Why gains slow!

Hey Wad,

I appreciate your comments and agree with much of what you say. However, I haven’t yet gotten to the point of frustration where I’m ready to give up on the science and just follow the received wisdom, although I believe the received wisdom is probably accurate.

Every day that I study PE, I learn something new. For example, I’ve recently learned that different guys naturally have tunicas of widely differing thickness. I never knew that, and it could help to explain why some guys are naturally harder gainers than others.

I’ve learned that the longitudinal fibers of the tunica don’t extend all the way to the pubic rami (making the portion of the crura inside the body a possible site for active length growth, since there’s apparently less resistance to longitudinal stress).

I’ve learned that the ventral side of the tunica has very few longitudinal fibers. Knowing that, I probably won’t be spending a lot of time doing V-stretches.

I’ve learned that collagen fibers tend to “magically” align themselves along the direction of applied force, apparently in a defensive effort to help the body to resist the force. This suggests there may be some benefit to mixing up exercises, to keep the body “guessing” as to the direction of the next force.

This is all good stuff and really helps me to understand what I’m doing. Most people aren’t as lucky as your soft tugging friend. And I’ve also seen posts on this site from guys who pull like hell and jelq with an iron grip on a full erection, and gain tremendously.

That’s the trouble with the current state of PE. It’s all anecdotal rather than scientific, and the effectiveness of techniques varies from individual to individual. It would be great if we could actually understand the underlying mechanisms for growth and resistance to growth. Then we’d be in a much better position to “engineer” specific programs to suit the anatomy and physiology of different people.

It’s unfortunate that PE isn’t scientifically studied. But there’s still a lot of information out there. There’s a great deal of research into ED and Peyronie’s disease. There’s also research into connective tissue stretching (for chiropractors, message therapists, and plastic surgeons). There’s tons of research into skin, and methods of preventing aging.

The connective tissues of the body are simply not that different from one another. I think that careful study of the published works and narrowly drawn inferences can help to illuminate many of the mysteries of PE.

I’m going to keep studying and trying to keep this thread rolling. It’s still a long way to 8x6, and I have lots of motivation to keep learning.

I don’t know if the following information can apply to PE, but it’s the best I’ve found:

Penile androgen receptor concentration decreased from 40 fmol/gram in newborn foreskins to 25 fmol/gram by 1 year of age. The receptor concentration rose in childhood to 180 fmol/gram in the late teenage years and fell thereafter to 20-40 fmol/gram in men over the age of 40.
Androgen Receptor in the Human Foreskin

That suggests that high AR count is conducive to easy growth (along with androgens, plenty of erections and maybe other things). Since post puberty those factors are still present (if only in a maintenance capacity) we need to tip the balance somehow, which is where the exercises come in. I still think the best way to gain length would be a 24hour low load ADS.

Interesting article. Have you found anything in your travels that describes how androgen and androgen receptors allow or promote growth? The abstract from the article you posted suggests a connection. It would be interesting to learn more about that.

This brings up another question. Body builders stretch the fascia so that the exercised muscle fibers can grow thicker inside it. Many of us may be stretching the tunica which is a fascia and not getting much or any tissue growth inside of it.

For a second there I was falling into a trap of thinking the tunica was the sole limiting factor but I can’t assume that is true for all.

So, the tunica/fascia must be stretched and the tissue beneath it must be somehow stimulated to grow. Someone said that early gains come from the expansion of elastic tissue inside the fascia.

What do you guys think, what type of growth takes place inside the fascia? Expansion of elastic tissues? New tissue synthesis? I know these questions have been addressed. I am not claiming that these things I throw out are new questions, I just want to address them with the new models we are developing.

By stretching the tunica you would almost certainly be stretching other tissues along with it. I haven’t looked yet, but I suspect we’ll find that the tissue stretch triggers the chemical messages that facilitate growth. I think we should be looking to distinguish between healing and growth. The former is a defensive, the latter an adaptation. Maybe we got stuck with meme that damage is a requirement of growth, I’m beginning to think that it’s not the case, and that growth is more a happy side effect.

Your going to find integrin signaling. Integrins connect the inside of the cell to the outer extracellular matrix (EM). On the outside they connect to the extracellular matrix. On the inside they connect to the actin cytoskelleton. I spent a few days looking at this and got bogged down in complex signaling pathways that are an enigma for cell biologists because different signaling pathways share many effectors. I don’t think the stretch alone triggers the chemical messages that facilitate growth, at least in the penis but I am not convinced yet.

I don’t know what did it but the sore spots along my shaft are now gone. The skin is continuing to fade but not at the original rate. At some point in the near future I will start a basic newbie routine. It is possible that this break without any supplements would have given me the same result.

What I copied below is from around post 130.

Nothing to extreme. I am using:

a loofah soap once every two days
Arnica Gel (Boiron brand) 2 applications over entire penis/day

At night:
Vitamin E 1000 IU
L-Arginine 1g

Morning:
Alpha Lipoic Acid 300mg
Acetyl L-Carnitine 500mg
L-Carnitine Tartrate 500mg

I am not super quantitative with this. Some days I forget to take stuff which I don’t worry about because I think one should give their bodys a break every few days at least.

I am also doing a lot of semi erect deep tissue penile massages for about 10 min. in the shower under the hot water. No constriction or pain, just very much loosing up the tissue. These are interesting and I think a new PE exercise might develop out of it. If you get hard enough, you are actually stretching the tunica as you push in, however, you are not forcing fluids across barriers or causing trauma so fibrosis is less likely. I am nowhere near ready to call it a PE exercise although I do hang fuller afterward.

I am thinking of using DMSO but I want to see where I can get with this other stuff first because I know it is all healthy and safe as long as I don’t overdo it.

Although I hang fuller during my shower massages, I am loosing flaccid gains. This is a little disappointing, however, I am not loosing erect gains and fsl is still the same. My penis seems harder erect than it has in a long time. Also, oddly enough, I have regained some of my erection angle without a loss in length. This is of course all very anecdotal and I don’t know what is doing what or if anything is doing anything and how much is in or stimulated by my mind.

It is not fading uniformly. This is a little disconcerting at first because I have pink, brown, yellow and black patches now. The circumcision scar is still black, the ridge on the head looks brand new but there are brown and yellow areas between the pee hole and the ridge. The area immediately around the pee hole is pink, which suggests the acid in the urine might be speeding up the turnover of skin. Rich and famous people get acid peels for the same reason, to speed the turnover. Disgusting I know, but someone might consider peeing in a condom and letting my shaft soak in it (not for me). The shaft is white at the base. This is my shaft point of reference, I have a distinct line separating the coloring of the base and the rest of the shaft behind the head.

IOW, my penis is starting to look really weird but I am heading in the right direction. This is nothing quantitative, just an update on my supplements and perceptions.

“I am also doing a lot of semi erect deep tissue penile massages for about 10 min. in the shower under the hot water. No constriction or pain, just very much loosing up the tissue. These are interesting and I think a new PE exercise might develop out of it. If you get hard enough, you are actually stretching the tunica as you push in, however, you are not forcing fluids across barriers or causing trauma so fibrosis is less likely. I am nowhere near ready to call it a PE exercise although I do hang fuller afterward.”

I have noticed that the tissue is harder in some places that others. I know this sounds like crap and I am hesitant to post it but I have some tough regions in the tissue immediately adjacent to my urethra. On the right side, it is very noticeably harder to depress than on the right side. I am not claiming this is fibrosis, I have no way of knowing what it is. I have to be pretty close to fully erect to feel this.

I also used around 2mg/night melatonin.

This is a good point. Everything I’ve read indicates that the contents of the CC’s expand during erection and expansion is limited by the tunica. Somebody once used the analogy that it’s like inflating a balloon inside a straw. Make the straw bigger and the balloon just inflates further.

At some point, the internal tissues probably do have to grow. I agree with Shiver that they probably grow along with the tunica, and are stretched at the same time.

I recently saw a drawing of the inside layer of the tunica, as it blended into the tissues within a CC. It was not an abrupt transition, as a simple membrane would be. Instead, the tunica actually had projections extending radially into to body of the CC to form a network of small pockets (I think they’re called “trabeculae”). The walls of the pockets are made of the same stuff as the inside layer of the tunica, and are coextensive with it. I’ll try to find the picture.

This means that stretching the tunica really does stretch some of the internal structure of the CCs, as they really are structurally integrated with one another.

Even if the tunica were to “get ahead” of the internal structures of the CCs, normal erections would probably (guessing) provide enough pressure to induce the structures to fill the available space. I don’t believe that anything inside the CCs provides anywhere near the resistance to expansion that the tunica itself provides.

Some hangers have noted that, as they grow, gains in their BPEL often lag behind gains in FBPSEL. I’ve often wondered whether this delay is caused by the internal structures needing to “catch up” with the tunica’s growth.

Here’s a link to great article on erection mechanics that explains the role of the trabeculae in restricting the shape of the CCs during erection (in an armadillo penis). The trabeculae may play more of a role than I had previously considered:

ModestoMan - CC "Struts" may limit girth growth

See the section on pages 10-11 entitled “Effect of trabeculae on cross-sectional shape and flexural stiffness.”

They actually measure the mechanical characteristics of a CC before and after the trabeculae have been removed.

Fascinating read. The tunica seems to be a big artery arterial wall in a lot of ways according to the article. Interesting because DHT makes one more vascular. We might be able to gain insights into how DHT grows the penis in puberty by studying how it affects arteries. There is a lot of literature on this:

http://www.ncbi .nlm.nih.gov/en … om_uid=14709148

I bring this up because despite a few hours of looking on the topic, I am still dumbfounded in terms of how the tunica grows.

Yes, the trabeculae seems more important than I had thought as well. I think I may have altered mine as my penis is now round and I don’t ejaculate with much force anymore (I have wondered about that for a long time).

Thank you.

After posting that my sore spots are gone, I spend a fair amount of time in the shower exploring my penis for hard spots at various levels of erection. I defiantly still have some asymmetry in terms of hards spots present on one side but not the other. I think they are very much reduced in size and will continue with what I am doing to see if they go away completely.

I may or may not have fibrosis. If I have it, this probably contributed greatly:

Extreme Extreme Ulis

I’ve never thought to look out for hard spots, but will later. It’s interesting that you feel they are reducing. That might be a good indicator of how long a deconditioning break should be (or how to judge if one is required).

Yea, I really don’t know if it is fibrosis but it is interesting. I have had a major reduction in my smallest flaccid size. I am disappointed that the skin fading has slowed. I guess I got the easy stuff that was very close to the surface with the arnica. I will probably need a carrier to get the rest.

Also, I posted yesterday that my penis is a lot more round. I felt around today. It is more round but I think it has more to do with a larger chamber surrounding my urethra than a modification of the trabeculae. I may have modified trabeculae, but not to the extent I imagined last night based. My penis is still more flat than tall, if that makes any sense.

I think human CCs are naturally rounder in cross-section than armadillo CCs. I thought the paper on armadillo penises was important because it suggested that trabeculae could be a strong factor in determining the resistance of the CC’s to gains. I didn’t mean to suggest that the gross anatomy was the same.

There are some pretty big differences between human and armadillo penises. For one thing, the armadillo doesn’t appear to have two separate CCs. It’s more like one that is divided into many pie-shaped sections. The trabeculae form “struts” that hold the CC(s) in a kidney bean shape. That shape takes pressure off the urethra to allow semen to pass.

In contrast, the human penis has two CCs, each of which is approximately round in cross section during tumescence. The human urethra rides in the CS, which fits nicely in the “valley” formed by the adjoining CCs. The trabeculae in humans are probably not necessary for keeping pressure off the urethra.

Just for fun, I suppose one could compare the struts of the armadillo penis to the septum of the human penis. Certainly, removing the septum would cause the same problem as removing the trabeculae in the armadillo—it would flatten the urethra.

Have you tried pissing with an erection? Do you have the same problem? How about pissing when flaccid? If so, you might want to have your prostate checked. I’m guessing the cause of your weaker ejaculation is not the penis but something internal.

Have you been doing your Kegels?