Hemorrhoids Prevention and Relief

Preventing hemorrhoids (also haemorrhoids or piles) is largely a matter of reducing or eliminating as many of the causal factors as possible. For milder cases at least, preventative measures can also help to reduce hemorrhoids that have already developed, and will also help more aggressive treatments to be effective. Once your hemorrhoids have gone, continuing to avoid or minimize the causal factors will help to prevent recurrence.

Diet for Hemorrhoids

Eating a healthy, balanced diet will go a long way to reduce many of the factors that contribute to hemorrhoid development:

Eat plenty of dietary fiber, such as fruits, vegetables and cereals. This will keep your stools soft, your gut functioning normally and help avoid constipation. Eating fruit in particular has extra benefits for avoiding hemorrhoids.
Drink sufficient fluids to keep yourself well hydrated. This will also help keep your stools soft and avoid constipation. The fluids don’t have to be water, but drinks containing caffeine or alcohol are less effective than those that don’t. Moist foods also make a valuable contribution.
Women who experience painful stools around the time of menstruation should increase their fiber and fluids intake a couple of days ahead of that time.
Avoid excessive consumption of caffeine and alcohol. Both can cause diarrhea and have adverse effects on blood pressure.
Don’t consume too much salt. This will help to avoid high blood pressure.
Foods considered ‘probiotic’, such as yoghurt with active culture, can help to keep the gut functioning correctly.

Weight Control

Maintaining your weight at a healthy level will reduce your risk of developing high blood pressure, and therefore remove it as a cause for hemorrhoid development. If you are overweight then you should take steps to reduce your weight to a healthy level. This essentially means adjusting the balance between your energy (calorie) intake (as food) and consumption (by being active) so that you consume more energy than you eat. Your body will then use its energy reserves in the form of fat to make up the difference and you will lose weight.

A weight loss program therefore involves two main techniques that can be used individually or in combination:

Reducing your energy intake, by switching to lower-calorie foods or simply eating less.
Increasing your energy consumption, by becoming more active and getting more exercise, which will improve your overall level of fitness too.

Weight loss by this method is most effective when the imbalance between intake and consumption is only moderate. If your energy intake is too much lower than your rate of consumption your body will go into ‘starvation’ mode and attempt to conserve its fat reserves by reducing its consumption of energy. Your rate of weight loss will therefore be lower than if the level of imbalance weren’t so great. This leads to the counterintuitive situation where eating a bit more actually accelerates your rate of weight loss!

You should therefore carefully monitor your own weight at regular intervals and adjust your energy intake and/or consumption accordingly to maintain an adequate downward trend. However, you shouldn’t try to lose weight too quickly; doing so could be too much of a shock to your system and be harmful. Those who are significantly overweight, and therefore really do need to lose weight fairly quickly, should take professional advice on how to achieve this safely.

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