Alt-Health: Size Matters

Penis enlargement has been an obsession with men since they first noticed they had penises. Considering the booming business in breast enhancement, it seems only fair that men should have alternatives for super sizing, too. But is there really an option out there that can change the size of your prize? I took a look at product websites, enhancement reviews and medical testimony. Although most of what’s out there is ineffective, painful or even downright dangerous, surprisingly, some of the stuff actually works. But first, the duds.

Pills and Lotions

Just don’t go there. Not unless you want to play Russian Roulette with some very expensive and unregulated crap. I searched the web and could not find a single medically validated success story for any of the vitamins, minerals, herbs or hormones that manufacturers claim will make your dick bigger. You will find testimonials at the sites that sell the stuff, but that’s about it. Interestingly, every individual brand claims that all the other manufacturers out there are fakes. Yup. There’s a lot of that going around.

Jelqing

It may look like simple masturbation, but the idea behind this exercise is to stroke the penis from the base up in order to force blood flow to the tip and expand the shaft to its maximum size. However, in practice this isn’t much different than over-inflating a balloon. You’re not actually adding mass, you’re just pushing it to the limit. The danger here is that jelqing can potentially cause nerve and tissue damage in your penis, even erupting blood vessels. Think of a balloon popping. Ouch.

Vacuum Pumps can draw blood into the penis, making it swell. Because of this, they’re sometimes used to treat erectile dysfunction. However, keep that balloon metaphor in mind. A pump can only make a penis look larger temporarily, and using one too often or too long can weaken elastic tissue in the penis, leading to less firm erections.

Surgical Procedures 

Clinical studies of the surgical techniques used to lengthen the penis have shown very mixed results. There is a medically sanctioned penis enlargement procedure, but it’s reserved for men with penises that don’t function normally because of a birth defect or injury. There are a few surgeons who offer cosmetic penis enlargement but it’s controversial and can cause permanent harm. The most widely used procedure (get ready to cringe) involves severing the ligament that attaches the penis to the pubic bone. When this ligament is cut, the penis appears longer because more of it hangs down. But this can cause an erection to be unstable – imagine the careening fire truck extension ladder scene from the end of It’s A Mad, Mad, World. Another procedure seeks to make the penis thicker by taking fat from another part of the body and injecting it into the penis shaft. But this is a crap shoot – some of the injected fat may be reabsorbed by the body. It can also lead to penile curvature and a weird looking penis. An additional technique for increasing width is grafting tissue onto the shaft of the penis. None of these procedures have been proved safe or effective, and they’ve often backfired, leaving the patient worse off than before.

But wait! All hope is not lost. According to WebMD, out of the hundreds of pills, lotions and contraptions that they’ve investigated, doctors found one that actually seemed to work, although not without considerable dedication on the part of the patient. The FastSize Extender is a device that claims to make the penis longer and thicker through traction. One patient documented results that showed his flaccid penis stretched from 3 inches to over 5 inches, with an erection going from 6 inches to 7 inches. But these results are not typical and it depends a great deal on effort and pain tolerance. If you think you can spend 8 hours a day with weights clamped to your privates, more power to you.

For all of the effort that men put into growing the stature of their power rods, the great irony is that most of their partners were perfectly happy with things the way that they were before. A recent study found that over 85% of women are pleased with their partner’s penis proportions. However, nearly half of men surveyed admit they want a larger penis, and felt theirs was too small. Could they be right? Well, the average penis size is about 5.5 to 6.2 inches long when erect; so most men fall within the normal range. I think that the concern with size may come from the exaggerated lengths that men will attribute to themselves when boasting. To hear guys talk, you’d think they all had a 10-inch salami in their pants. I actually heard one man claim, “My dick’s so big I have to haul it around in a shopping cart!”

Sigh. Men. Don’t they know that an experienced touch and imaginative techniques are more satisfying to a woman than mere size? The most sensitive nerves in the vagina are found close to the surface, and the clitoris is located outside. Save your money and take a lesson from the lesbians, guys. They’ve figured out how to produce fireworks without any penis at all.