Her palm was facing her chest, and spread her fingers apart. She spread her hand out wide in front of her. This is a 20-year-old, a 30-year-old, a 40-year-old, a 50-year-old and a 60-year-old. Gabal finds herself confronting in terms of ED is that it only affects older adults.Īnd there’s a little visual that I have. It’s just wonderful the things that are on the horizon for erectile dysfunction and other entities that we treat in urology. And so that’s now translated into our field for erectile dysfunction and female sexual dysfunction. Shockwave treatments have been used for many, many years for things like kidney stone breakage and also for orthopedic treatments for joints and muscles and tendon repair. Gabal pointed out that there have been many other advancements for treating ED in recent years, too, such as shockwave treatments and the P-shot, which uses PRP therapy.
And it really just normalized it for men to be able to talk about it.ĭr. She told me she’s really grateful that Viagra is commonplace today, a “household name like Kleenex.”Īnd I think they did us such a huge favor by bringing this out in the open and having commercials and talking about it. Gabal said there are different types of implants. Then you place a ring over your penis, like a cock ring, to keep it firm. It uses a vacuum technique to pull blood in. A pump involves a tube inserted into your penis. When these treatments don’t work and the cause seems physiological, your doctor might recommend a penis pump or implant. Viagra and similar medications, like Cialis, enhance the effects of nitric oxide in your body: a natural chemical that relaxes muscles in the penis and increases blood flow. And then also inflatable penile prosthesis. The only thing we really had for more advanced erectile dysfunction-and we still offer these things now but it’s much more rare that we have to go there-would be injections for ED, certain medication that can be injected into the penis. And so men would come and some would want some treatment and we had nothing really to offer them. It was a long time ago and back then, we thought oh, erectile dysfunction is all in your head. The pills that cost $8-10 yielded about a billion dollars in sales in the first year. It was approved by the FDA to treat “impotence” in 1998, and became a near-instant success. She said that fear of talking about it was even more prevalent during her residency at UC San Diego. Many men are afraid to talk about it, because they don’t realize that it’s something that happens to everyone or almost everyone as they get older. Today when she refers to men she’s talking about cisgender men-although the same issues can absolutely impact anyone with a penis: including ED: the inability to have an erection or keep it going during sex. Gabal has only treated a few transgender people through the years, and said she wishes she saw more in her office. More than anything else, she said, she sees men who are struggling with erectile dysfunction.Īs a side note, Dr. Gabal’s thoughts on common penis issues she treats in her office. Today you’ll hear highlights from those stories. We spoke recently about common penis problems, two of which we’ve explored here with true, personal stories in years past. Gabal is a board-certified urologist with more than 20 years of experience in the field.
These things are talked about a lot more than they once were, thankfully, partly thanks to experts such as Dr. But given cultural messages about sex, genitals, and gender - what it means for a cisgender man to have a quote “imperfect” penis - it’s easy to feel shame or confusion. Like pretty much all body parts, the penis can develop health issues that can range from mild to severe.
Not long after noticing those symptoms, he realized he had Peyronie’s disease. That was playwright, author and actor Don Cummings, and he’s talking about his penis. And sometimes in life, it is best to ignore pains. And that was going on for a bit and I go, “What is this?” I thought, Oh, it’s just some pain. It was really sore and tender and it didn’t feel right. So it felt like-what would it be like? Like if you overworked out something maybe? I don’t know. “Common Penis Problems: True Stories + Expert Insight”Ī lightly edited Girl Boner Radio transcript