Pulled back — living with a bare head

I think it's gone. I found an old link to it (in a post iirc, or maybe it was a private message) but when I clicked it I got a message along the lines of "this board is no longer available".

It might be worth getting some urine glucose dipsticks: glucose can get into the urine by other means than just diabetes. Yeasts don't care how the glucose gets into your urine, only that it's there as a source of food for them to live on.

I've certainly never had urine leave a white patch like that for me. It's worth looking into.

Hi all
I am sure I must be doing something wrong ...... but could someone clarify if and where the gallery has gone?  I have looked on both UI for windows based PC and on apple based phone but can't see a button, link etc.
Thanks

QuoteIt's interesting you mentioned jock itch! How long have you had it, what have you used to treat it, and is it responding to treatment?

Believe it or not, I've had it for over 20 years. Started in the 2000s when I started going to the gym. I would shower nightly and wash the area, and use fresh clothes every day, but it still hit me. It was very mild. I went to my GP back then, and he gave me clotrimazole with hydrocortisone cream. I used it and it didn't do anything, so I just decided to ignore. It wasn't bothering me as long as I cleaned it nightly.

Fast forward to 2020: Lockdown. I started not being as careful about my personal hygiene: reusing clothes for days, still showering, but skipping a day. It got worse, to the point now it looked red (intertrigo). I thought about an idea: Use Clotrimazole only, and point a fan at my crotch area at night to keep it dry and cool. And increase hygiene. I have reduced the infection by half this way. The redness is gone, and the brown patches are maybe at 50% of what they were. I then switched to a miconazole talcum powder to keep it dry. This helps with itch, but I'm not really seeing any changes, so I am currently trying something called "Mensbiotics" spray, with Bacillum Coagulans, which is supposed to be a very good probiotic to fight fungal infections. Have about 1 week of use so far.

The Itraconazole for 5 days did not make any difference to Jock Itch.

QuoteMay I ask, perchance, do you also have diabetes or problems with blood sugar? You don't have to answer this though, I'm just trying to form a personal picture of this very common problem we all have.

I did a blood panel 5 years ago, and no diabetes. Also right now I am on the keto diet, and have been on it for 5 months now, since November of last year. I weighed 290lbs and I am currently at 247lbs. I used to body build, so a lot of that is muscle. I was borderline obese at 287, now I am just slightly overweight at 247. My 42 size pants are starting to fit again.

QuoteI have a small personal theory about the pain/itches after masturbation and orgasm. I think that when we get invaded and colonized by these bacteria or fungi, they weaken the skin layer where they settle in, so when we use lube and then jack off, the lube first dissolves the very thin and weak keratin layer over the colonised sites, and then the friction from our hands abrades them off, leaving very sore, and very raw spots. When we're healthy no such problems occur and I think it has to do with the health of our skin layers. The bacteria or fungi also prevents normal healing, and as long as they persist the condition may become a chronic problem.

Sounds very feasable.

QuoteA lot of yeasts and fungi have developed resistance to clotrimazole, so it's a normal thing to switch from one azole to another to see what works for the strain we have. This is a problem of diagnostics - the general population just does not have as much access to lab testing as we like. I think that even for doctors the diagnosis is about likely causes and a process of careful elimination.

I worry that resistance to clotrimazole means all azoles.

QuoteBack to your glans: have you noticed any inflammation on your foreskin itself, inner and outer? Have you noticed any "dry" looking skin on your glans or any spot on your penis after pulling back and commencing treatment or at any point of time, or any "scaliness"?

No inflammation on foreskin. It's hard to tell what's normal in my glans. I wish I had paid attention to what it looked like when it was healthy. The only abnormalities I remember were not there before, are the red patches right at the tip, near the urethra, and the main red sore at the meatus. There's random red spots noticeable when erect, basically as you can see in the pic. They were more noticeable 2-3 months ago, but they are almost invisible now as long as I am flaccid.

[quoteWith regards to the terbinafine and antifungal creams, if there is any improvement it might appear visually glacial. Treatment courses are a minimum of two weeks, and perhaps some more for a full cure. Improvement will be visually slow but gradual - but the oral anti-fungals should demonstrate remarkable changes after a single course.

With the antibiotic creams though, I think improvements should be seen within three days. Improvements should be drastic, or the antibiotic is not working. Apart from fucidic acid, you could also use povidone iodine solution, but you have to be careful not to apply it too often on your mucus membranes in case of excessive absorption into the blood stream. I'd say 3 days, twice a day applications max to see if there are any changes.

With regards to the fucidic acid changing your biome and allowing opportunistic fungal infection, the fucidic acid is not as radical as oral azithromycin or doxycycline, so I don't think you have to worry about it so much.

If the anti-bacterials are the ones you haven't tried yet, I'd suggest giving it a shot for a week, making note of any changes or improvements, and then only leaving a two week gap (or maybe 1 week is enough) before your appointment with the dermatologist, who hopefully will perform scrapings for microscope examinations, as well as swabs for various cultures fungal and bacterial. I think it is a good idea to leave enough "lead time" because either the anti-fungals or anti-bacterials could suppress the pathogen to low enough levels to present very light or mild symptoms or presence that it becomes difficult to identify and pinpoint through the lab tests. [/quote]

I might try Fucidin for a week, and then Miconazole for the 2nd week, and leave a 7-10 day gap where I use nothing before my appointment.

QuoteI would also recommend taking photographs to note the changes, under similar lighting conditions, to serve as a visual record for the doctor as well as yourself - you do not have to post these here because few of us can help you even if we have that additional personal information. You definitely want to take a photo post orgasm/ejaculation because that would be extremely awkward to show a doctor in person, haha! And otherwise they can only guess how bad it looks like after lol

Depending on status, I think my plan was to masturbate the day prior, so I walk in to the appointment with strong visible symptoms. I'll take a picture of it also. I probably won't suggest it was due to masturbation though, lol. TBH, I looked up this dermatologist, and this lady has some really bad reviews, but if I try to get somewhere else, it will be another 1-2 months. I'm hoping out of all things, she does a scraping and sends it to the lab. As soon as I know what I have, then I can deal with my GP to give me the treatment I need.

Quoteyou ask us to ignore the white patches at the tip of your penis, visible in the first photograph, dismissing it as dried up urine.  I do not understand why any urine drips were not shaken or wiped off , given that you are retracting your foreskin.

Even if I take a leak retracted, a tiny bit of urine stays on the tip. I forgot to dry it off with a towel. Even if I did have diabetes, my blood sugar right now is extremely low. I am only eating meat and leafy greens, and have been like this for the past 5 months.

I've come across an interesting article about foreskin sensitivity. The major takeaway for me as a permanent retractor is that nerve cells in the foreskin tend to decrease in number as we age and that actually, foreskin isn't too sensitive as it is claimed to be. Glans, in its turn, contains nerve endings which are very sensitive to temperature and vibration. So, in a way, permanent foreskin retraction
can enhance one's sexual pleasure.
What do you guys think?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4498824/

Quote from: lvprcm on 2024-04-02 11:31:02Sorry to hear some of you had some difficult experiences on your first retraction.

From my earliest memories, age 4 or 5, my foreskin was retractable. I could expose the glans with the only limitation being an adhesion that kept the inner foreskin attached to the coronal rim of the glans.

I ripped the adhesion one day during a bath when I was 8. Once that happened it opened up a world of possibilities.

Surprisingly I can't recall if I was told to retract when I pee or wash or just a lot of curiosity with playing around, it felt good when I retracted so perhaps that was all the motivation I needed to keep retracting.

for me it was Painful to keep it open cuz of sensitivity and cuz of damaged skin due to forcefully pullback. My aunt told me to keep it exposed to heal it properly after some time it started feeling good so I started to keep it open

Sorry to hear some of you had some difficult experiences on your first retraction.

From my earliest memories, age 4 or 5, my foreskin was retractable. I could expose the glans with the only limitation being an adhesion that kept the inner foreskin attached to the coronal rim of the glans.

I ripped the adhesion one day during a bath when I was 8. Once that happened it opened up a world of possibilities.

Surprisingly I can't recall if I was told to retract when I pee or wash or just a lot of curiosity with playing around, it felt good when I retracted so perhaps that was all the motivation I needed to keep retracting.

I was 13. Accidentally had my first orgasm. In shock, at first I thought I peed in my nickers. Then smelled it and it was not pee. 

Before that, especially with best friends, I had these I show you mine, you show me yours moments. But just the tip of my glans was like an alarm bell. To not even point a finger at. Not just unpleasant but more like pain.

Soon after my first orgasm, I had more. Funnily enough. And got more curious what was under the skin. Wanking forwards, but not backwards. Just the thought of touching my glans kept me from even closely exposing it entirely. I needed a plan. Under the shower, I filled a jar with warm water. To see if I could just see what was there under my foreskin, and also how it all was attached, skin wise. Without any hurt, I saw my glans for the first time. In the warm water of the jar. At 13. I cannot describe the amazement and the beauty of that moment. If any major wow happened in my life it was back then. More amazing than buying my first Ferrari (which happened much later). Seeing my own glans was the best wow of my life. And then understanding it was there all the time. Never aware of it. But I had it all the time.

Yeah it was the exact same for me, 2 people holding me down, really a traumatic experience, I think due to that it took me quite a while, until I was like 16 or 17, to even try to understand how my body worked. I would have been better to just be circumcised instead of that.

Quote from: Bottomkek on 2024-04-02 09:03:16I went through the same thing. I was like 6 or 7 and my pediatrician forcefully pulled my foreskin back to "cure" my phimosis. I hurt a lot, over the next days I had to pull back again and apply some ointment, but in the end it didn't cure anything. I remember being scared to pee since it hurt a lot. After some months I went through a new round and again it fixed nothing. Eventually in my teens I started pulling back a bit and over time the light phimosis I had was fixed.

yeah it's painful i remember they have to hold my hand and leg to pull it they did it like so many time but atleast it open