To heat, Ice, or neither?

[Joe00242]

Hello Gents,

Just had a quick question and wanted to get opinions from you guys. Maybe you have some experience experimenting with this type of thing.

Ok, so I generally use a TLC/TLC-X along with some shorter sessions of manual tugging to give some extra attention to places like the underside where the testicles often provide too much give for a decent amount of tension with a device. What I've noticed is, after a tugging session (anywhere from an hour to 4 hours between taking off and reapplying the device) I notice the shaft skin is a bit puffy. It can last as long as a day or so when I'm not tugging. I'm not overdoing it or using too much tension and there is no pain or discfort involved and it's not swollen, just a noticeable puffiness that is definitely not just skin bunched up. I'm wondering if I should try short applications of cold packs or heat packs, perhaps at the end of the day just for good measure.

Like I said, it's not bothersome and it's not "swollen" but the puffiness makes me wonder if maybe I should go ahead and treat it to maximize the health of my skin or whatever is going on under the skin (obviously fluid because it's a tad puffy and the skin looks thin sometimes). Generally speaking, cold packs are used for swelling or puffiness. That's because they constrict the blood and lymphatic fluid supplies and give the area a chance to "heal" without being bombarded with your body over reacting and sending all those fluids there, causing swelling. On the other hand, I've read that when it comes to what we are doing, we want to encourage as much blood flow as possible. This provides fresh nutrients and a refresh for the skin we are trying to stimulate growth in. However, heat makes swelling worse because it opens everything up and let's the blood/fluids rush right in.

I am probably over thinking this. I just thought I'd get some opinions and maybe experiences on whether to cool, heat or let it do it's own thing and not be concerned about the puffiness.

sorry for the long post and thanks ahead of time!

[Science Monk]

Both cold compresses and warm compresses are used by our friends, the nurses, in hospitals to deal with swelling in their patients. Both methods seem to work, and there is no general agreement on which works best.

One early restorer named Paul posted (maybe the very first) foreskin restoration diary to the internet in 1995. He said that massaging his foreskin whenever he took a warm bath seemed to help with the tugging-induced swelling.

I also used to get the tugging-induced puffiness that you are experiencing. That puffiness is a sign of inflammation, and inflammation is the enemy of restoration. The underlying inflammation never goes completely away, and it eventually leads to a general callusing throughout the tissue which slows progress significantly. Part of the magic of fetal development is that it is growth and differentiation which occurs without inflammatory responses within the growing tissues,

I found the best way to deal with the puffiness was to keep the tissue in cyclic motion (any frequency seems to work, from very slow to high frequency vibrations). I was a T-taper, and I found the best way to do this was to simply keep my T-tape apparatus on as a retainer, but use a soggier tug. I called this my program of "relative rest." My foreskin would experience a slight (usually imperceptible) vibration with each stride that I took when I walked.

One of the early (1990s) restorers kept careful records and graphed his progress. He found that whenever the elastic he was using became distressed, his progress would slow. When he would replace the distressed elastic with fresh new elastic, his progress would pick right back up again.

I went one step further with making sure I was tugging with fresh resilient rubber. I replaced the elastic that I was using with rubber bands, which I could buy in bulk and replace every few days. I found #84 rubber bands from the Staples office supply chain to be the most useful (#84, 3 1/2" X 1/2"). When I first started using the rubber band method, however, the 1/2" wide rubber bands produced a tug that was a bit too taut. I used a small pair of very sharp scissors to cut the rubber bands to 1 cm width, which worked perfectly for me.

Whenever walking around naked around the house without any tugging apparatus on, I would use what I called "jiggle therapy." I would simply grab a section of the tip of my foreskin between my thumb and fingertip, and gently pull while vibrating my hand at the highest frequency I could muster. You can almost see the inflammation go out of your foreskin in response. It stretches and appears to magically let go, get more pliable, and magically "grow" to new lengths as you use "jiggle therapy." That instant "growth to new lengths" is a harbinger of good things to come!

David
World As Monkey Island

[Joe00242]

Wow. Thank you for the in-depth answer. It sounds like I wasn't over thinking it and it is actually something I'll want to take care of. Everything you said makes perfect sense. I will do everything you suggested. Thank you very much!

[Reality]

Because it's a potential safety issue:

Please do not use heat or ice on minor shaft skin swelling. Using either can be harmful, and neither are needed, because your body will take care of the swelling as part of the inflammatory process. All too commonly, actual in-depth knowledge of human physiology is missing in the typical forum reply, and it's also common to see a straw man argument, and outright magical thinking, as "proof" of some claim. So....readers beware, and stay safe.