The Cause and Treatment of Anal Fissure - A Different View

The symptoms of most anal fissures can be relieved with wheatgrass. You won't have to change your diet, drink gallons of water, use stool softeners, or load your bowel with fiber. Best of all, you won't have to suffer the pain and bleeding that can be so distressing in this condition.

Surgery, like botox injections and other expensive procedures, should only be considered as a last resort.

Anal fissure - What is it?

A fissure is a split or tears at the outer end of the anal canal wall, usually at the posterior or backside of the anus. In chronic fissures, a skin tag is known as a "sentinel pile" often overlies the fissure and can be mistaken for painful hemorrhoid.

The power of wheatgrass healing

Although it affects a different part of the body, anal fissure results from a breakdown in the anal wall very much like a split lip which, as many of us know, can also be very painful and difficult to treat. A young male patient suffered this problem for more than a year and received numerous treatments that didn't work including steroids and antibiotics. His wound however healed in one week after only one application of wheatgrass cream. (See link at the end of this article for photographs)

• What are the symptoms of an anal fissure?
• Typical symptoms may be:
• Pain, which can be severe, during and after bowel movements
• Red blood in the stool (blood on the toilet paper)
• Constipation - due to pain-causing avoidance of passing stool
• Anal itchiness, burning
• Difficulty in passing urine
• Why is there so much pain?

The area where anal fissure occurs is supplied by numerous nerve endings that are highly sensitive. Even a tiny split in the wall of the anal canal can be very painful, particularly during a bowel motion when the anal muscles are stretched.

Who else gets anal fissure?

An anal fissure is very common. It is estimated that approximately 250,000 new cases occur each year in the US alone. It can occur in newborns and right across the age spectrum to old age, and affects both sexes equally. It is most common from young adulthood to middle age. Pregnancy and childbirth can aggravate or initiate the condition.

How long does it last?

Approximately 50-60% of anal fissures will heal spontaneously. However, it can recur or become chronic (sometimes lasting for years) in the other 40-50%.

How is an anal fissure diagnosed?

Symptoms of pain and rectal bleeding will alert your doctor to make a simple examination of the outer end of the anal canal. If an acute fissure is present, it will look like a small tear in the posterior (the back end, near the spine) of the anus. Chronic fissures have thickened edges and a "sentinel pile" as mentioned earlier. If considered necessary, particularly if bleeding is present, the doctor will arrange further investigations such as colonoscopy to exclude other causes of blood loss.

How is anal fissure treated?

My method is simple. I use a wheatgrass extract in a cream base and get the patient to apply a small amount just inside the anal opening twice daily with a cotton bud. In greater than 80 percent of cases, the symptoms disappear, usually within four to six weeks, sometimes within a few days. Because the fissure itself is not a life-threatening condition, it is not essential to heal the fissure although most of them do heal in time. The aim should always be to rid patients of their symptoms so they can resume a normal quality of life - something that wheatgrass is very good at.

What causes an anal fissure?

Doctors invoke all kinds of reasons why fissures develop including constipation, hard bowel motions, diarrhea, inflammation, reduced blood flow to the anal region, poor bowel habit, and even "spiky" foods such as peanuts. They seem to forget that many fissure patients do not have constipation, (some have diarrhea) and some babies are born with fissures. It is unlikely the cause is related to trauma unless there is some direct injury to the anal wall e.g. from colonoscopy or childbirth.

More likely, the fissure occurs first and constipation follows. In other words, constipation is an effect and an aggravating factor, not a cause of anal fissure. How do I know this?

The answer is based on simple clinical observation of numerous patients with chronic constipation. Many of them had undiagnosed chronic anal fissures because an anal examination had not been performed. Following the relief of pain with wheatgrass treatment, their constipation cleared up.

Therefore, I believe that anal fissure is most likely an auto-immune condition.

What does auto-immune mean?

Normally the immune antibodies our bodies produce act to stave off bacteria, viruses, and other organisms that try to invade the body and to kill off cancer cells that continually develop inside us. When this system goes awry, such as when the body undergoes severe or prolonged emotional or physical stress or severe illness, these antibodies can attack and damage healthy cells, tissues, or organs. This is called an auto-immune reaction which can eventually cause an auto-immune condition if it continues long enough. In rheumatoid arthritis, for example, joints can become severely damaged. i.e. they become red, swollen, and painful and eventually lose their function.

I believe this is what occurs in the anal fissure and possibly in other similar painful conditions such as tennis elbow and plantar fasciitis and perhaps even in a split lip. For some reason, these antibodies attack the mucous membrane on the anal wall. This breaks down and the fissure opens up. At the time of passing stool, the anal muscles reflexly go into spasm and the bare nerve endings in the fissure produce a painful sensation. The pain leads to stool avoidance which can then cause constipation which aggravates the fissure and the whole process becomes cyclical. Unless some way is found to heal the fissure, or the body repairs itself, the fissure becomes chronic. The anal verge being unable to "rest" for any length of time because of the need for bowel evacuation, the fissure remains open. So the aim should be to fix the fissure, not constipation. However, this has never been an easy task - until now.

How does wheatgrass work for anal fissure?

Having used wheatgrass on thousands of patients for a variety of conditions it has been strikingly obvious to me that it facilitates natural healing e.g. for wounds, burns, fractures, anal fissure, etc. One can see the healing in progress for example in burns and infected wounds when the open wound is re-covered itself with a thin film of new cells in 24-48 hours. This keeps the body fluids in and the bacteria out, and the patient's pain disappears as well. These are not phenomena one sees when the body is healing itself unaided. Wheatgrass in some way "normalizes" damaged tissue and facilitates rapid healing. It can also work dramatically in some cases of auto-immune related disorders such as acne rosacea and psoriasis. In other words, it appears to act as a topical (surface) immunomodulator. Wheatgrass is a powerful, natural healing agent that often works when nothing else does.

Please go to http://www.drwheatgrass.com/conditions/anal-fissure/Default.htm to view the graphics relating to this article and for more information about wheatgrass healing.

Dr. Chris Reynolds.

Born in 1941. Perth, Western Australia.

Educated at Scotch College and John Curtin Senior High School. In 1957, joined the British mercantile marine and traveled the world for seven years as a navigating officer before entering medical school at the University of Western Australia.

Graduated M.B., B.S. (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery) 1973. Spent most of professional career as a general practitioner in Perth and Melbourne except for four years working with refugees in Hong Kong and a year in Moscow with the International Organisation for Migration.

Currently works at a general practice for Japanese patients in Melbourne, Australia.

Special interests: dermatology, thalassemia, and the immunomodulatory and therapeutic properties of wheatgrass.

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