How long do hemorrhoids last? When will hemorrhoids / hemroids / piles go away? When will it all be over?

1. What your body does to heal

Your body has very advanced and rather beautiful ways of looking after itself, and the natural healing process is one of them.

The parts of your body that look after the immediate response to injury or infection is referred to as the immune system, although its quite a nebulous system that doesn’t exactly sit in one place like the gastrointestinal system does.

Because the immune system is comprised of the white blood cells as well as a lymphatic system of nodes, it moves round the body to where it is needed.

When an area is damaged, the cells in it release different chemicals to the ones they normally release - alarm bells, in essence.

These alarm bells attract the cells of the immune system as well as changing the properties of the tissue near the injury, usually in ways that allow the white blood cells to get there faster.

There are many different types of white blood cell, all with different properties.

Some specialize in eating bacteria, some in secreting chemicals that promote healing, some in removing dead or damaged cells, but either way, they congregate in the damaged area and do their stuff.

You can usually see or feel this as swelling, accompanied by a feeling of heat, perhaps pain or itching, and the area usually becomes infused with blood and red.

So if your piles are red, itchy, sore and inflamed, although that is a signal something isn’t right, it’s also the body’s natural response to that damage, and it’s part of what it does to set it right.

Cells are very specific in their needs, and one such need is the temperature they can live at.

Ours are quite happy at body temperature, but they actually work slightly more efficiently at a slightly higher one - this is why damaged areas get hot, or why you get a fever when you have an infection.

It’s a deliberate thing your body does.

It doesn’t do that all the time because that wouldn’t be an efficient use of its resources, it saves it for emergencies.

Piles are no exception to the rule.

All that heat, swelling and tenderness is partly nature’s way of telling you to leave the area alone for a bit so it can get on with getting better.

The problem is that it doesn’t quite work for piles:

• You can’t really leave your anus alone, you regularly need to use it for defecation.
• And if you do manage to stop going to the loo, you’ll just end up constipated, which is an important cause of piles, so you’ll probably just make things worse!

The damage in piles is caused by the veins in the rectum getting stretched out of shape from within by having too much blood in them over long periods of time, blood that is forced in when you strain at stool, for example, or blood pushed there from somewhere else in the case of pregnancy or portal hypertension.

Once that damage is done, the body can repair it but it takes a long time, several months at best, because the veins can’t shut down to let the repair process work.

Like a busy rail terminal, if you completely close it down to fix it, you almost cause more problems than you fix!

It’s not an option for blood supply, you cant shut it down without killing tissue and cells etc.

Skin is a very dynamic tissue, and grows in response signals from the tissues it covers.

Pressure is one such signal - if something, like a swollen vein, presses against the skin from below, it will grow to contain that pressure.

That is why some piles have skin covering them - you body is keen to protect them from the outside world.

Remember, though, that the damage has been caused to the vein by something else, and if you can remove the cause (better diet, end of pregnancy, whatever it is), your piles will start to get better.

Piles are not like a cut or scrape, you can’t ignore them and let the body get rid of them on its own.

You will probably need to take action on piles yourself.

2. Pile Treatments and what to expect

First important point - most mild cases of piles, if left entirely alone, will disappear without further intervention within a couple of days.

They may come back later, but if it’s a mild case you should not worry and you probably don’t need to treat them other than considering lifestyle changes.

Mostly, though, piles are a chronic (a long term) problem, and in most cases, that means a long term solution.

The best, recommended treatment for most cases of piles in the west remains treating them through dietary and lifestyle changes.

It is likely that if you change to eating a healthy, high-fibre diet and get regular gentle exercise, you will experience an improvement in the state of your piles within two weeks, and you could expect a total cure after about six months.

That is the bottom line - there is no quick fix without resort to surgery, and that is never the first line of treatment unless there’s a crisis going on.

If it’s detailed information on what each treatment is, I suggest you look through the rest of this website, where you’ll find more specifics than I’m going to go into here.

This is going to be information on when you should expect a treatment to start working, along with a short consideration on what you should expect it to do, but it will be broad strokes. This is simply because there are so many different treatments that I can’t cover all of them in exact detail, and I don’t want to miss any!

Always, if in doubt, read the label. It should explain how long you should take the medication for and what to do if it doesn’t work.

So here is a very broad consideration of the other different treatments of piles.

1. Symptomatic Treatments.

This refers to any kind of treatment that looks after the symptoms of piles.

I would include anaesthetics, lubricants and some astringents and vasoconstrictors in this category, but also sitz baths and pile cushions.

All of them act in the short term to reduce pain and swelling in your pile.

A good example would be ibuprofen, a painkiller that reduces the pain you feel as well as reducing swelling.

These are good because they usually start working as soon as you apply or take the treatment.

Ibuprofen, for example, can be taken as a tablet or applied directly to the skin as a gel, and will start dulling the pain within a matter of minutes. They give you quick relief, which is vital to help you get through your day.

Symptomatic treatments do not treat the cause of piles, only the symptoms of them that you experience.

That doesn’t mean they won’t help them go away, exactly - if a painkiller helps you poo without pain, it helps ease your constipation and that will have a beneficial effect on your piles. But alone, they aren’t acting directly on the pile to cure it or make it go away, so if your piles are a long term problem, you need to consider what else you can do.

Check through the general advice I’ve given above, and make sure your medication is doing what it says it will, and always follow the instructions on the label.

2. Combined Treatments

Some herbal remedies or over the counter medicines contain a mix of different active ingredients that not only help boost the body’s healing process with vitamins, but also strengthen the veins, reduce swelling and discomfort and may also help you bowel move easily and regularly too.

Many of them promise instant relief on the label or on their website, and it may be that you will get instant relief.

But maybe that’s all you’ll get - check to see what the product says it will do.

Relief is not the same as a cure.

3. Surgeries

Whether surgery for a straight removal of a pile, or tying one off so it dies from the lack of blood supply, injecting it with a chemical that collapses it, surgery is the only direct intervention that will immediately remove a pile.

By instant, I’m not including the waiting for the operation, the time taken out of your life by having to hang about in day surgery or the (usually very brief) recovery!

There may be some temporary side effects, such as the tenderness of the wound where the pile has been snipped off, but these are usually minimal, and you’ll usually be offered appropriate painkillers and advice to deal with them.

But yet again, although surgery will cure a specific pile, it is not a cure for whatever is causing you to get piles - although your immediate problem is gone, the long term one will probably remain.

The home treatment of hemorrhoids:

There are three pages on this site that you should read before leaving:

1... To treat your existing hemorrhoids, the page on how to treat hemorrhoids offers some wonderful treatments that should bring you relief and help heal you of those existing hemorrhoids. It offers you hope. So why not check out the page and see the before and after photos and then make your own mind up?

2... The page on hemorrhoid causes is likely the most important page we have to offer you, as it truely allows you to see what may be causing your hemorrhoids. Yes, you can go for an operation, but there is a good chance you will need another and another. So what's the point of that? Isn't it better to learn a little about your hemorrhoids and prevent them instead?

3... The page on hemorrhoids diet will give you a wealth of information and recipes to help resolve your hemorrhoids and might I add a 4th page on foods to avoid with hemorrhoids? Yes, there are foods that if consumed do definitely run you the risk of hemorrhoid flare ups and constipation.