[ ARC forum 2 ]
Written by tmtanec at 13 May 2002 21:44:14: Re: Stretching Progress
As an answer to: Stretching Progress written by Greg at 10 May 2002 09:27:17:
Hi Greg,
Glad to hear you're getting towards where you want to be - it sounds like you're almost there. Very interesting to hear about the cream too.
If you're still using this cream (betamethasone?) I guess you'll want to get to a point where you don't need it any more. You'll hopefully find your skin has loosened more or less permanently in a few more months. Regular exercise should be sufficient to maintain this, so you'll be able to dispense with the cream and with deliberate stretching.
Your experience with the stoppers sounded fairly alarming. Since extended-wear devices are effective for men who are trying to restore their foreskins, shouldn't they be about as effective for men who are trying to dilate?
In foreskin restoration, though, the main forces are presumably longitidinal (pulling the restoreskin forwards) rather than radial (dilating the foreskin so as to increase its diameter). I wonder, although I haven't actually tried this, whether radial forces might be more likely to interefere with circulation, so that with extended wear, the foreskin could sometimes end up with something not unlike very mild frostbite. This would make it more susceptible to injury.
Techniques that encourage skin growth by applying stretching forces are careful not to interfere with circulation, and this may be an important point for guys who would like to use extended-wear devices to dilate their foreskins: make sure the devices do not interefere with circulation.
How? This is only a suggestion, but, with the device in place, press the skin firmly with a finger tip and then release. The skin should look paler for a second or so, but should quickly turn darker again as blood returns. Try the same test on a finger nail. If the recovery time for the foreskin is notably slower than it is for the finger nail, the device is perhaps too tight.
I didn't try extended-wear devices myself. In retrospect it seems that what I was aiming at was more like being able to do the splits than it was like having very long earlobes. If I'd wanted very long earlobes, sure, I'd have attached heavy things to my ears and worn these all day. People who want to do the splits, though, don't put themselves in an approximately split-like position then hold this for twelve hours minimum. They're doing a different kind of training.
Different strokes for different folks. Some guys will probably need to encourage skin growth before their foreskins will have the potential to stretch enough for complete retraction when hard, and it could be that your off-putting experience with the stoppers nevertheless did encourage some useful growth.
It seems to be working as it is though. Congratuations and all the best.
Ad.