Pain below belly button

Facts about Pain Below Belly Button

If you happen to experience pain below the belly button, you are best to seek medical attention and look deeper into the problem. Sometimes, the location of the pain may seem to be confusing. Yet, if the pain comes from an area below your bellybutton, act timely and seek medical attention since the reasons behind it may be food poisoning, intestinal infections, inflammations of the appendix or some other health complications affecting the area. Either way, a timely diagnosis can help you treat the problem successfully.

Reasons Behind Pain Below Belly Button

Appendicitis is the most common reason behind the pain below your bellybutton. However, since this is a serious condition, you need to rule it out or to have it diagnosed as soon as possible. Pay attention to other symptoms of appendicitis such as nausea, appetite loss, swelling and pain in the area from the bellybutton to the lower right abdomen. If any of these go hand in hand with the pain you are feeling, seek medical assistance immediately. Ignoring this problem may lead to infections and possibly death.

Predominantly, but not exclusively, women tend to have the pain in this area triggered by cystitis. Along with the pain in the area below the bellybutton, you might experience frequent need for urination, burning sensation while urinating, blood in the urine, fever and a pressure sensation affecting the area. Again, if this condition is left untreated, it is likely to evolve into an infection affecting your kidneys.

Alternatively, you might be suffering from hernia. Additional sign of this condition is a sharp pain in the lower abdominal area. Hernia may be triggered by many different conditions including obesity, lifting of heavy objects, excessive sneezing, straining during bowel movement, pregnancy, lung disorders and fluid in the abdominal area. Once diagnosed with hernia, you are likely to be treated surgically or non-surgically, depending on the severity of your condition.

Causes of Pain Below Belly Button

Malnutrition, germs and an unhealthy lifestyle are factors which can trigger peptic ulcers, causing you pain below the bellybutton. Hand-in-hand with the pain, you might experience bloating, nausea, blood in the stool and weight loss. Medical attention is necessary to be sought.

Alternatively, gallbladder disease adds on to the list of possible causes. Other signs of this illness involve fullness in the abdomen, nausea, heartburn, vomiting or fevers. Again, seeking medical help is necessary since you might need a therapy or even to undergo surgery.

Finally, simple overeating may lead to this pain. Then, try to eat in moderation or to change the type of food you are consuming on a daily basis.

There is no substitute for a careful history of the type, onset, location, and progression of abdominal pain, as these symptoms closely match the pathogenesis of each disease process within the abdomen. This, coupled with understanding of the splanchnic and cerebrospinal innervation of the abdominal viscera, is essential for arriving at an accurate diagnosis in patients presenting with abdominal pain.

Differences in the location and rate of progression of lesions within the abdominal cavity may be summarized in terms of five possible components.

Visceral pain alone is a symmetric pain located in the midline anteriorly, with or without associated vasomotor phenomena.
On occasion, when visceral pain is of rapid onset and of great severity, at the peak intensity of the pain it may "spill over" at the spinal cord level by viscerosensory and visceromotor reflexes into the corresponding cerebrospinal pathways, producing somatic findings without pathologic involvement of somatic receptors.
Visceral and somatic pain often become combined as the causative lesion progresses from the viscus to involve adjacent somatic nerves. Visceral pain may continue, but a new and different pain is added.
Somatic pain may be so severe that it overshadows the visceral pain of origin in the affected viscus, making an accurate diagnosis difficult.
Referred pain due to irritation of the phrenic, obturator, and genitofemoral nerves are unique and diagnostically important findings remote from the abdomen that may provide clues to the source of abdominal pain.

✓ Fact confirmed: Clinical Methods: The History, Physical, and Laboratory Examinations. 3rd edition. Roger Sherman; 1990.