Should you clean your penis everyday before use?

[LetsGrow]

It seems abit obsessive and i feel like it's making my skin dryer.

[Allie2k14]

Just clean it with water. Some soaps (if not all) tend to make your skin dry. I clean mine and my device/retainer before each use.

[mjwise]

I tend to shower every other day (especially in the winter) but I clean my devices every single day. The real trick is to get all the urine out of your penis before applying any device - every last drop. I never apply soap to the glans.

[LetsGrow]

I don't use soap, and i defenitely don't want a uti. But i feel like repetitive cleaning makes my skin feel dry.

[Swingshiftworker]

A simple wipe w/a damp cloth should be sufficient whenever you think you need to clean it. .

[parsecskin]

If you want your device to grip properly and not slip, yes cleaning your skin daily in the shower is essential. Just use a ph neutral cleanser and rinse well. After a day of tugging moisturize your skin with a vitamin E enriched aloe Vera product and raw coconut oil. Coconut oil is the best thing for your skin.

[Guest]

It's good to see someone stand up to the usual party line on restoration forums and suggest soap. Soap, as long as it was meant to use on skin, does absolutely nothing negative to any of the tissues of the penis as long as you wash it of. Soap and water is the foundation of hygiene and health; it all starts there. I've been finished for years now, and I've used soap every day of it with no negative effect: no drying of shaft skin, no drying of mucosa, especially after my mucosa returned to its function. Washing the natural detritus found on your body is basic to being human. Hell, even many animals groom themselves.

[Rood]

The two operative phrases are: "...and rinse well." and " ... as long as you wash it of (sic)."

The danger is always leaving soap residue under the foreskin, where it tends to kill healthy, protective strains of bacteria, which might open the region to invasion by harmful bacterial strains. If some men prefer not to take a chance and wash the inner foreskin and glans with clear, clean water, only ... what's the harm?

[parsecskin]

It all depends how pink and moist your inner tissues are. I remember when I was 11 and my foreskin first separated. There was no way I could use soap in there. it was like getting soap in your eye. Fast forward a few years, after that tissue was more used to being exposed some of the time and the end of my foreskin was more open, soap didn't hurt then but I still didn't actively use soap there.
It will be interesting to see how my restored foreskin affects this.

[Guest]

The two operative phrases are: "...and rinse well." and " ... as long as you wash it of (sic)."

The danger is always leaving soap residue under the foreskin, where it tends to kill healthy, protective strains of bacteria, which might open the region to invasion by harmful bacterial strains. If some men prefer not to take a chance and wash the inner foreskin and glans with clear, clean water, only ... what's the harm?

People are free to do whatever they want. Thing is, for us restored guys there is no 'under the foreskin" actually, that's one of those forum concepts that doesn't exist. It's just mucosa, and shaft skin, which you easily unroll (the "tube" is temporary), wash, rinse, dry if you must, and roll it back down. Basic hygiene without the illusion of a "foreskin" because it's all really just outer surface.

[Guest]

It all depends how pink and moist your inner tissues are. I remember when I was 11 and my foreskin first separated. There was no way I could use soap in there. it was like getting soap in your eye. Fast forward a few years, after that tissue was more used to being exposed some of the time and the end of my foreskin was more open, soap didn't hurt then but I still didn't actively use soap there.
It will be interesting to see how my restored foreskin affects this.

Well, what I personally found is what I posted: no irritation, no discomfort, no drying, all because it's not a foreskin, it's a temporary tube. There is an odor which can form and be offensive, so using soap breaks up the microscopic sticky clumps, puts the stuff into suspension so that "clear, clean water" can actually rinse the stuff off. Not a huge deal, but part of the mild concern regarding a temp tube trapping crap close to the urethra.

[mjwise]

People are free to do whatever they want. Thing is, for us restored guys there is no 'under the foreskin" actually, that's one of those forum concepts that doesn't exist. It's just mucosa, and shaft skin, which you easily unroll (the "tube" is temporary), wash, rinse, dry if you must, and roll it back down. Basic hygiene without the illusion of a "foreskin" because it's all really just outer surface.

Actually, I would argue that the entire concept of foreskin is itself a term of convenience and basically a medical fiction that's perpetuated to obscure the fact that circumcision is really more accurately described a partial amputation of the penis (removal of the "extra" foreskin is easier to accept than partial removal of the penis!). There is no actual anatomical demarcation of where the foreskin would begin or end on any penis. Unfortunately, circumcision (particularly of the infant variety) is, what Ron Low called in one of his videos, a rather haphazard affair. For a circumcised male with an intact frenulum and lots of inner mucosa, he can restore a great deal of the function and appearance of what would have been present originally. Sure, some of the distal structures might be lost (e.g., ridged bands) but on some intact men they barely exist anyway. For others circumcised with no inner mucosa remaining, the outer shaft skin proximal to the corona and with no frenulum, the resulting skin growth is more limited in its resemblance and function of the original anatomy.

[Guest]

Actually, I would argue that the entire concept of foreskin is itself a term of convenience and basically a medical fiction that's perpetuated to obscure the fact that circumcision is really more accurately described a partial amputation of the penis (removal of the "extra" foreskin is easier to accept than partial removal of the penis!). There is no actual anatomical demarcation of where the foreskin would begin or end on any penis. Unfortunately, circumcision (particularly of the infant variety) is, what Ron Low called in one of his videos, a rather haphazard affair. For a circumcised male with an intact frenulum and lots of inner mucosa, he can restore a great deal of the function and appearance of what would have been present originally. Sure, some of the distal structures might be lost (e.g., ridged bands) but on some intact men they barely exist anyway. For others circumcised with no inner mucosa remaining, the outer shaft skin proximal to the corona and with no frenulum, the resulting skin growth is more limited in its resemblance and function of the original anatomy.

I take the point but it's evading the soap and water issue. The fact is, "foreskin", as so-called restorers see it on forums, tends to verge on our own sticky little fantasy on several levels, and the soap-and-water party line, which maybe we can give a good swift kick to here, and which you've seen here ad nauseum on the old forum, is one such fantasy. "Soap residue" is easily washed off. I don't see the argument there. Really, who doesn't know that, but we still see the mock verbal recoil when "soap" is discussed, in some sort of secret handshake so that a conversation, however clueless about one's anatomy (before and after restoration), can be had. The bottom line is: wash your dick, rinse it off, and you will be healthier for it. We don't have foreskins (that's why we're here), we will never have foreskins, so this is particularly easy to do. Maybe I should repeat that: for us, washing some mucosa and a lot of shaft skin is particularly easy. Unroll what is not permanent, wash it, rinse it, go on about the day's business.

To think that soap is "drying" after it's gone (by rinsing) is ad copy, pure and simple; it's an idea manufactured to sell you some other product which was manufactured, usually with a false (manufactured) benefit. To think that the pH on an outer surface is changed in a potentially non healthy way by soap, is ad copy. Women, whose mucosa is sequestered (unlike ours), have a valid concern, but only if they don't rinse their vaginal tissue. There's that word again: "rinse". Simple enough, and the truth is, for them anything else beyond that is just ad copy; not science, not a description of natural function, but ad copy.

For the "clean water only" proponents who think that water is holy unto itself, look at it this way: clean water easily does a less than acceptable job if the crap you're trying to remove isn't loosened from the surface, and, guess what, it's soap's job to do just that. It's called the detergent action. It lifts crap up, puts it into a kind of suspension, so that water (which can easily NOT lift sticky crap up) can remove it all through physical force and dilution of the soap.

There: that's Info's message to those who will listen.

[mjwise]

I take the point but it's evading the soap and water issue. The fact is, "foreskin", as so-called restorers tend to see it on forums, tends to verge on our own sticky little fantasy on several levels, and the soap-and-water party line, which maybe we can give a good swift kick to here, and which you've seen here ad nauseum on the old forum, is one such fantasy. "Soap residue" is easily washed off. I don't see the argument there. Really, who doesn't know that, but we still see the mock verbal recoil when "soap" is discussed, in some sort of secret handshake so that a conversation, however clueless about one's anatomy (before and after restoration), can be had. The bottom line is: wash your dick, rinse it off, and you will be healthier for it. We don't have foreskins (that's why we're here), we will never have foreskins, so this is particularly easy to do. Maybe I should repeat that: for us, washing some mucosa and a lot of shaft skin is particularly easy. Unroll what is not permanent, wash it, rinse it, go on about the day's business.

Maybe I'm a little confused, but do you think intact men should wash inside the foreskin with soap too? I say this because I am married to an intact man and have been with him for almost seven years now, so I actually have quite a bit of first-hand and vicarious experience with a very much intact man, and, absent special circumstances, washing the inside of a foreskin out with soap is an entirely unnecessary exercise, no more than you need to wash the inside of your eyelids with soap. Do you worry about the eyelids trapping some crap near your tear ducts too?

And for a man restoring with inner mucosa intact and basically being put back in something close to what would have been the original configuration of things, I'm also not getting your permanent foreskin/temporary restoration distinction. Restored skin is what I would call a permanent feature.

[Guest]

Maybe I'm a little confused, but do you think intact men should wash inside the foreskin with soap too? I say this because I am married to an intact man and have been with him for almost seven years now, so I actually have quite a bit of first-hand and vicarious experience with a very much intact man, and, absent special circumstances, washing the inside of a foreskin out with soap is an entirely unnecessary exercise, no more than you need to wash the inside of your eyelids with soap. Do you worry about the eyelids trapping some crap near your tear ducts too?

And for a man restoring with inner mucosa intact and basically being put back in something close to what would have been the original configuration of things, I'm also not getting your permanent foreskin/temporary restoration distinction. Restored skin is what I would call a permanent feature.

I think you really know what I've been talking about, but for the general membership and those tourists I referred to (who aren't necessarily the great thinkers of our time), no, I do not think intact guys should necessarily wash with soap and water under their foreskins. Unless they want to. Then they should rinse well. Can't cause any harm. That's pretty simple to me.

My basic point in all this, and I know you grasped it because you started wriggling around it a little, is that WE don't have foreskins. So it doesn't matter who's standing next to you at the moment; that gives you no expertise. We don't have foreskins, we have loose skin. Period. To think that the expanded tissue you stimulated to grow is a "foreskin" is a fantasy. From that fantasy arises all the nonsense you see on forums regarding so-called restoration, including the soap and water issue.

The tube we make with that loose skin is temporary. It's not a permanent tube, it's a temporarily formed tube, formed from that loose skin. The skin is permanent, the "tube" isn't. It rolls into a tube (because the shaft is a cylinder), and unrolls back into loose skin which bunches on the shaft. A real foreskin has grown from a seamless combination of tissues, with an "inner" (if you will) and "outer" surfaces. (It's not an eyelid either; that tired old mistaken idea. If your eyeball wasn't designed to demand an isotonic situation, you COULD wash your eyelid (some people have to; didn't know that?), and as you might know, there are isotonic solutions out there that do exactly that). What WE end up with, is rolled down by US, using our fingers, on any one day we choose. We choose not to, and voila, no tube, just really fat wrinkles of loose skin. We weren't born with what we end up with.

Your experience vicariously gives you no direct experience (by definition of the word) and certainly no expertise. I assume you were circumcised, so if that's the case then you know what I'm referring to when I say, you don't have a foreskin, you and I will never have a foreskin, and I would think that your powers of observation has shown you this. You haven't "restored" a "foreskin", you (if you've done any of this at all) have only stimulated your skin's natural response to add to itself, through applications of tension. That's what guys who tug do.

While we tug, over the years it takes to see some expanded skin, WE have a greater need to wash with soap and water. And when we are satisfied with the amount of skin we've grown, WE will have a continuing need for hygiene. Again, that's pretty simple. No fantasy, just fact. Any other expectation found on restoration forums either nudges up against a fantasy, or is a complete fantasy. repeated by guys who have never done this thing, but want to take part in forum chatter. Again, as long as you rinse it all off, WE will experience no harm. If nothing else, for a long time we will trap our tissues in devices daily, and this includes retainers or some sort. We will urinate and some amount (however small) will be trapped by that temporary tube and the device or retainer. Wash it away. When we've covered our mucosa for long enough it will exude a thin fluid. This will trap bacteria. Wash it away. Manual technique users should also practice hygiene. Hygiene is hygiene; doesn't matter where you got your skin from, or what kind you have, or what shape you just rolled it into, hygiene is hygiene.

We are a microbiome. Do your simple part to make sure it doesn't somehow get out of control