Does it shrink with age?

The cock itself barely changes in adult life. The belly, the blood flow, a scar or prostate treatment can, and some of that can be undone

Somewhere around forty, many men start to suspect their cock is quietly retiring ahead of them. Hair goes, knees go, so why not inches? The answer from the measuring studies is reassuring. The organ itself barely changes in adult life. What changes is everything around it: the belly, the blood flow, the occasional scar, and in some men the effects of prostate treatment. Some of it can be undone.

What the tape measure says

Nobody has followed the same group of men with a ruler from twenty to eighty, so the evidence comes from comparing younger and older men at one point in time..

A German team measured 111 men aged 18 to 19 and 32 men aged 40 to 68. Erect length was 14.5 cm5.7 in in the young group and 14.2 cm5.6 in in the older one, a difference too small to be significant. The older men were actually a little longer soft. Erect width at the base was slightly smaller in the older group, about 4 cm1.6 in against 3.5 cm1.4 in across. The two groups got hard in different ways, the young men by themselves and the older ones with an injection, so this is a rough comparison, but it is not the picture of a shrinking organ.

Other studies agree. In 80 men measured before and after an induced erection, age did not predict erect length. In 271 healthy Jordanian men, soft and stretched length were no different under and over 40. One thing does seem to change: in a clinic study of 274 men, the growers, those who gain the most from soft to hard, were younger on average, about 48 against 56. The erection may get a little less dramatic, not the cock smaller. The full story is in Grower or shower?.

The belly: hidden, not lost

The most common reason a cock looks smaller at fifty than at twenty-five is the fat pad above it. In 778 men with an average BMI of 29, length measured from the pubic bone was 1.8 cm0.7 in longer than length measured from the skin, and the heavier the man, the shorter the visible part. Nothing was lost; it was buried.

In more marked cases doctors speak of an acquired buried penis. In a survey of men who had weight-loss surgery at one American hospital, 17% met the criteria. The guidelines put weight loss first for this, with surgery to remove the fat pad as a later option, as the Micropenis page explains. How many centimetres a given number of kilos gives back has never been properly measured: the "an inch for every 30 to 50 pounds" rule that circulates online has no study behind it.

Erections that are not what they were

The second big change is in the blood, not the tissue. In the Massachusetts Male Aging Study, 52% of men aged 40 to 70 had some degree of erectile dysfunction, and complete dysfunction tripled from 5% to 15% between 40 and 70. Age was the factor most strongly linked with it, followed by heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes.

That matters for size because a half-hard cock is shorter and thinner than a fully hard one. A man who used to reach the top of the Erection Hardness Score and now stops one step lower will see, and feel, a smaller cock, even if the tissue is the same. Night erections also become rarer with age, which the same page covers. The good news is that this kind of shrinkage is the treatable kind: get the hardness back and the size comes with it.

Scars and bends

Peyronie's disease, a scar in the sheath around the erectile tissue, can bend and shorten an erect cock. It becomes more common with every decade. In a survey of more than 4,400 German men, 1.5% of those in their 30s reported a plaque, rising to 3.0% in their 40s and 50s, 4.0% in their 60s and 6.5% over 70. Most of the men with a plaque also had a new bend. The Curve chapter explains what it is and when to see a urologist.

Prostate treatment and hormones

The clearest measured shrinkage in older men comes from prostate cancer treatment. In 124 men measured before and after removal of the prostate, soft and stretched length were both significantly shorter afterwards, and 19% lost 15% or more of their stretched length. In a smaller study, 22 of 31 men were shorter three months after surgery, and 15 had lost more than 1 cm0.4 in. Hormone treatment that shuts testosterone down does it too: in 39 men, average stretched length went from 10.8 cm4.3 in to 8.1 cm3.2 in over two years, with the loss levelling off after about 15 months.

The ordinary, gentle fall in testosterone with age is a different matter. We found no study showing that it shrinks the penis of a healthy older man, and giving testosterone does not make an adult penis bigger: the European guidelines advise against hormones for penis size after puberty. Low testosterone can blunt desire and erections, though.

What can help, and the balls

The useful list is short. Losing weight uncovers length the fat pad was hiding; in 50 men followed after weight-loss surgery, erectile function and how they felt about their own genitals both improved significantly. Treating erectile problems brings back the fuller erection. A new bend, a lump, or real shortening after prostate treatment deserve a urologist rather than a forum.

As for the balls, in more than a thousand men examined after death, testicular volume fell with age, but once illness and poor nutrition were taken out of the picture, age alone made them smaller only in the eighth decade of life. The scrotum is widely said to hang lower as men get older, which is likely but, as the Scrotum chapter notes, has never been measured.