11 Things Every Woman Needs To Know About Hemorrhoids

11 Things Every Woman Needs To Know About Hemorrhoids



About a month ago, at an event for health journalists, I heard a colorectal surgeon say something that nearly made my eyeballs bug out of my face. "All of us have hemorrhoids, all the time," she said.

Uh, no, nope. There's no way. All these healthy-looking people sitting comfortably on their bums around me have hemorrhoids?!

So I called her up after the event and asked her what she meant by that inflammatory (sorry) comment. Never in my life did I think I'd spend 45 minutes on the phone casually throwing around phrases like "anal canal." I also didn't know there was so much to learn about hemorrhoids. Here are the dirty details everyone should know.

Yes, it's true, we all. have. hemorrhoids.

I know, I'm horrified, too. "I love telling people that," says Alexis Grucela, MD, the colorectal surgeon who first mentioned this idea, who is also an assistant professor of surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center. "It's usually so shocking to them!" Indeed. But hemorrhoids are totally normal, she explains. "They're anal tissue that gives us extra support in the anal canal," she says. Just like pelvic floor muscles help keep urine from leaking out when you, say, cough or laugh, hemorrhoid tissue does the same for stool and gas. "It's only when they become symptomatic that people start noticing them," Grucela says. "Usually, they just do their job."