Forget About Whether Bigger Is Better: Is it Even Possible?

You may be convinced that you are not very well endowed in your private parts. Certainly, using the Internet to figure out where you stand on size won’t help you feel any better about yourself. And, you can always find someone who will promise to make you bigger and better in any number of ways. So how does one negotiate this extremely sensitive and potentially treacherous path?

Shaping the Good Wood

The penis can be lengthened by surgically cutting the ligaments that secure it to the pelvic bone, but this only makes limp penises appear longer; there is no benefit to the erect penis. In fact, erections are less stable with use. The penis can also be nonsurgically “stretched” for several hours a day to increase its length. Like braces on teeth, this slowly “remodels” the penis and can add a half inch or so.

Penises can be thickened with implants or “grafts” that are sewn to it, or by putting fat, silicon or muscle grafts under the skin. These techniques can increase girth but can also make the penis look strange, appear “doughy soft”, or lumpy and can erode through the skin or become infected. And when these things happen, the disfigurement can substantially alter what was once normal.

Making Good Enough Better

The key issue behind all of this is that penile augmentation procedures try to satisfy personal desires but do not necessarily address a universally acknowledged problem. Because of this, it’s a buyer-beware market with little hard data to support one technique over another. Thankfully, a recently published paper examined 17 studies of 1,192 men who had 21 commonly used procedures to enlarge penises. Take a quiz to learn what they found:

True or False: The vast majority of men having penis enlargement procedures have abnormally small penises.

False. Most have penises of normal size.

True or False: There are procedures available that reliably increase either penis length or width (girth).

False. Surgical procedures such as suspensory ligament excision (lengthening), fat grafting (girth), flaps (girth) and “penile disassembly” are certainly available but in no way are they reliable. Nonsurgical procedures such as injectables (girth), extenders (length) and vacuum devices (length) are less invasive but also unreliable. The most reliable are penile extenders for added length (<2 cm on average) and injectables for girth (complicated by “lumpy penis” syndrome).

True or False:  Most men are completely happy with the results of penis enlargement procedures.

False. The average satisfaction rate among men undergoing penile augmentation procedures is 20%.

True or False: When men are fully informed about penile augmentation procedures, they typically get them done.

False. More often than not, patients, decline enlargement procedures after a fully informed conversation about them.

When it comes to penile augmentation, be careful out there! Have realistic expectations about what you own and what you’re buying into. And realize too that it’s the swing and not the bat size that makes all of the difference.