Ayurveda's role in Arsha/piles management: A classical review

Abstract

Arsha (Piles) is a disease that impacts all socioeconomic groups of people. While the condition is beyond treatment boundaries, it has its own problems, such as excessive haemorrhage, swelling, and thrombosis, through which a patient gets serious discomfort and cannot perform his daily work. Arsha   are engorged condition of veins surrounding the anal canal along with abnormal prolapse of enlarged anal cushion, characterized by dilated, swollen and inflamed pile mass associated with bleeding per rectum and some discharge from anus. Patient having chronic constipation or diarrhoea usually strain during defecation and due to this increased pressure on veins, there is pathological varicosity of the haemorrhoidal veins. Pile are typically arise due to impaired eating habits, altered lifestyles, genes, and pregnancies. It is one of the most frequent ano-rectal illnesses affecting as much as 50 % of the population by 40-50-years old age group. There are many procedures described in medical science for the management of piles, out of them haemorrhoidectomy is mostly preferred by surgeons. But there are possibilities of recurrence after some time of excision. People not only want to learn how to treat Piles/haemorrhoids but also want to know how to easily and naturally cure them. In Ayurveda, management for Arsha/Piles has been mentioned on the basis of chronicity and presentation of the disease. There are four modalities of treatment for the management of Arsha, out of them Bheshaj Chikitsa and Kshar Karma chikitsa shows marvellous results. The author focus at Ayurveda's role in the management of piles. The aim of this article is to review the studies carried out on Arsha in the department of Shalya Tantra Rishikul Campus, Uttarakhand Ayurved University Haridwar, Uttarakhand.