Does Penis Enlargement Work?

Penis enlargement can be grouped into two main categories:

• Natural penis enlargement (NPE)
• Surgical penis enlargement

Natural penis enlargement is anything non-surgical and is anything but natural. Effective techniques include stretching the connective ligaments to expose more shaft or stretching the shaft itself manually or with a hanging device, expanding the shaft by increasing the internal pressure manually or with a constriction device or lowering the pressure around the penis with the aid of a vacuum device.

Surgical penis enlargement is improving all the time. It mainly involves cutting the ligaments to expose more shaft (normally followed by the NPE technique of hanging during recovery) or bulking the girth of the penis with fat injections or man-made tissue. The injection of fat has some long term issues (reabsorbtion being one). The cutting of ligaments normally requires a course of the NPE technique hanging after the fact to allow for gains. There are instances of this technique producing a shorter phallus.

The rest of this page deals with NPE. For discussions on surgical techniques, the forums provide direct experiences of those who have undergone surgery, both positive and negative.

It is often advantageous to wait for scientific studies to be conducted on a product or technique, for the relevant authorities to pass it as fit, and maybe a number of years in the field to guarantee it's effectiveness, and long term stability and safety. Even when this path is followed, safety and efficacy are not assured: From Thalidomide to Cox Inhibitors and Asbestos to Sudan 1, there are regular scares which remind us that science and regulation provides only a partial guarantee.

The current vogue for the precautionary principle, that is assuming something is dangerous until proved otherwise, leads to small protest groups being given the power to demonise almost anything irrespective of worth, tainting our trusted sources of information with conjecture. We are used to being presented with a multitude of conflicting information. The minimum requirements for trusting something often include at base some kind of scientific proof. Increasingly the proof has to be defensive in nature, produced to fight negative public perception as with the MMR vaccine.

Penis enlargement is spammed heavily, using frankly ludicrous claims for products that have no hope of producing the results. In this kind of situation, penis enlargement needs heavy scientific proof for people to even consider trusting in the process.

There is no independent scientific proof for Natural Penis Enlargement.

Dr. Brian Richards, a UK based doctor of medicine - unlike many other people involved in penis enlargement and claiming a doctorate - specialising in sexual medicine, conducted the closest thing to proper research in 1975. The research followed the "Chartham Method", which consisted of muscle exercises, warm wraps and vacuum pumping. The research was published in a commercial medical publication but it's fame grew as a result of the vendors of the Chartham Method being sued for "obtaining money or property through the mails by means of false representations" by the United States Postal Service, a case the vendors lost.

Dr. Richards experiment lasted 3 months, consisted of a tiny random sample size of 64 of which 32 were a control. Of the 32 men involved pro-actively in the trial, 2 dropped out and 2 gained nothing. The remaining 28 gained between 0.94" and 1.4" inches in length and .55" and 1.2" in girth, a success rate of 87.5%.

If you compare this small experiment to the kind of research required to get a drug passed by the Department of Health, it is easy to see that these results are at best worthy of further research. Dr. Richards himself could not be sure of the permanence of the gains.

The comparison with the process required to pass a drug for market, even a potentially dangerous or useless one, also leads to the most obvious reason research is sparse. The amount of money required to run research of this kind is not inconsiderable, and the potential revenue is somewhere between tiny and non-existent. The money in penis enlargement is in the surgical field or the scams run by those pushing penis pills and patches.

Here's where the good news starts, though it is mostly empirical in nature with theories based on other technologies or research outside the field.

This site has many thousands of members signed up to the forum. There are posts going back over 4 years from people who have tried penis enlargement and succeeded. These people come from all walks of life and many different countries around the world. Even medical people have gained and posted about their gains.

The downside of a forum is that of the people who join, there is no way to calculate a success rate. Only those who post can effectively be counted and it is hard to gauge whether people will post more if they are successful or if they fail. There is at least one example of a person who tried for two years and gained nothing, then switched methods and gained an inch in length. There are also cases of people who have been frustrated with lack of gains and either pushed to the point of injury or given up.

There is also the issue of permanence. There are a few cases of people who have committed to PE, gained well and then stopped. These people have then lost a proportion of their gains. There are others who have lost little or nothing. Some of this maybe has to do with methods employed or cementing gains, some may have to do with lowered erection levels over time.

Penis enlargement is in much the same position as herbal remedies in many ways, good quality information can be hard to come by on the Internet in general. On the forum fads tend to gain a grip easily and proven methods are ignored for the latest grow fast method. The psychology is easy to understand, if someone claims you can gain faster and with less effort, a desire is encouraged and if you have the least bit of insecurity it will grow. Sometimes even the desire for something to be wonderful and revolutionary will encourage advocates and an idea with people behind it convinces more people.

There is a fair amount of experimentation, this filters through the forum for a period of years and out of the other end the good material is filtered. It ends up in the Tutorial Forum.

Injury is something that as a beginning PEer you have to watch for like a hawk and not fall into the trap of running before you can walk or pushing beyond the boundaries of anything that could be defined by the words safe and sensible. With PE comes risk and also reward and it is for you to guard against the risk, while maximising the reward. Check the "Injury and Treatments" forum for more information. The vast majority of injuries reported are minor, and the major injuries are the result of techniques that are considered dangerous by the majority of PEers.

Your first step as a penis enlargement sceptic should be to see if you can figure out the con here. Look around the site, check for advertisements, check for posts that look as if they are trying to hawk products to you, check for anything else you can think of.

You will find (currently) two commercial links at the bottom of each forum page and we have received donations from at least one of them. You will also find next to some members names the added title 'Commercial Member' and a section in the FAQ on what this means. You will also find people posting spam here and hoping to get away with it.

Once you've looked around this site with that attitude, take the same scepticism to any other Penis Enlargement site you visit. Commercial Penis Enlargement is extremely cut throat, with underhand tactics and guerrilla marketing continually attempting to lull you into useless products or paying for information which is available for free elsewhere.

Natural Penis Enlargement is not something you can buy, it's something you need to work at. Other than buying some lubrication from your local pharmacy or sex shop, you do not need to spend any money. Most of us are time poor these days and have a fair amount of disposable income, the thought of a quick route to success with penis enlargement is incredibly enticing but there are no shortcuts. Surgery is not a guarantee of gaining or even retaining your original length.

If you choose to sign up for the forum, you can access the exercise videos and the extra forums. If get queasy about giving out your email address, or you work particularly well from text and don't need hand holding, this is unnecessary. A little extra reading of the pearchive, the wiki, and as a forum guest will suffice.

On the forum you will read about all manner of equipment. Some members have spent varying amounts of cash on PE devices or information. Some people will mix comments about their latest purchase with good reported gains. This does not mean that expensive equipment is helpful or even necessary.

Most devices are available in an easy DIY version, if not on Tom Hubbard's site then elsewhere in the forum. If you can put together Ikea shelving, you can make most of these devices.