Testicle Size 'Really Is What Matters'

Testicle size is what counts for a clean bill of health and being able to produce children.
Most men are unaware of how important the size of their testes is in relation to their health, Professor Rob McLachlan, director of Andrology Australia, told Fairfax newspapers.
"I've seen men coming in with (testicles) the size of a sultana and they haven't realised (it's a problem) - it happens all the time," Prof McLachlan said.
Men need to be aware of their testicle size, to measure their own health.
"They don't know how big their testes should be - what's normal and what's abnormal," Prof McLachlan said.
Small testes can indicate there is a testosterone deficiency. This can make a man feel tired, lose muscle, gain fat, lose sex drive.
It could lead to osteoporosis or thinning of the bones. And it can also be a sign of infertility, with a higher risk of developing testicular cancer, Prof McLachlan says.
Genital examinations, which take about 30 seconds, are crucial for men and opens the channel for a diagnosis.
"You want to pick these conditions up in men when they are younger if you can because then you have the chance to intervene and give them 30, 40, 50 years of quality of life and protect them from issues such as thin bones," Prof McLachlan says.
To raise awareness of men's health, the male reproductive health centre Andrology Australia is producing orchidometers or different-sized beads.
They range from 1 ml to 35 ml in volume, which help doctors identify reproductive health disorders.
Testicles measured from 15 ml to 35 ml are in the normal range.
"If a man's testicles are the size of a sultana he should see his doctor," he said.
from The Sydney Morning Herald

Penis Mud Pack

Japan's sex industry relies on innovation, so much so, that a company has come up with a penis mud pack, which has been adapted from the facial, according to a Japanese magazine.
The service is part of an Italian-style treatment, which involves a soothing wine bath for the testicles being followed by the mud pack, and it's offered by a Tokyo-based service called The Aromani.
"A whole lot of operations similar to ours sprung up in a short time and we needed to provide a service nobody else was offering, and this was it," The Aromani boss told Spa!
Authorities in Japan have cracked down on the sex trade in recent years, which has prompted operators to create an innovative set of new law-abiding services that are aimed at providing pleasure.
The boss revealed: 'Our sales point is that we also offer variations, including having the service performed by multiple workers (groups of two or three women), or you can have it performed by a shy woman or another who'll do it while talking dirty.'
For the service, a sink is filled warm water and wine as these will supposedly improve circulation.
Instead of the customer putting his face into the basin, he needs to sit in the sink, allowing his penis and bum to soak.
The washing is performed by at least one woman, who's in her 20s, or 30s at the oldest.
Once the sink soak is complete, the genitals are covered with mud and massaged, which is supposed to cleanse the skin.
from Metro

'Cup Check' Leaves Student in Danger Of Losing Testicles

SACRAMENTO - A locker room prank as common as the snapped towel has one Ponderosa High School student in danger of felony assault charges and another in danger of losing his testicles.
According to the El Dorado County Sheriff's Department, a 17-year-old Ponderosa junior performed a "cup check" on his 14-year-old freshman teammate following a snowboard team competition at Sierra-at-Tahoe on Feb. 12.
"They do this thing called the 'cup check,' " said sheriff's Lt. Kevin House. "It's this small group of guys that does it to one another."
A common sports gag, a cup check involves striking a teammate's groin, ostensibly to determine if he is wearing a protective cup.
In this case, the freshman was not and, according to the sheriff's report, fell to his knees in pain.
A coach reprimanded the junior, who is not being identified because of his age, and told the team not to conduct any further cup checks. Because the injuries did not appear severe, the coach did not seek medical assistance, said House.
Sometime later, the boy complained to his mother of pain, House said. On Feb. 19, after she noticed her son wincing when he sneezed, she took him to a doctor, who sent him to the emergency room.
There, according to investigators, he was told he had internal bleeding and an infection, and that he could lose one or both of his testicles.
The boy's parents brought the incident to the attention of Ponderosa High School Assistant Principal Darrin Slojkowski and sheriff's Deputy Laura Bradshaw, Ponderosa's school resource officer.
According to the report, the victim said he was struck with a closed fist with the intent to cause damage. The alleged perpetrator told investigators he used an open-hand slap, that it was a joke and that he never meant to hurt his teammate.
The 17-year-old signed a citation and was released to his parents' custody, House said. The citation is under review and if sufficient cause is found, the boy could face charges of battery causing serious bodily injury, a felony.
Slojkowski said he could not comment because the matter involved privacy concerns of his students.
Dr. Eric A. Kurzrock, chief of pediatric urology at UC Davis Children's Hospital, said that in his 16-year medical career, he had never seen a patient who needed both testicles removed.
Speaking generally, Kurzrock said the injury most likely to lead to removal of a testicle is a fracture, in which the outer layer of the testicle, which is made up of collagen and other tissue, is cracked by some sort of impact.
Minor fractures can be sewn back together, he said. Severe fractures that cause extensive bleeding usually lead to immediate removal of the injured testicle.
"It's usually a kick that does it, or skateboards and snowboards when you're doing a trick," he said.
Kurzrock estimated that the UC Davis Trauma Center treats two to four testicular fractures per year.
If the student has his testicles removed, he'll need a lifetime of testosterone replacement shots, especially now that he's going through puberty, Kurzrock said. Any viable sperm in the testicles would need to be frozen if he hopes to reproduce.
One Ponderosa student said that while activities like cup checks are ubiquitous wherever teenage boys gather, the practice isn't excessive at the school.
Jason Dyer, a 17-year-old senior at Ponderosa, has spent four years on the school's football team and two years on its wrestling team.
"It's just as prevalent as any football thing," he said of cup checks. "We don't do it excessively."
While Dyer said he's heard of hazing rituals taking place for younger athletes at other schools, he said he's seen none of that at Ponderosa.
"We get serious (about sports) around here," he said.
from The Sacramento Bee

No More Fake Balls

Fake bull testicles and other anatomically explicit vehicle decorations would be banned from Maryland roads under a bill pending in the state legislature.
The measure was filed in the General Assembly Monday by Delegate LeRoy E. Myers Jr., R-Washingon, who says children shouldn't be exposed to giant plastic gonads dangling from pickup truck trailer hitches. The bill also would ban depictions of naked human breasts, buttocks or genitals, with offenses punishable by fines of up to $500.
"It's time to take a stand," Myers told The (Hagerstown) Herald-Mail.
The American Civil Liberties Union objected to Myers' bill.
"The legislation is overly broad, and would probably make it illegal to have a sticker on your car of the Venus de Milo from an art museum," ACLU of Maryland spokeswoman Meredith Curtis wrote in an e-mail.
Pamela Campbell whose Bullhead City, Ariz., business sells fake bull testicles, suggested that the swinging decorations can prompt healthy discussions about anatomy and reproduction.
"Do we have to neuter all dogs that walk by us?" she asked. "Where does it stop?"
Last week, Arizona's legislature rejected a measure that would have banned vehicle splash guards bearing racist terms or silhouettes of naked women.
from The Associated Press

Swimmer Trapped By Beach Balls

A man got a nasty surprise when he tried to get out of his deckchair and found his testicles had become stuck between two slats of wood. Mario Visnjic had been swimming naked off Valalta beach in Croatia and his testicles had shrunk in the cool sea. When he sat down they slipped through the slats and then, as he lay in the sun, expanded back to normal size. He was freed after he called beach maintenance services on his mobile phone and they sent a member of staff to cut the deckchair in half.
from Bore Me

Drinking During Pregnancy, A Possible Male-Infertility Factor

The most common male-genital birth defect is undescended testicles, affecting about 3 percent of boys born in the United States. A few risk factors have been identified, but researchers have generally puzzled over the cause of the problem. Now, a new study has revealed an unexpected risk factor. Regular alcohol consumption during pregnancy appears to triple the risk that a woman's son will have the condition, Ida Damgaard and her colleagues report in Environmental Health Perspectives.
The finding suggests an obvious strategy for reducing the incidence of the birth defect: Women should be even more strongly discouraged from drinking during pregnancy. But Damgaard's group has its eye on a bigger prize. The researchers are trying to understand the reasons behind declining fertility rates in Western countries. Boys born with undescended testicles are 60 percent more likely than other boys to be infertile when they grow up. Furthermore, the researchers believe that poor testicular development in the uterus may lead to later fertility problems even in boys who don't show the genital abnormality at birth.
Male fertility has been declining dramatically in developed countries over the past 40 years, with sperm density dropping 1.5 percent per year in the United States and 3 percent per year in Europe and Australia. That change, combined with the tendency of Western women to delay getting pregnant until after their fertility peaks, has meant that more and more couples have had difficulty getting pregnant.
The rate of undescended testicles in newborn boys has increased steadily over about the same period. The defect is known as cryptorchidism from the Greek: "crypto" means hidden, and "orchid" means testes.
The study is one of many coming out of a 10-year-old effort to track nearly 5,000 pregnant women in Denmark and Finland and then their children. The pregnant women were asked about their consumption of alcohol and caffeine, working conditions, diet, and medical history: "anything we could think of," says Katharina Main, a coauthor of the paper and a pediatrician at Rigshospitalet in Denmark. When the babies were born, the researchers examined them and found that 128 of the boys were cryptorchid.
Boys from mothers who had five or more alcoholic drinks per week during pregnancy had triple the rate of cryptorchidism of boys whose mothers didn't drink at all. The researchers didn't see a significant effect in women who drank less than five drinks a week, but Main says she suspects that alcohol can have an impact even at lower rates of consumption. "I wouldn't say that four [drinks are] OK but five aren't," Main says.
In three-quarters of the cryptorchid boys, the testes descended into their natural place within 3 months after birth. A quarter of the boys needed surgery to correct the problem. But even boys whose testes descended on their own showed a lasting abnormality. "We're still worried about these babies . . . because when we look at the hormones, they still show an impairment of hormone production," Main notes. Even if a boy's testicles descend on their own so he doesn't need surgery, "it isn't a sign that everything is OK."
Damgaard's group is doing numerous studies using data from the women and their babies. Early last year, the team identified another risk factor for cryptorchidism: maternal exposure to pesticides, including DDT, that are no longer in regular use but that persist in the environment. Previously known risk factors include premature birth, low birth weight, gestational diabetes, and being a twin. Damgaard's group is searching for even more risk factors for the condition.
Interest in cryptorchidism is high in Denmark because the defect is unusually common there. About 9 percent of boys born in the country have the problem, compared with just 2.3 percent of the boys born in neighboring Finland.
The identification of alcohol consumption as a risk factor helps to explain this anomaly. In Denmark, public information campaigns have encouraged pregnant women to limit their alcohol consumption but not to eliminate it entirely, whereas Finland and most other countries advise women to abstain entirely while they're carrying babies.
from Science News

Double Cancer Risk For Tall Men

Tall men face double the risk of developing testicular cancer, according to new research.
Experts found that those over 6ft tall are far more likely to develop the disease than men under 5ft 6ins. And men even shorter were not at risk.
American researchers studied the links between diet, body size and cancer of the testicles, which strikes down 2,000 men in the UK every year.
According to the study, the taller the man, the greater the risk of developing the form of male cancer. Even men between 5ft 6ins and 5ft 9ins increased their risk by 40 per cent.
But researchers admit they are unclear as to the reasons why.
Testicular cancer is one of the few cancers that affects young men, normally hitting 15 to 44-year-olds.
Cycling champion Lance Armstrong, who is 5ft 11ins, was struck down by the disease in 1996, aged 25. But he fought back to win the Tour de France in 1999 for seven consecutive years. The disease is still fairly rare but cases have already doubled since 1985. If diagnosed early, 98 per cent of patients make a full recovery.
Doctors have long suspected cow's milk as one possible cause. But American scientists from the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, say they found no evidence to link consumption of diary products in early childhood with the the disease. Lead researcher Dr Katherine A McGlynn says the study is important in helping understand the disease because it used a large sample of US servicemen under the age of 45.
Dr McGlynn, of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, said: "The study suggests that risk of testicular cancer is associated with greater adult height."
Men born with an undescended testicle or with a close relative who has had the disease may also be at greater risk of getting it.
from The Mirror

More Males Have Themselves Checked For Testicular Cancer

LONDON, ENGLAND - A study conducted by the Cancer Research U.K. has found that the number of young British men who have their testicles checked for signs of cancer, has tripled in the last decade.
Researchers said that in the 1990, only 10 percent of the men checked their testicles, but this number significantly increased to over 36 percent in 2000.
They said they surveyed some 17,000 students in 21 European countries in 1990 and another 19,000 in the year 2000. It found that the examination rate in British men in 2000 was double the European average.
Dr. Lesley Walker, Cancer Research U.K.'s director of information said, "This shows that many British males are literally getting a grip on their health. Men have a bad reputation for taking care of themselves in medical matters but this shows real progress which we need to build on."
The study also disclosed that across Europe, the number of students who had their testicles checked increased from 13 percent to 18 percent.
Walker said regular checks of the male testicles provide young men the best possible chance of detecting changes such as lumps, at an early age, when treatment is still more effective.
Testicular cancer is one of the few cancers that affects young men.
from All Headline News

Stuck On The Fence

UNITED KINGDOM - A Man who was impaled on a fence was yesterday recovering in hospital after life-saving surgery.
Joseph Brookhouse, 21, was found by police screaming in agony with a two-inch spike embedded in his groin.
He was rescued from the 4ft-high railings on Saturday after a night out with pals in Bathgate, West Lothian.
It is thought he was stuck there for more than two hours.
Joseph, a shop manager, was making a good recovery at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
He had two operations to repair damage to a major vein and a gaping wound left in his groin.
His tearful mother Isobel, 40, said: "Joseph lost an awful lot of blood and he was at death's door. Fortunately, it looks like he'll make a full recovery."
Isobel, from Livingston, hopes Joseph, who plays football for Broxburn, will eventually be able to get back on the pitch.
She said: "None of the doctors have discussed with us yet whether he will be able to play."
The mum-of-four rubbished reports that one of Joseph's testicles had been pierced.
She said: "That is a really cruel thing for anyone to say about a young man with his whole life ahead of him.
"Joseph's still to get married and have children."
His family are in the dark about how the accident occurred because Joseph can't remember what happened.
He is likely to be in hospital for several days.
from The Daily Record

Man Accidentally Nails His Testicles To Roof

AUSTRIA - An overzealous Austrian workman accidentally nailed his testicles to the roof, with a nailgun.
August Voegl, 59, from Jennersdorf, fired a four-inch nail into his left testicle with the compressed air nail gun he was using.
Emergency medics were called in after Voegl was unable to extract the nail by himself.
He was later airlifted to a nearby hospital where he is reportedly recovering well after surgery.
from All Headline News