After communicating with thousands of pruritus ani sufferers since 2010, (and from my own personal experience), it still makes me incredibly angry when someone tells me that their doctor told them that this awful affliction is the result of something that they did or didn’t do. That they caused this problem themselves. “You’ve been overcleaning your bottom,” or, “You don’t clean your bottom well enough,” or my favorite: “Stop scratching, let the skin heal, and you’ll be fine.” The anger boils within me while typing this. It’s NOT your fault!

Hopefully you’ve read my previous blog articles and take solace in knowing that we’ve found the single cause of our chronic anal itching problem. So, you KNOW having pruritus ani is NOT your fault. You didn’t cause it, but we still need to get the word out to physicians, as they are so busy with so many things, that unfortunately many of them remain ignorant on this subject. In other cases, some simply don’t care about this problem because it’s not profitable for them or possibly since they feel they can’t do anything about it they try to get pruritus ani patients out of their office as quickly as they can.

Of course, it’s not all doctors. Many are kind, caring people that want to help ALL patients.I’ve been trying to spread the message to colon/rectal surgeons and gastroenterologists since early 2018. We sent a mailer to all of those specialists in the USA and we attended the 3-day national conference for colon/rectal surgeons in May. Attendance was approximately 1800 surgeons from around the USA. At these conferences they invite “vendors” to pay $3500 for every 8 X 10 booth to hand out information and answer questions regarding our products. It was a complete flop. I’m sure over 1,000 doctors walked by our booth, yet we handed out less than 100 samples and also got very little response from our mailer. One surgeon approached me in the booth and said, “if people would just clean themselves better after bowel movements this wouldn’t be a problem”. (Yes, I got angry but remained calm!)

The only conclusion one can come to is that many (if not most) doctors just don’t care enough about pruritus ani, for whatever reason, to even try a breakthrough treatment when it has success numbers at 90%. Nothing else has shown a success rate even close to that, and yet very little interest from doctors. There has never been statistical evidence like ours. Our survey of Pranicura Treatment users from 2013 – 2017, over 17,000 of them, with 2000+ responding, shows a 90% success rate. In addition, we believe that the 10% who said it didn’t work, either gave up too quickly and didn’t get through the 1-5 week healing period or they hadn’t been to a doctor yet to rule out fungus/yeast and other curable problems.

Ok, to be fair to doctors, our data is NOT scientific.It is not a controlled study.Someday I trust that will happen. Maybe not for a few years and then results will be available a few years after that. So, maybe by 2025 there will be a controlled study with results completed? Who knows, but the Pranicura treatment will continue bringing relief to tens of thousands of sufferers around the world every year. We’ll be happy to get confirmation from scientists at any time in the future that the Pranicura treatment works and the results now worth publishing in a medical journal so doctors will then believe.

Pruritus ani is NOT your fault! If anyone tells you it is, I’ve got 20,000 Pranicura treatment users that will confirm it is NOT. Please read my prior articles that go in depth on the true cause of our chronic anal itching. It’s NOT what you eat.It’s NOT that you overclean your bottom or don’t clean well enough. It’s NOT that you can’t control yourself from scratching. It’s NOT because YOU are using the wrong detergent on your sheets and underwear. It’s NOT because you are using the wrong toilet paper. It’s NOT because you enjoy scratching. It’s NOT because there is something wrong in your head, mentally. YOU are doing NOTHING wrong. It’s an unfortunate condition that a few of us are afflicted with. The itch is very real, and YOU did nothing to cause it.

Doctors that tell pruritus ani sufferers that this condition is THEIR FAULT, anger me and are wrong. But don’t expect your doctor to know about anything other than treatments that are published in medical journals either. If they recommended every hoax that promised benefit, where would medicine be? Doctors must rely on proven scientific evidence.In a few years, hopefully we will have scientific evidence that the Pranicura treatment results are fact. Keep in mind however, that results published in medical journals using limited data can be wrong. Many quoted “facts” by doctors and other medical professionals are myths.

In the case of pruritus ani, I have no doubt that the limited published data has steered doctors to the wrong conclusion: there are NOT multiple causes of “idiopathic” pruritus ani, just ONE, and it’s never the patient’s fault!

I look forward to the day when science finally confirms the Pranicura Treatment is the answer that ALL doctors should be recommending for ALL cases of primary pruritus ani.