Acupuncture for Hemorrhoids

How Chinese medicine understands hemorrhoids

In Chinese medicine, hemorrhoids are seen as a local build-up of blood and damp in the veins around the anus. The question is what is causing the build-up, and whether the body’s “holding up” function is working.

The common patterns are:

• Damp-Heat in the lower bowel. Swollen, painful, sometimes bleeding hemorrhoids, with burning, itching, and sticky or smelly stools. Often worse after spicy food or alcohol.
• Heat in the Blood with dryness. Bright red bleeding with hard, dry stools and straining. Often linked with constipation and not enough fluids.
• Qi and Blood stagnation. Swollen, dark, sore hemorrhoids with a fixed, aching pain, often after long periods of sitting.
• Spleen Qi sinking. In Chinese medicine, the Spleen is seen as holding organs and tissues in place. When it is weak, hemorrhoids prolapse easily, bleeding is pale, and there is tiredness and a heavy, dragging feeling. Common after childbirth and with age.

Cooling and clearing inflamed, bleeding hemorrhoids is a different job from lifting and strengthening ones that sag and prolapse.

What treatment involves

Your first visit includes a lot of questions: bleeding, pain, itching, prolapse, your bowel habits, diet, fluids and how long you sit. I also look at your tongue and take your pulse. Treatment follows the pattern.

Acupuncture for hemorrhoids commonly uses points on the lower back, the lower legs, the arms and the top of the head. The aim is to ease pain, itching and swelling, and to support regular, easy bowel movements so there is less straining. For a sinking, weak pattern, moxibustion can be used on points that are seen as lifting.

Chinese herbal medicine is often part of treatment. You take a formula written for your pattern between visits, dispensed at the clinic, to address the bowels and the heat, dryness or weakness behind the problem.

Because straining is so often the cause, treatment usually looks at your bowels as a whole. If your stools are hard or slow, the constipation page explains how that is treated.

Treatment at the clinic in Keswick works alongside your family doctor. Research on acupuncture for hemorrhoids is still developing. Plan on 5–10 treatments to judge progress.

Between visits

• Eat more fibre, from vegetables, fruit, beans and whole grains, and increase it slowly.
• Drink enough water through the day to keep stools soft.
• Go when you feel the urge, do not strain, and do not sit on the toilet for long. Leave the phone outside.
• Try a warm sitz bath for 10 to 15 minutes, which can ease itching and aching.
• Move every day. Walking helps the bowels, and breaking up long periods of sitting helps circulation.

When to see your doctor first

Bleeding from the bottom should always be checked by a doctor at least once, even if you are sure it is hemorrhoids. See your doctor promptly if you have:

• Dark red or black blood, blood mixed into the stool, or heavy bleeding.
• A change in your bowel habits that lasts more than a few weeks.
• Weight loss you cannot explain, or signs of anaemia such as unusual tiredness.
• Sudden, severe pain with a hard, blue or purple lump. This may be a clot and can often be treated quickly.
• A hemorrhoid that has come out and cannot be pushed back.
• Fever, or discharge from around the anus.
• You are over 50, or have a family history of bowel cancer.