Okay, this probably seems like a silly and ignorant question, but I'm genuine in asking it.
It seems the number one bit of advice is to change your diet. Some seem to claim that diet change alone can heal the fissure(s).
But, if your BM are usually soft and you maybe take out nuts and seeds from your diet (ow), how exactly does the diet change help? Is it just avoiding a hard stool at all costs? (Yet most people seem to take softeners to manage that). It's not clear to me.
I don't feel like hard BM got me here, and I don't see how a diet change could have that much of an effect. Some people avoid alcohol - why? Is it the alcohol, or the hard BM that they (and presumably not everyone) get after drinking alcohol?
Is it just a suggestion that doctors make when really there's nothing they can do to help?
I know I'm always told - 'eat more fibre' by the doctors but this is so unhelpful. Clearly there are different types of fibre and only some types are of any use to AF people because we want soft stools. But they miss out the relevance of the soft stools - that is what helps us because it's easier on the fissure, right? There's nothing in the diet itself that helps. Yet it doesn't necessarily help it heal, because the problem is the tightness of the sphincter muscles. Even if your BM are early liquid, if those muscles are being really tight, any opening at all is a real struggle and could cause a retear.
Anyway, that's my theory. I just feel unsatisfied without good clear logical explanations of things.