Another e-mail posting, this time from Dr. Jonathan Wright --

Sit without surgery

Q: No matter what I try, I have been getting hemorrhoids for most of my adult life. I am desperate to find something that works to get rid of them. Can you help?

Dr. Wright: As you've discovered, there are plenty of options for people with hemorrhoids -- over-the-counter creams, pads, and ointments, those inflatable "donuts" to sit on, and, of course, surgery. Unfortunately, the less drastic ones aren't very effective, and the more drastic are just that -- drastic.

But my colleague Richard Kunin, M.D. (a world-class expert on the use of SSKI and other forms of iodine) has found that hemorrhoids will disappear -- sometimes literally overnight -- when a mixture of 20 drops of SSKI and 1 ounce of flaxseed oil is applied to them at bedtime. SSKI alone will do the same job, but Dr. Kunin's patients have reported that it "really stings" when applied by itself.