Penises

You can make your penis bigger without surgery

Many men worry that their penises are not big enough. In one study, only 55 percent of men surveyed reported that they were satisfied with their penis size. (In contrast, most women are pretty happy with their partner’s penis size: 85 percent of women report being satisfied.) And men worry more about the length than the width.

Into this vortex of concern and feelings of inadequacy come the advertisements for ways to increase the size of your penis without surgery. Pills, creams, vacuum pumps, and special stretches or squeezing exercises are all touted as the surefire way to increase the size of your member (and make you more pleasing to your partner). We suspect you may be as tired as we are of having to delete these messages from our inboxes, but you also may find yourself wondering, “Do any of these things work?” After all, the idea of increasing your penis size without having to undergo something like surgery does seem awfully appealing.

Many pills, herbs, and creams are marketed as the “proven” way to increase your penis size. Many of them claim that they will increase the blood flow to the penis and thereby increase its size. This is just not true. No medications have been proven to increase penis size. While one mixture of herbs was found to increase the pressure within the penis in rats, and thus might be able to make an erection a bit stronger, none of the herbs was proven to make the penis longer. There is just no science backing these pills, herbs, or creams—regardless of what the manufacturers claim!

Vacuum devices are a popular suggestion for increasing the size of your penis without surgery. These devices are used to treat some forms of erectile dysfunction since they can increase the amount of blood in the tissues of the penis and thus create an erection. Many believe that these devices can also be used to increase the size of the penis. The scientific evidence does not back this one up. In a study of thirty-seven men with penises less than 10 centimeters (when stretched out), vacuum devices were used three times a week, for twenty minutes at a time, for six months. At that time, there was no significant difference in the length of the men’s penises. Moreover, only one third of the men were satisfied with the procedure. While these vacuums can play a role after surgery on the penis and in certain types of erectile dysfunction, they just do not work to make the penis any bigger.

Another option touted for making your penis bigger is a penile-extending device. One of these devices has been studied in a somewhat scientific way that involved measurements for twenty-three men who wore the penile extender over the course of three months. This device consists of a plastic ring into which the penis is inserted, and the penis is then attached to two metallic rods by a silicon band. The men were supposed to wear the stretching device for several hours a day, increasing from four to six hours in the beginning to nine hours over the course of the three months, and they were supposed to add a half a centimeter to the length of the rods every two weeks. This study did report that the average length of the flaccid penis (not the erect penis) increased by about 1 centimeter over the course of the three months. The girth of the penis did not change. Based on this one small study, it is possible that stretching your penis for three months might increase the length a little, but it is not clear whether this effect lasts or whether this would make any difference when your penis is erect. It is also important to note that stretching the penis with weights may cause permanent damage to the penis.

In between the unproven pills and creams and more significant surgeries, there is the option to have a doctor inject a type of gel that acts as a “filler” to expand the size of the penis. There is some evidence that having a doctor inject a special kind of gel called hyaluronic acid gel can increase the girth of your penis or the size of the head of the penis. In a small study of fifty men in Korea, using this gel to increase the girth of the penis was found to be satisfactory and safe at eighteen months. The increase in girth was about 4 centimeters (remember, that is measured as circumference around the penis). These are not the best data, as it is a small study in one population, but at least this method seems to work. Not surprisingly, this option has a lot of potential bad side effects. Pain, bruising, changes in the color of the penis, depressions or bumps from uneven spread of the gel, and even embolisms or impotence are possible complications.

We have gone through a bunch of nonsurgical ways to try to increase your penis size, but what about surgery? If none of these pills or lotions or exercises or devices works, should you think about taking the plunge with surgery? In the surgery to make the penis longer, ligaments that hold up the penis are basically cut so that the penis can hang lower and look longer. But even surgery might not be the answer for you. In a critical review of the studies of surgeries to increase the size of the penis, penile enhancement surgery is found to cause a 1–2 centimeter increase in the length of the penis (that’s about half an inch) and a 2.5 centimeter increase in the girth of the penis (close to an inch wider in circumference). Surgery can make your penis a bit bigger, though not as much as you might think or hope. There are lots of downsides to surgery, though, and the studies of penile enhancement surgery are full of reports of all kinds of unpleasant complications. Problems like deformity of the penis, paradoxical penile shortening (who wants a penis-lengthening surgery to make it shorter accidentally?), disagreeable scarring (scarring of the penis always seems disagreeable), shifting of the injected material, and sexual dysfunction are all reported as frequent problems with this surgery. In fact, patients are so dissatisfied with these surgeries in both the short term and the long term that the critical review actually concludes that patients should be discouraged from trying these surgeries. Not a good endorsement from urologists and plastic surgeons who specialize in these types of procedures!

It is important to take a moment to think about what is normal and what is not. The average length of an erect penis is between five and seven inches. Most penises, no matter how small or how big they might look when they are soft, end up being about this same length when they are erect. You also might be interested to know that the size of a man’s penis falls lower down on a woman’s list of requirements than you might think. Women consistently rate a man’s personality and grooming higher than penis size in terms of what makes him attractive, and 90 percent of women in one study prioritized the width of the penis over length. Being a fit, attentive, responsive partner is much more likely to be attractive to your partner than having a particular size of penis. Finally, if you really want something else to do, you could work on two optical illusions that might make your member look a bit larger. The most important one for your overall health would be to get rid of your belly. A big belly can hide the upper part of the penis and make it appear smaller. Not only will losing your gut make you much healthier, it might make your penis look bigger too! A less important strategy, but one that you still might want to give a go, is to cut your pubic hair down. Having less bushy hair around the base of your penis might create the illusion that your penis is a bit bigger. Once again, your partner may not care at all, but you can try this one out if you want something to work on.