Everybody knows that chronic constipation and chronic diarrhea both cause hemorrhoids, but a frequently overlooked question is why? How could opposite conditions both contribute to hemorrhoids? In addition, pregnancy, childbirth, Crohn's disease, inflammatory bowel syndrome and age can also be underlying causes of hemorrhoids, but many of these causes share important points worth looking into.

The reason lies in the actual function of hemorrhoidal cushions and how those cushions relate to the rest of the body. Chronic straining due to constipation or diarrhea, long periods of sitting, pregnancy, childbirth, and various gastrointestinal diseases all contribute to internal abdominal circulatory pressure.

When the large blood vessels of the hemorrhoidal cushions are placed under pressure, they naturally swell. If they are pressurized for too long or too often, they may eventually get stretched so far that they cannot return to their contracted state and promptly develop into hemorrhoids. The same is true of external hemorrhoids, even though they do not lie on hemorrhoidal cushions.

This is because external hemorrhoids develop from the blood vessels that drain the hemorrhoidal cushions back towards the heart. Because these lower veins are so closely connected, they are frequently subjected to the same hydraulic pressures as the veins of the cushions.

The conditions related to straining are, of course, chronic constipation, chronic diarrhea, pregnancy, and those gastrointestinal diseases that cause frequent toileting. Pregnancy is particularly known for causing hemorrhoids because women gain about two extra pounds of blood alone during pregnancy, frequently causing blood pressure to rise and swelling veins in order to manage a higher liquid capacity in a closed system. Sitting for long periods, especially while slouching, works with gravity to push blood deeper into the body, and causes the same veins to swell. Sitting on a toilet for long periods of time may, in fact, be the worst thing of all to do for hemorrhoids. You're sitting for a long period of time with no support for your pelvic floor muscles, while straining and usually slouching besides! This combination of weight, downward muscular force and lack of upward support can swell anal veins to unprecendented levels and be a causal factor of hemorrhoids all it its own right.

Age, the last common causal factor, contributes to hemorrhoids from an entirely different direction. As we get older, our bodily tissues, such as ligaments and muscles, tend to lose the elasticity they had while we were young. Therefore, veins which used to be able to contract back to proper size without a problem may lose this ability, much like elastic stretched one too many times. However, proper lifestyle can go a long way to counteracting this problem, as people who exercise frequently and eat a proper diet will retain their muscular elasticity much later in life than people who don't.

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