemorrhoids.

Here’s one remedy you can try - Collinsonia Root Powder Collinsonia is a vegetable, known as “Stone Root” because of it hardness. It comes in powder and liquid. Stone Root is found in Canada and in Florida. It has been found quite helpful in aiding hemorrhoids.

Linda Clark in her book called, Linda Clark’s Handbook of natural remedies for common ailments, 1976, says this about collinsonia root. “I have heard people rave enthusiastically about the results of this remedy, which works quickly.” It’s benefits come from,

Supporting blood vessel contractions and flow

Reducing irritation and inflammation of veins

Providing a tonic effect on weaken veins, capillaries, and tissue

Improving digestion

Helping to keep mucus membranes healthy
Secondly, you need to do something about becoming regular and to eliminate mild or chronic constipation. To start with, do these simple changes in your diet.

Eat fruits as a snack between meals – oranges, apples, bananas, prunes, grapefruits, mangos, watermelon, grapes, cherries.

Stop eating bread, flour products, milk, sodas, back off on eating a lot of protein.

Eat a few serving of vegetables during the day – green lettuce, celery, carrots, and so on

Drink at least 2-3 glasses of water every day or drink more water than you normally do.
The third thing you need to do is add some exercise to your daily routine. It can be any thing as long it is something you like and you do it regularly – walking, swimming, or rebounding. Don’t over exercise; all you need is 10 – 20 minutes per day.

There you have it, the threes step to getting rid of hemorrhoids – a hemorrhoid natural remedy, a slight change in your diet, and 10 minutes of daily exercise that you like.

Hemorrhoids occur when the veins is the rectum become swollen and cause irritation. Hemorrhoids, in most instances, are a minor medical problem. They can be uncomfortable and painful and can cause much embarrassment to the sufferer. However, they are easy to treat and are often cured without too much pain.

Hemorrhoids are often referred to as piles, a term that is applied to a number of different conditions of the anal canal. Most commonly, however, it refers to hemorrhoids. It is also used to describe anal fissures or tears, clotted external hemorrhoids, and flaps of extra skin or skin tags on the anus.

The rectum is connected to the outside by a short tube called the anal canal which is the last part of the large intestine. The first part of this canal is lined with mucous membrane and the latter part is lined with skin which is very sensitive to pain. This canal is circled by a ring of muscle which is tightly contracted but relaxes to allow a bowel movement. This muscle is called the anal sphincter.

Hemorrhoids can be internal or external. Internal hemorrhoids are in the higher part of the anal canal. The veins swell and continue to increase in size over a period of years. They may be caused by prolonged straining to pass bowel motions and can be exacerbated by pregnancy. They are usually characterized by bright red bleeding that occurs at the end of passing a motion and they are usually relatively painless. If the hemorrhoids become bigger, they may come out of the anal canal and can be quite painful because of being strangulated or squeezed by a tight anal canal.

An anal fissure is a split in the anal canal, possibly caused by straining when constipated. This causes extreme pain when passing bowel motions and may be so bad that the person fears passing a motion. Often, these fissures heal of their own accord but sometimes a minor operation may be required.

External piles or hemorrhoids are caused when a blood vessel bursts just under the surface of the skin near the edge of the anal canal causing severe pain during and after the passing of a bowel motion. Sometime later, a painful lump appears that becomes red, sore, and inflamed. These are sometimes referred to as thrombosed piles.

Skin tags around the anal canal are not uncommon or painful but can cause problems with personal hygiene. They are often diagnosed and treated as external hemorrhoids but treatment is not really required.

Another condition that is sometimes wrongfully diagnosed as hemorrhoids is a condition known as anal fistula. The main symptom is a discharge of fluid, often like pus, but there is seldom much pain, bleeding or a lump. This condition usually appears as a result of an abscess in the lining of the anal canal, causing an abnormal connection between the outer skin of the anal canal and the inside of the canal. This causes secretions to leak out through the rectum. Treatment of internal hemorrhoids can take several different forms. They can be injected with a substance that makes them shrivel up if they are only small. Another method of treatment is by shrinking the hemorrhoids through a process of freezing, using a cryoprobe. Yet another method is to apply tiny rubber bands to cut off the supply of blood to the hemorrhoids.

There are some home treatments that are worth noting as they can be very helpful. These are taking a warm bath with a handful of salt dissolved in it if the hemorrhoids prolapse or appear externally as lumps. Alternatively, if the hemorrhoids become strangulated, you can apply a plastic bag of crushed ice to the enlarged hemorrhoids to ease the pain.

A diet high in fibre is very important to keep the gastrointestinal system working well and to avoid the discomfort of hemorrhoids as well as assisting in the general wellbeing of your body.