Hernia causes and hernia complications
There are many possible hernia causes, but not that many have been completely proved to be related to hernia. However, when talking about hernia causes, these are the most common:
- Obesity: this represents a sort of "double - trouble". On the one hand, the fatty tissue presses on your stomach, forcing it to seek the only relief it can and go up through your herniation. On the other hand, your stomach is already enlarged and has no more space to grow in the abdominal cavity. Therefore, it will penetrate the canal, causing hernia.
- Pregnancy: just like with obesity, the uterus pushes unnaturally against your other organs and muscles, causing a tear and thus, a hernia.
- Physical posture: if your posture is not correct, that means if you keep slouching or walking too stiff, your upper body will press on your abdomen, leading to your stomach moving a few centimeters up and, eventually, to hernia
- Frequent coughing, straining with constipation, bending over and heavy lifting on a daily basis: all of these physical activities cause your abdominal muscles to move up and down too often for your organs to move along all the time. At some point, one of the membranes will get stuck on some portion of those organs and cause your problems.
- Congenital defects: there are children born with a larger than normal herniation or organs. These defects are corrected by surgery days after the birth.
Just like there are several types of hernia, there are several types of hernia causes related strictly to those hernia variations:
- A rigid diaphragm (the membrane that separates your abdominal cavity from your chest cavity) is one of the main culprits when talking about hiatal hernia causes. If your diaphragm does not move up and down at precisely the right time, you esophagus cannot pass smoothly through the hole in the membrane, causing some muscle tearing. Once the muscles are compromised, the upper portion of your stomach manages to slide into your chest cavity and hiatal hernia is born.
- Another hernia cause that might or might not surprise is diabetes. While the mechanism of this relationship is unknown at the moment, almost all of the patients who suffer from diabetes develop some sort of hernia. One possible explanation claims that your entire body is weakened by diabetes, and that includes your abdominal muscles.
You must keep in mind that there are other hernia causes out there, many of them still unknown. However, if you follow some very simple rules, like not lifting heavy objects for a large period of time, you could avoid some serious hernia complications.
Hernia complications
A sliding hernia that has evolved into an incarcerated hernia is considered the first of the hernia complications. Whatever comes next is just a natural, albeit severe follow - up of that first step.
One of the most common hernia complications out there is strangulated hernia: once your hernia becomes incarcerated, the part of organ that is trapped inside that bulge has a very high probability of losing its entire blood supply and slowly, but surely, loosing its functionality. When that happens, your body enters into a state of shock that translates at a macroscopic level in severe pain. This is the moment when a hernia surgery is essential to your survival.
Another hernia complication that you have to be aware of is gangrene. You might think that only a leg or an arm can suffer from the complete rotting of the tissues. Wrong! After your hernia turned strangulated and the blood supply is interrupted, that part of the sick organ starts to die. Once that process is started, stopping it could prove rather difficult.
Peritonitis is a complication of hernia that involves the appendix. If a hernia bulge presses constantly on the appendix, it could irritate it so much that it leads to peritonitis.
