Top 3 Problems I Heal in Video Consultations!

Looking for a personal consultation with Dr. Albert Chung?
Share your story so I can help guide your recovery. Please note: there is a fee for this service. Email for details: YourFriendlyProctologist@gmail.com

Sponsors for this episode:

• Vessol Health – Doctor-backed supplements for gut, rectal, and vein health.
• ManyBidets.com – Your online BIDET superstore with top-tier service to help you find the right fit for your personal needs.
• Pranicura – Targeted relief for hemorrhoids, anal fissures, and itching.

I’ve put together a list of products I personally recommend—tools to help you manage, treat, and heal more effectively. Every click helps support this show and keeps these episodes coming!

Recommended Recovery Supplies:
Stool softeners:

• Colace (100ct)
• Colace (400ct)
• Miralax powder

Skin care essentials:

• Desitin barrier cream
• Calmoseptine cream
• Dove hypoallergenic soap

Moist wipes:

• Honest baby wipes

Hemorrhoid relief:

• Preparation H Max Strength
• Tucks pads
• Preparation H with Lidocaine
• Recticare 5% cream

Wound care basics:

• 4x4 gauze pads
• Paper tape
• Blue disposable underpads

Contact Dr. Chung's Office

Address: 30212 Tomas, Suite 365, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA 92688
Phone: 714-988-8690
Fax: 714-988-2235
Email: YourFriendlyProctologist@gmail.com
Website: https://www.CRSurgeryOC.com Check out reviews on Google and Yelp! 

Follow me on social media for more tips and updates:
Facebook: Your Friendly Proctologist
Instagram: @yourfriendlyproctologist

Disclaimer: This podcast is educational in nature and does not constitute medical advice. All content reflects my personal opinions and not those of my employer(s). Use this information at your own risk. I assume no liability for any outcomes—economic, medical, or otherwise—resulting from its use.

Transcript

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I'm gonna tell you something that's probably gonna make you feel really comfortable and at ease. And that is every single person with a bottom end issue has wondered, is there someone else who's struggling just like I am? Am I some unique case that no one seems to understand? And I'm telling you, there are many people just like you. Now I have my office here in Orange County, California, but I also do video consultations with people all over the world. I'm telling you, there hasn't been a part of this world that I haven't spoken with. No, Antarctica. I haven't spoken with anyone in Antarctica, but all seven continents have been in my office in a virtual sense. And I want to share some stories with you today that may make you comforted, but also let you know that these are the three most common things that I find or I talk about with patients online. Hi there, I'm Dr. Albert Chung, and I'm your friendly expert, board certified colon and rectal surgeon, or proctologist if you prefer. This place is supposed to be a resource for you. So I've got links in my description box. Check them out. I've got my office location and contact and also my sponsor info as well. And you are a welcome part of the community. Please like and subscribe. Let's further this community and have it grow to reach out to more people just like us. So, because of all of you guys furthering this community, people around the world are finding out about me and about us, you know, and they naturally want to get in touch with me for a video consultation. I mean, we do the best that we can with videos, pictures, and whatnot to try and get a plan of care of action. It's not the same thing as being here, but hey, it's the next best thing, right? And so today I wanted to go through some main topics that people talk to me about because I want to enlighten you guys. Like people around the world are struggling with exactly the same conditions. Okay, exactly the same, not an exaggeration, one bit. It's not like an anal fistula in Europe, it's somehow different than an anal fistula in Canada. No, we're all the same. Naturally, when I'm doing these video consultations, the hot topic of hygiene always comes up, and I'm always telling people get a bidet, get a bidet, get a bidet, because it's the most sustainable, it's the cheapest, and it's the healthiest. Because you need a solution that's not gonna ruin the skin, create fissures and cuts, ruin the skin, or create more wounds on your anus, it can give you bleeding and itching and pain, so many issues that are totally avoidable. And that's why I like many bidets.com for many reasons here. And I highly suggest you go visit their website, but more than importantly, just give them a call, okay? They actually want to hear your butt issues, they want to hear how they can help you, they know their catalog, and they've heard it all before. All right, these are people, real human beings based in the United States, and they will tell you what's gonna fit. They ask you to take a photo of your toilet. That's what I had to do for them to make sure that's a perfect fit, and you can get the idea. I like working with people, and I want to show off people to you guys that are very helpful, have great customer service, and stand behind what they are doing, just like me. So give them a call, give them a shout out, many bidets.com. And they've actually done an awesome thing with their community. They gave they did a bidet giveaway of a bidet that is retail, like a thousand dollars. Okay, so that's who these guys are. Give them a call and shout out, and I appreciate you, many bidets, for working with us. So, one of the topics I usually get is anal fistula, and most of the people that come talk to me already know they have an anal fistula, rare, very rarely, maybe a handful of people didn't know they were incorrectly diagnosed, but most of all, most commonly, it's because they haven't been seen by a doctor yet. Um, they come with an MRI, they've got an ultrasound, they're wondering what I should do for them. So we answer some basic questions, right? But I impress upon everyone anal fistulas is not so much about the surgery being done in the operating room, it's about the care after the surgery. Fistulas are a wound care problem, in my opinion. That's what I'm convinced of because that's where the work comes in. It's very time consuming on my end, and it's time consuming on the patient's end, believe it or not. Many surgeons will say, Hey, you had a fishula surgery, bye-bye. See you in four to six weeks. But I can't tell you how many people, okay, have issues afterwards and they can't get a hold of their surgeon or a doctor or office, they can't be seen. And the thing that happens is that when you miss an opportunity to treat a problem with a fishula, like another infection comes up, you end up with a fistula recurrence, like it was a failure of a surgery. And guess what the surgeon is going to recommend when they see you in a month or so? Another surgery. And in my opinion, that is a travesty because what I do is I actually keep in touch with my patients, I actually invite them to text me, to call me, to let me know if any stupid little thing even comes up. Stupid, of course, according to the patient, say, I hate to bother you, Dr. Chung. I said, please don't worry about it. I'm telling you, and I'll tell you, 98% of the time when somebody says they've got something that they feel different, okay? And different is so nebulous of a word. There probably is something wrong going on there, okay? I don't care how highly educated you are. I mean, I do surgery on teens, 14 and above, and they will tell me, you know, they didn't graduate from high school yet. They'll say something doesn't feel right. And I usually do find something. I need to maybe do a small procedure in the office, but people are highly motivated, right? No one wants to go back to surgery or find out, oh no, this surgery didn't work. People put in the time and the effort, and same here. It is very time consuming on both parties, and that's how you get fistula solved. Now, one good thing, or you know, I guess one great fact about hemorrhoids, not hemorrhoids, fistulas, is that if a fish is gonna behave badly and do something that's out of the ordinary create, try and create a complication, right? It usually tells us there's some sign, feeling, look to the area that alerts the patient first, and then they tell me. Usually very rarely are they completely silent, like some little sneaky ninja and doing something underneath the scenes, it's very rare. So again, I tell people, do you have a surgeon that's very attentive to you? Do you feel like you're being taken, you will be taken care of? And can you go in with there's an issue so that you can avoid having a recurrence? That's the main theme of the sur the anal fistula topics. Oh, and there's one more thing, too. If a surgeon's gonna tell you that you're going to get cancer from an anal fistula, so you should get the surgery done, run away from the surgeon. I've actually heard this several times, even from a surgeon, a patient told me locally here has said that in Orange County. That is very bad, okay? That is, first of all, completely untrue. You tell me, you ask that surgeon, show me the data that says that cancer is that often or that common that I should be forced to do this surgery with you. You show me that, Doctor, because it's absolutely false. It is absolutely disingenuous, and they're just pushing you in to do a surgery and make a few bucks off of you. That is absolutely wrong. The second most common topic people bring up are, of course, hemorrhoids. And it's not like the generic stuff, like, do I have a hemorrhoid or not? No, it's mostly Dr. Chung, look at my hemorrhoids, okay? What do you think? So they want me to literally do a consultation of a photo that they send me. And some people I ask them, will you please volunteer a few selfies so I can actually detail it's with some specifics about how it would help you with your hemorrhoids? Many people have already gotten hemorrhoid treatments from doctors around town and they're saying, No, this didn't last very long, or I had pain this one time. So, Dr. Chung, what's a way to get rid of this? And some people I've actually spared them from a surgical procedure because looking at it is like, yeah, I think I can do something with that without doing surgery. So many people have actually ended up coming to my office after seeing me online so I can do a procedure, whether it's a laser surgery with Botox and with my whole protocol and Espirel, etc. I've got videos on that. Um, or they'll suggest to their surgeon or doctor, say, hey, you know, what do you think about this idea? Now, guys, this last one here is actually the most commonly discussed condition on my video consultations, and also happens to be the one I see most common in person as well. This has become my life's work, actually. This is internal anal sphincter and pelvic floor muscle spasm and uh muscle injury. Now, the reason why this is so common is because it is underdiagnosed, it is not diagnosed correctly or is misdiagnosed, and I have not seen a single doctor that understands this condition fully all around the world, and I've talked with many people around the world, so I know this is happening. Many people do not come to me with this condition diagnosed, and all of these people have seen multiple doctors, they've gotten treatment for fissures, perhaps, for hemorrhoids most commonly, and they'll come to me completely helpless and clueless and don't understand why they feel like the doctors and health care providers are gaslighting them. Like they're telling them that they don't have an issue, but these people have pain, fullness, burning, all these types of issues, recurrent fissures all the time. If you can imagine yourself in that where you're not, you're told you're not sick, you're told that you don't have cancer, but you feel like your butthole is making your life such hell that you feel like you want to die. Can you can you imagine that? That's how these people feel, and that's how severe this issue is. And when people tell me this story, it's a very recognizable pattern to me. I have a lot of videos on this. I don't want to spew that out again over here, but I tell people you gotta find a pelvic floor physical therapist as fast as you can. Most importantly, you gotta find one that understands this issue, most of all, because while this should be really well understood by some these pelvic floor therapists, there are some that don't truly get it when it comes to a muscle that's very tight and very strong, right? A lot of these pelvic floor therapists tell their patients to just do kegels and squeeze the heck out of their butts. But no, that's actually the wrong way to treat it. So I give them a lot of help on it, but really, if you can't get the help from physical therapists, you're going to need what I believe is the next step Botox injection surgery. But not just any Botox procedure, the one that I have developed with the research in my office. I have spent spent countless, countless hours. I've spent three hours with some of my patients over a total, you know, even and then if you count over many visits, I probably spend like 10, 12 hours per patient while I was researching this in my office. And now I feel like I have a really good idea of what is happening, and I'm trying to advance treatments for this. But it's truly frustrating because these people they don't look like they should have a problem, right? They don't have a cast on their leg, they don't have a big incision from a surgery on their belly or on their butt. But they tell you that they are having their they can't get along, they can't get on with their day, they can't focus to even write a check or do their taxes. Um, it's that serious and that misunderstood. Definitely, I feel very bad for these people, but this is the state of our understanding in the world of this condition. And in our in my official textbook, we have a paragraph like that long about it. It's extremely terrible. Well, with this video, I want to give you guys a perspective that I see from talking with people all around the world, and I'll tell you again, the people around the world are struggling with the same things that we are here in the United States, and vice versa. And it's been truly a privilege to meet all of you and have you guys share your stories with me, and I want to help every single one of you. If you're interested in a video consultation, just email me, or you can go to the website at crsurgeryoc.com and click on that book a consultation button to get the process started. I can't wait to hear your story, and definitely when you talk to me about your story, I'm gonna give you my expert opinion and do the best I can to help you. Like and subscribe to the channel and the video. I wish you the best. Bye.