What to do if your anus is itchy

Itching is a condition that we all encounter more or less in our daily lives. If we feel an itch, we will consciously try to get rid of it. But what if the itching area is more special? For example, if it is anal itching, we cannot scratch it immediately when faced with such itching, and we cannot scratch it even if no one sees it. This is mainly because there are more bacteria in this area, and if we scratch it with our hands, it is easy to get bacterial infection on our hands.

Since we cannot scratch the anus with our hands, what should we do when faced with anal itching? In fact, there are many reasons for anal itching, such as endocrine reasons, etc. We need to understand what causes anal itching before we can treat it. Let us learn about it below.

① Anal eczema: For itching, many patients choose to scratch with their hands, which can easily break the skin around the anus, causing it to become infected, and mucus to flow out, causing the anus to become moist, thus causing anal eczema and making the itching more severe.

② Endocrine disorders: The body's metabolism is generated faster, and the sweat glands secrete faster, which leads to frequent sweating and lack of normal volatilization, which can easily cause endocrine disorders and irritate the skin and cause itching.

③ Improper diet: Excessive consumption of spicy, greasy and irritating foods, such as chili peppers, strong liquor, fried foods, etc., can cause anal itching. Another type of itching is caused by taking allergy medications or expired food.

④ Nervous disorders: Excessive tension, irritability, abnormal excitement, agitation, etc. caused by excessive stress can cause disorders in the brain's nervous system and cause itching.

⑤ Organ diseases: Patients with liver disease and kidney disease have high salt content in their blood, which causes blockage in the liver duct and easily stimulates the peripheral nerves, causing itching.

Treatment options include:

1. Treat primary diseases or complications such as hemorrhoids, anal fistula, pinworm disease, etc. Give appropriate antibiotics or antibacterial drugs to treat concurrent infections.

2. Avoid inappropriate self-treatment. Many patients with anal pruritus are reluctant to go to the hospital for treatment and adopt inappropriate self-treatment, such as scalding with hot water, applying high-concentration corticosteroids or drugs containing antagonists, purchasing some crude home therapy devices for self-treatment, etc. These methods have more disadvantages than advantages and can only temporarily suppress itching. Over time, the disease will persist and worsen. Patients should be advised to stop using them.

3. Pay attention to hygiene, do not eat or eat less irritating food, such as spicy food, strong tea and coffee, strong liquor, etc. Clothes should be loose and fit well, and underwear should preferably be made of cotton.

4. The drug treatment of localized anal pruritus should be based on local external application. Various drugs used in systemic treatment, such as corticosteroids, anti-inflammatory mediator preparations, various sedatives, etc., have no obvious antipruritic effect on anal pruritus, but they all have many side effects or adverse effects and should be avoided without clear indications.

5. Injection therapy: The drug is injected subcutaneously or intradermally to destroy the sensory nerves, causing local sensory impairment, disappearance of symptoms, and healing of local injuries. About 50% of cases can be permanently cured. However, those with strict itching are prone to relapse and need to be treated with injections again. The injected drugs not only damage the sensory nerves, but also the motor nerves. Sensory anal incontinence and sphincter dysfunction of varying degrees often occur, but they can recover on their own after a period of time.

The above are the causes and treatments of anal itching. From the above we can see that there are actually many causes of anal itching, and the treatments for anal itching caused by different reasons are different. Therefore, when we treat anal itching, we need to pay attention to what causes it, and then treat it symptomatically, which will have a good treatment effect.