So, you decided to move that heavy old table all by yourself and you suddenly experienced a pain in the abdomen? Maybe you got hernia and it's time to see the doctor immediately.
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A hernia is a condition when an internal part of the body pushes through a weakness in the muscle or surrounding tissue. Your muscles are usually strong enough to keep your intestines and organs in place, but sometimes they can't stand to pressure and keep organs in the place.
What causes hernia? The answer is simple: anything that raises the pressure within the abdomen. That can be heavy lifting, for example, weights in the gym or a heavy table at home, coughing, or straining on the toilet. Every pressure in the abdomen can make a rupture in the abdominal wall and push intestinal content through a hole. So, we can define four risk groups: "gym fanatics", building workers, people who cough, and people with weak stomach muscles.
When a hernia occurs the patient feels pain and he may have a feeling that something moved in the abdomen. The pain then goes away and lump appears, it doesn't hurt but it grows when the patient coughs. It can also disappear and appear again because the organ can go back in place and then protrude again. A hernia can occur anywhere in the abdomen and there are four most common types of it.
Inguinal hernias are the most common type of hernia, mostly connected to men (98% percent of them occur in men), and every year hundreds of thousands of surgical operations are required to repair inguinal hernias. It occurs when tissue, and this is usually part of the intestines, pokes through your lower abdomen. This type of hernia can occur at any age, however they are an age-related condition: the older you are, the more likely you will develop one.
Femoral hernias are less common than inguinal hernias, occurring when tissue pokes through into your groin, or the top of your inner thigh. Here the interesting data is that some 75 percent of this type occurs in women.
Incisional hernias is a condition that develops as a complication of abdominal surgery. In this case hernia occurs when tissue pokes through a surgical wound or incision that has not fully healed. The chance of get incisional hernia after surgery can vary from between 0.5-10%, depending on the type of surgery and skills of a surgeon.
Umbilical hernias are very common in young children, and some 16 percent of children are affected. It occurs when tissue pokes through the part of the abdomen near to the belly button. (It is interesting that black children are 10 times more likely to develop it but the reason for that is still unknown). This is a "good hernia" because an umbilical hernia will go away by itself as a child grows and in the most cases the treatment is not needed at all.
The good news here is that in many cases a hernia causes very few or no symptoms. However, in some cases a hernia can cause an obstruction in the bowel and it can interrupt the blood supply to the intestines. When that happens, this is a medical emergency and requires immediate surgery. To be sure, some doctors will recommend surgery just to prevent that situation because the risk of complications at hernia surgery is very small.
So, if you are lifting something heavy or exercise in the gym and you feel the pain, go and see your doctor at once. Maybe your muscle is too weak and it hurts, but maybe you just got a rupture inside your body. ■