External hemorrhoids can be someone's worst nightmare. A socially unacceptable health problem, external hemorrhoids itch, burn, hurt, and generally cause misery to over ten million people per year. A rather simple health problem, their medical description does not begin to describe the pain and embarrassment they can inflict, but external hemorrhoids are one of the few cases where home remedies are usually the best ones.

External hemorrhoids are caused by vein enlargement on the outside of the anal canal. In other words, they start outside the body, right on a sensitive nerve band that controls the anal sphincter. This location is what makes them such a miserable problem. They are frequently caused by internal abdominal pressure that places the large anal veins under too much force to bear. This abdominal pressure can usually be traced back to pregnancy, constipation, heavy lifting or extensive periods of sitting, so the first thing to do after getting pain relief is to find out exactly which of these exists in your life and how to eliminate them.

Of course, first you have to get the pain down to the point of being able to think beyond the unhelpful expression of "ow." Fortunately, there are many easily available ways to do that. Towel-wrapped icepacks and ibuprofen are generally good places to start, as most people have those in their homes. Taking a warm, plain water sitzbath for twenty minutes at a time three times a day is another easy and cheap home remedy. Once you can get to a pharmacy, all of the hemorrhoid creams in existence were made with you in mind, so look for one that has lidocaine or benzocaine on the label. These are topical anesthetics, which start their numbing action as soon as they come into contact with your skin. There are multiple other ingredients that can be used to treat external hemorrhoids, so feel free to ask your pharmacist which would be best for your particular situation and problem.

To cure external hemorrhoids, usually changes in lifestyle are the first place to start. If you sit for extended periods of time, establish a routine by which you get up and walk around for a few minutes every two hours or so. If heavy lifting is a problem, try learning better methods by which to lift and remember to use a weight belt. If pregnancy is the issue at hand, well, there's not much that can be done about that as it will fix itself in the fullness of time, so distract yourself by decorating the nursery and focus on eliminating any other factors from your life. In all of the above cases, eliminating any possibility of constipation is important, so add fiber rich foods like whole grains, beans, and fresh fruits and vegetables to your diet while increasing your water consumption to the recommended eight glasses per day. Adding light exercise to your regime can be quite helpful as well.

Hopefully you have found this introduction to treating external hemorrhoids helpful, but don't hesitate to look further on the Internet, or to take advantage of the services of your family doctor or pharmacist. If your hemorrhoids start bleeding or start to get worse, you need to see your family doctor immediately to rule out other, more serious causes of hemorrhoids or anal bleeding. Implementing these remedies and lifestyle changes, you should see improvement shortly, and soon you should be completely free of them.