[ ARC forum 2 ]

Phimosis: what is effective?

Written by Paul B. at 05 Jan 2002 07:48:40:

As an answer to: phimosis: when are steroid cremes effective? written by Sn72 at 04 Jan 2002 23:00:49:

> I have phimosis.

And the degree is noted.

Look, you're talking about steroid creams, but that isn't the important part. What you need to to is to stretch your foreskin, and the stretching is much more important than the cream itself.

Take a read here, there is a lot of waffle by certain posters as to whether it will or won't work, but the important thing is it will work if you actually do it! Now, this seems a tedious process to some people and sure, it is going to take weeks, maybe months, so you undoubtedly want the fastest way to do it.

This is described in the post just below by Jim and involves the idea which you will probably find quite novel, of using a tubular plastic object (such as a pill bottle, cap from a pen, or in fact a film canister) to hold the opening fully open all the time (or at least, most of it), and when this becomes a loose fit, move on to a larger object until you get exactly where you want with the size of the foreskin opening.

As you mention "0.5 cm", a suitable object with which to start might be the cap from a pen. Most people have all sorts of dud pens and such lying around, so you could find one which (when you figure out how to pull the foreskin end over it) is a tight but not painful fit. It might be the cap from a felt-tip pen. If you get the wider end inside first, then the shape will tend to make it tend to slip inward rather than out, otherwise you might need to use surgical tape to keep it in place.

It should be pretty easy to figure out how to do this, but even more clever would be to (we presume the object is expendable!) cut off the end so it becomes a tube, so you can pee through it and not need to remove and re-fix it more than once a day (when you wash and check out that it isn't rubbing too much). Obviously, it is going to touch the penis head and this may be uncomfortable, so you may need to smooth the end which touches either by a craft knife, sandpaper or a heat gun.

The eventual aim is to progress up to a 35 mm film canister - very easily available for free from a film processor (I always have a bag of them here, but not for this purpose!) which will be about the time you can "pop" the skin behind the penis head. You will want to give it at least a month extra wearing that device to make sure the skin "sets" to the full stretch. Should it later become tight, you just stretch it again!

> Will my condition respond to Hydro-cortisone 1.0%, to betamethasone valerate 0.5%?

It may respond to the first, you have mis-quoted the second - it is generally 0.05% but you can get 0.1% and these are stronger than the Hydrocortisone. They will assist the stretching process, but you still need to do the stretching somehow, even if you only did this daily whilst masturbating. But if you want things to happen fast, I recommend chasing out some stretching devices. This is called "tissue expansion" and if you look at some of these links, particularly this one with the picture of the African guy which points out how old the idea really is, you will see that this one also gives a very brief summary pointing out that it has really been a relatively recent "discovery" in medical uses.

> ... might not be too strong, and it won't work and I'll have to get a circumcision.

Again, if you were to expect the ointment (preferred form) alone to do it for you, you might be disappointed, but if you actually do the stretching, I can assure you there is no need to consider circumcision at all.


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