Monthly Archives: June 2011

Why Is My Penis Curved?

Posted on by Dr.Herazy

How to straighten a penis

What a terrible shock to realize, “My penis is curved.” 

But then you must ask, “How did that happen, and what is going on down there?  And the most important question to Google, “How to straighten my penis?”

Of several causes of a curved penis, the most common and difficult to deal with is Peyronie’s disease.  

Peyronie’s disease is a condition that occurs in about 6-10% of men over the age of 40 (although it can affect teenagers and men in their early 20s) in which a dense and thick mass of fibrous tissue, called a Peyronie’s plaque or scar, is found within the tunica albuginea layer of the penis.  The presence of this fibrous nodule or band  under the skin of the penis prevents the normal expansion of the chambers of the penis during an erection.  This causes the erection to be curved, bent, hinged, or to take on an hourglass or bottleneck distortion.

Please visit Peyronie’s symptoms to view the Peyronie’s pictures of curved penis to determine if you might have this condition.  It is always advisable to have a complete examination by a physician to make an accurate diagnosis of Peyronie’s disease.  Do not think you can self-diagnose this problem.

The problem of Peyronie’s disease is not that you have a curved penis; the penile curvature is just the outward appearance of the actual problem that is found below the skin surface.  The real problem is the Peyronie’s plaque found deeper in the tunica albuginea causing incomplete filling of the penile chambers.  For this reason any treatment that is only directed to making the penis straight, without removing the PD plaque, will not be successful.

If a man knows he has Peyronie’s disease he should also know the problem is that his body produced excessive scar tissue or plaque in response to a small injury or inflammation of the deep penile tissue layer.  While the Peyronie’s Disease Institute does not take a position against Peyronie’s surgery, we feel too many men resort to penis surgery far too soon before trying conservative treatment.   Our objection to Peyronie’s surgery is that when a surgeon cuts that same tissue that has the plaque material in it puts stitches into it, what prevents additional scar formation from occurring?  The very real chance that more scar tissue will result is the reason many urologists and surgeons take a position against all Peyronie’s surgery.

Peyronie’s Disease Institute has educated men since 2002 about the use of Alternative Medicine to assist the body to heal the Peyronie’s plaque.  Fifty percent of men naturally recover from Peyronie’s disease without any help or outside intervention.  Our approach is to assist each man to increase his chance to heal naturally like those in that lucky 50% group. So if you are one who has said in shock, “Why is my penis curved,” and “How to straighten your penis,”  now you know. 

Learn more about Peyronie’s disease treatment with Alternative Medicine. A good source of information is the Peyronie’s Disease Handbook.  

Pentoxifylline, Niacin and Peyronie’s Disease

Posted on by Dr.Herazy

Pentoxifylline is not an approved Peyronie’s disease drug

There are several things I find interesting in a question and answer about Peyronie’s disease and Pentoxifylline (Pentox) I discovered online recently.  It appears on the Peyronie’s forum of a medical doctor who is well known as a Peyronie’s disease expert.  I will not use the doctor’s name since it does not serve a useful purpose to mention his name.

Here is the question, followed by the doctor’s answer:

Question:  Can Pentoxifylline help with increasing blood flow when a man has PD?  Also is Niacin also an alternative that might achieve any results?

Answer:   Pentoxifylline has been shown in animal studies to potentially reduce the development of the Peyronie’s scar when the animals consumed the Pentox in their drinking water from the time that the Peyronie’s process is triggered.  Pentoxifylline is indicated to enhance blood flow to the lower extremities in patients with peripheral vascular disease likely because it has a mild non-specific vasodilating effect.  Therefore, it is possible that it can increase blood flow in the man with PD.  As to whether this will improve erections or has anything to do with preventing progression of already established PD is unknown.  Niacin, to my knowledge, has not been studied as a treatment for Peyronie’s disease.

Pentox preferred simply because it is a drug

Point # 1.  The doctor responds that the use of Pentoxifylline is used to treat Peyronie’s disease because it has the ability to enhance blood flow to the lower extremities in patients with peripheral vascular disease likely because of its mild non-specific vasodilating effect.

My response:  Here the doctor is saying that Pentoxifylline is used in Peyronie’s disease because it improves blood flow in people who have peripheral vascular disease.  Anyone who has studied this subject knows that Peyronie’s disease is not a vascular or blood vessel disease, so it is difficult to understand from this answer the connection between the two conditions. This reason he gives for using Pentox for treatment of PD is not supported by what we know about this condition.

Point #2.  The doctor states that Pentoxifylline is used in Peyronie’s disease (of the penis) because it improves blood flow in the periphery of the body, meaning arms and legs.

My response:  These are two different areas of the body. This part of the answer suggests that Pentox has not been tested or shown to actually improve the blood flow to the penis, only the upper and lower extremities.  This reason he gives for using Pentoxifylline for treatment of PD is not supported by what we know about this condition.

Point #3.  The doctor attempts to tie his two points together and then carefully speculates that “it is possible that it can increase blood flow in the man with PD.”

My response:  What the doctor is saying is that using Pentox for Peyronies treatment might possibly work since it works for other conditions that are only remotely related. This kind of speculative use of a drug is common, and would not be objectionable except for the fact that Pentoxifylline is known to have side effects that can affect the cardiovascular, immune, digestive, respiratory, visual and nervous systems. That is a risk taken by a patient for use of a drug that might only possibly help an unrelated condition.  I doubt many patients know that they are exposing themselves by taking drugs that are not known to help the condition they have.

Point #4.  The doctor reports that it is unknown if Pentoxifylline will improve erections or has anything to do with preventing progression of an existing case of Peyronie’s disease.

My response:   Saying that it is unknown if Pentox will improve erections suggests that it does not influence blood flow to the penis. Yet, improving penile blood flow is one of the reasons given by this doctor to justify using it for Peyronie’s disease.   Since I have never heard of anyone taking any medication for prevention of Peyronie’s disease, the doctor also says that Pentoxifylline will not alter the progression of a case of PD once it has started.  This sounds to me that it would not help Peyronie’s disease.

Point #5.  The doctor reports that to his knowledge niacin (a member of the B vitamin family) has never been studied as a possible treatment for Peyronie’s disease.

My response:  Niacin is well known to those who take vitamins for the “niacin flush” that it causes.  Niacin causes an increased blood flow throughout the body, experienced as heat, redness and itching that occurs after taking a few hundred milligram dose.

So we have the doctor reporting that Pentox (with side effects) is used to treat Peyronie’s disease because it has a “mild non-specific vasodilating effect,” yet niacin (with no side effects) which also has a mild to moderate non-specific vasodilating effect has never been studied as a Peyronie’s treatment.

I think this is a classic example of the drug industry ignoring potential non-drug therapies simply because they lack profitability.  This is a point to remember when you are told that no nutritional therapy has been shown to help PD.   This is only true because these companies refuse to do the testing to prove they might have merit.

Point #6.   The doctor uses  only one brief  sentence to discuss niacin, and 90% of his reply to discuss a drug that does the same thing as niacin can do and do it without side effects.  In his short sentence about niacin he only says that it has not been studied as a Peyronie’s treatment.  Period.  As a scientist, as a physician interested in advancing the body of thought about Peyronie’s treatment, wouldn’t you think the doctor would be more interested in something like niacin?  Instead, he merely brushes the idea of niacin use for PD aside.  This is so typical of the attitude of organized medicine about treatment of Peyronie’s disease.

Point #7.  The man who asked a reasonable and intelligent question about niacin was not given an actual answer about niacin.    He was only given a reply that promoted the use of a drug that has side effects and not known to be effective against Peyronie’s disease.   And you wonder why men get frustrated with the lack of help and useful information about Peyronies treatment.

Spontaneous Remission and Natural Cure for Peyronie’s Disease

Posted on by Web Designer

Helping nature to remove the Peyronie’s plaque

Peyronie’s disease is filled with unknowns and controversy.  There is even controversy about how often this problem simply goes away on its own.  Some say it never goes away; that once you have Peyronies you have it for life.  And there are those who say it goes away half of the time, and those who say it rarely goes away on its own.

The term “simply goes away on its own” is another way of saying “self-healed” or “spontaneous cure” or “the body healed itself without outside assistance.”  This is not an example of playing with words.  In my world of working to help men reverse their Peyronie’s disease by improving their ability to heal or correct this problem, there is no difference in what these terms mean.  It is important – even critical – to realize that when the body is able to rid itself of a disease process or abnormality it is an instance of true healing or a self-cure.  Hence, it cannot be said that there is no cure for Peyronie’s disease.  The body is able to cure Peyronie’s disease; it happens either rarely, or up to 20-50% of the cases, depending upon whom you choose to believe – but it does happen.

This is an extremely important point to consider in regard to using Alternative Medicine to treat Peyronie’s disease.  When you use the different internal and external therapies to rid yourself of the Peyronie’s scar all you are attempting to do is to increase your body’s ability heal or cure itself of PD.

Most of us would be in agreement that the body can and does rid itself – by a process in which the immune system heals, or “cures itself” – of Peyronie’s disease. How often this happens might be of some disagreement, but I think it is fair to say that most people know the body is able to cure or heal the Peyronies problem in some cases.  This is an important point to keep in mind when you read or hear that there is no cure for Peyronie’s disease.

When the medical doctor says there is no cure for Peyronie’s disease what he really means is that there is no drug that he can prescribe that is a Peyronie’s cure.  We have established that the body can and does heal the Peyronie’s plaque in an undetermined number of cases.  With the Peyronie’s Disease Institute therapy program we are attempting to increase that natural healing ability.

Is cancer more difficult to treat than Peyronie’s disease?

A spontaneous healing, also called spontaneous remission or spontaneous regression, is the unexpected cure or improvement of a disease which previously appeared to be stable or worsening. These terms are typically used to explain unexpected improvement of a cancer.  The spontaneous regression and remission from cancer was defined by Everson and Cole in their 1966 book, Spontaneous Regression of Cancer, this way: “The partial or complete disappearance of a malignant tumour in the absence of all treatment, or in the presence of therapy which is considered inadequate to exert significant influence on neoplastic disease.”

Because most of our medical information is presented through medical sources, it has long been suggested spontaneous regressions, let alone cures, from cancer are rare.  Frequency of spontaneous healing was estimated to occur approximately at the rate of 1 in 100,000 cancers.  Everson and Cole report that at least for small tumors, the frequency of spontaneous regression had been was drastically underrated and underreported. In their carefully designed mammography study they found that 22% of all breast cancer cases underwent spontaneous regression.  They explain spontaneous regression from cancer: “In many of the collected cases … it must be acknowledged that the factors or mechanisms responsible for spontaneous regression are obscure or unknown in the light of present knowledge. However, in some of the cases, available knowledge permits one to infer that hormonal influences probably were important. … In other cases, the protocols strongly suggest that an immune mechanism was responsible”.

When you read that in 20-50% of the cases the Peyronie’s disease goes away on its own, these are the instances in which the body was able to heal itself of the excess Peyronie’s scar.  This issue of spontaneous resolution and tendency for improvement of Peyronie’s disease has been commonly cited. 1-4 If the body can cure cancer on occasion, why not Peyronie’s disease if you are doing many things at once to encourage this to happen?

All of this should give you some encouragement that the Peyronie’s Disease Institute therapy program is following a logical and reasonable course of action to help the body remove this problem, as the body was designed to do.

Learn about starting a Peyronie’s treatment plan.

  1. Williams JL, Thomas GG. The natural history of Peyronie’s disease. J Urol 1970; 103: 75-76.
  2. Furlow WL, Swenson HE, Lee RE. Peyronie’s disease: a study of its natural history and treatment with orthovoltage radiotherapy. J Urol 1979; 114: 69.
  3. Williams G, Green NA. The nonsurgical treatment of Peyronie’s disease. Br J Urol 1980; 52: 392-395.
  4. Gelbard MK, Dorey F, James K. The natural history of Peyronie’s disease. J Urol 1990; 1441: 376-379.