Dr Fergal McNamara

within a couple of weeks, people get a good relief of symptoms.

Yeah, short answer is yes, absolutely.

If it's going on for quite a while, quite a few months, quite a few years, and you're getting any kind of bleeding, you need to check in.

I mean, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck, but at the same time... Just get it checked out.

So the first point is that you go to your doctor, you do a full exam, front and back, possibly blood tests to look at iron levels and haemoglobin, and ask around everything else.

So you're making sure there's no other risk factors there, like weight loss, change in bowel habits, family history, things like that.

And once you've established it's a hemorrhoid, then you can move on to treatment options.

And like we said, you have the topical treatments, then you have...

Referring to the likes of ourselves, you have the banding, and then for really bad cases, then you're talking about surgery.

What a wise woman.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's exactly it.

There was a research paper come out last year from the States, and that looked specifically at...

people sitting on the toilet for prolonged periods.

And for five minutes was the... So they looked specifically at people who bring their smartphones to the toilet.

So then, you know, in previous generations, it was men heading off with the newspaper to the toilet.

Now everyone brings their smartphone.

Aside from the hygiene implications of that, once they sat for over five minutes, I think it was a 45% increase in hemorrhoid risk.

Yeah.

Absolutely, yeah.