If you’re convinced that your penis is small (chances are it really isn’t), using the Internet to figure out how you measure up certainly won’t help you feel better – but you’re sure to find plenty of procedures and products promising to make your penis bigger. Are these promises too good to be true?
Medically, it is possible to make changes to the length and width of the human penis.
Doctors can lengthen the penis surgically by cutting the ligaments that secure it to the pelvis; but this only makes limp penises appear longer. It does little for the erect penis except make it more unstable and less well-rooted. You can nonsurgically “stretch” the penis for several hours a day for months with rubber band-laden-devices to increase length. Likes braces on teeth, this slowly “remodels” the penis and can add a half inch or so.
To make the penis thicker, surgical implants or “grafts” can be sewn to the sides of the penis, or fat, silicon or muscle grafts placed under the skin to increase its diameter. These may work but can make the penis look strange, almost “doughy soft” and have complications like erosion through the skin or infection requiring removal. And when this happens, the disfigurement can be permanent and really mess up what originally appeared normal.
So, how do you know what’s right for you? What’s safe? What’s effective? Well, honestly, you don’t. This is because, much like plastic surgery, penile procedures seek to satisfy personal desires and do not necessarily address a universally understood problem. Because of this, there is scant published data on individual penile enlargement procedures, let alone comparisons among them.
That’s why it was refreshing to see a recently published paper that examined the outcomes from 17 studies of 21 surgical and non-surgical procedures that are used to enlarge penises. This 30,000-foot view of the field of penis enlargement was quite revealing. Here’s what it found:
- 1192 men with healthy penises who underwent penile enlargement were evaluated
- The vast majority of men having procedures had penises of normal size before their procedures
- Surgical procedures included suspensory ligament excision (lengthening), fat grafting (girth) flaps (girth) and “penile disassembly.” Nonsurgical procedures included injectables (girth), extenders (length)and vacuum devices (length)
- Among nonsurgical procedures, extenders definitely increased length, but only <2 cm
- Injectables increased girth but were associated with significant complications (lumpy penis)
- The average satisfaction rate among treated men was only 20%!
- When counseling and education about penis size was given to patients before any procedures, more often than not patients declined any penile enlargement procedure
It suggests that when it comes to penile enlargement, be careful out there! Have realistic expectations about what you already own and what you’re buying into. Realize that the majority of men having such procedures end up not being entirely satisfied. Understand what can go wrong and how often it happens. And remember that in most cases, skill matters much more than size.
Myths and Facts
I don’t know about you but I am fast growing tired of the dozens of spam e-mails I get every day about the magic new penis enlargement pill, cream or device. But it is not limited to these anonymous e-mails. Now I have to watch or listen to these same scams on major prime time TV shows and radio. What amazes me most is that these advertisements must be making money, or they wouldn’t still be on the air week after week, month after month.
Here’s the kicker – there is no truth or science behind any one of them. They are all pure and simple scams, designed to separate out the foolish from their money. Nothing more than snake oil salesmen, and sadly as educated as we are, we still remain gullible. Hey, if I could find a way to feel comfortable stealing money from people I might too jump in and offer “Sheldon’s secret penile enlargement formula- but don’t’ wait, because organized medicine wants to shut me down, so order before midnight tonight and we’ll throw in a free spray-on window tinter”. And here is how they promote an age-old gimmick – now they call it male enhancement – kind of like a used car is now called pre-owned so they can charge more. If I sell my own secret formula, then I can lie but it is a new lie so it will take a few years for it to catch up to me and maybe by then I will have my millions hidden away in an off-shore Caribbean island. But my ethics gets in the way.
So many times people ask “why doesn’t the government step in an stop these quacks from making outright lies and false claims?” The reason is simple – the supplement industry has worked very hard to keep the FDA out of the supplement market. This way, they can sell anything to anyone and they don’t have to prove that it is effective, that it is even helpful or that it is even safe. So anyone with some money can create a fake treatment and sell it, making wild and extreme claims.
And what better way to trick people than playing to the secret wish of many men – to have a bigger penis? Because, after all, we know that men with bigger penises must be happier, more successful and have happier wives. And who will complain that his penis enlargement pill didn’t work? I would guess very few men.
But what is a normal sized penis? This is a subject that guys never seem to understand. First of all, the size of a non-erect penis has no relevance to an erect penis. Some guys who have small penises can get quite large and other guys who are large don’t change much, and everything in between. Somewhere about 4 to 6 inches erect is what a normal penis is supposed to be.
Let me explain this as simply as I can. The penis you have is the one you are genetically designed to have. It is because of the DNA you inherited from your mother and father. It is also the reason you are as tall or short as you are as well as the color of your eyes.
After spending more than 20 plus years in urology, it is clear that no pill or cream or vacuum contraption will change your penis size. It is not like the penis is elastic and can be enlarged. It is what it is. If you have extra weight, then you can lose a few pounds and your penis will seem bigger. You could opt for disfiguring surgery to cut the ligament that will let your penis fall down, and give you the appearance of maybe 1/2 inch more for a lucky few, but that is about it. And so you know, most men who have penile enlargement surgery regret doing so. It must be something about all the scarring and pain.
So here is what it comes down to. You can spend lots of money trying to change something that can’t be changed, or you can learn what is really important, be satisfied and save a few bucks.