If you suffer from serious and painful hemorrhoids, surgery can be a great option for treating them. However, hemorrhoid surgery is a big commitment. There are risks involved with the anesthesia, and the recovery period can take a few weeks or more. If you're not quite ready to commit to hemorrhoid surgery, that's understandable — and there are some hemorrhoid non-surgical treatments you should consider using instead.

Dietary Modifications

For some patients, changing their diet has such a profound effect on hemorrhoid pain that they don't ever need to pursue surgery. You do need to be committed to a permanent change, though, and it's important to work with a dietitian to make sure your nutritional needs are met in spite of the dietary restrictions. A diet to minimize hemorrhoid pain generally:

• Contains lots of high-fiber foods like vegetables and whole grains
• Minimizes meat consumption
• Includes lots of fluids, particularly water and other sugar-free beverages
• May be combined with a stool softener

This diet should keep your stool soft and reduce pressure on your hemorrhoids. You should notice an immediate reduction in pain, and then your pain level should reduce even further as the weeks go on. A topical cream can often nix any lingering pain.

Rubber Band Ligation

If dietary changes and topical creams do not bring you enough relief, then talk to your doctor about a rubber band ligation. This is a medical treatment administered in the doctor's office, but it's not surgical. Your practitioner will place what are basically rubber bands around the hemorrhoids. Over the next few days, the tissue in those hemorrhoids will die off due to a lack of circulation. The treatment can be a bit uncomfortable, but it has a shorter recovery time than surgery. It's a good option for hemorrhoids that have prolapsed from the anus.

Laser Coagulation

This is another non-surgical medical approach that is gaining popularity. Your doctor can use a laser to basically coagulate the blood within the hemorrhoid and build up scar tissue inside the vein associated with the hemorrhoid. This cuts off circulation to the hemorrhoid tissue, and it then dies off. Laser coagulation can cause some pain, but you should only need to take a couple of days off from work, not the weeks you'd need to take off for surgery.

If you're not ready for hemorrhoid surgery, that's okay, and it doesn't mean you need to just live with the pain. Talk to your doctor about the non-surgical options above.