Dr Fergal McNamara

Again, the big issue with that is when you ask people, is this a family history, most people look at you blankly and say, well, it's not something we chat about over the dinner table, so...

I've no idea, you know.

Men slightly more.

And then the compounding factor with that is men are less likely to attend.

For most health reasons, men are less likely to attend for help.

So men's problems tend to exacerbate over time because they haven't attended.

While women then, you would think because of the pregnancy risk, but actually women or men over time, they're the ones who suffer more.

so women tend to get treated earlier and therefore it doesn't become as much of a problem absolutely yeah okay so on that at what point should we be going to see somebody like yourself going to your GP yeah so I mean certainly to the GP I mean any bleeding out the back passage you should really be attending your doctor even if you think it's a hemorrhoid and it seems like a hemorrhoid and when you get there it may well be a hemorrhoid but bleeding out the back passage just isn't something you can ignore because there could be

all sorts of other things going on.

Absolutely.

You could have something further up, David.

You know, you could, you know, it could be masking something else.

It could be, you know, it could be worst case scenario, colorectal tumour.

It could be Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis or something like that.

Now, again, these are far less common than hemorrhoids.

But, you know, and I have my own personal story about that.

My father, unfortunately, died aged 49 from colorectal cancer.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Thanks.

But he... Like, in that scenario, like, he had been bleeding from the back passage and put it down to hemorrhoids.