Exact Therapy and Dosage for Peyronie’s Disease Treatment
Fine tuning Peyronie’s treatment key to success
Only you can determine what therapy to use or the exact dosage in your Peyronie’s disease treatment plan. Using the information found on the PDI website and “Peyronie’s Disease Handbook” as guides, each man must determine the specifics of his therapy plan for himself. To help you further, for your specific questions, I am always pleased to offer ideas and information about what I have learned since successfully treating my own PD in 2002 and the many hundreds of men I work with each year since then.
I can give you basic ideas and general suggestions. However, for the exact way to treat Peyronie’s disease it is important to remember that each case is different and must be worked out by each individual. There are no short cuts to this process.
Oh, I can hear you telling yourself right now, “But, I am not a doctor. I do not know about these things. This is too complicated. What do I do? How do I get started? I will never be able to do this!”
You can use any small or large group of therapies as a starting point. From this starting point you simply monitor and observe the response of your Peyronie’s scar to your treatment plan. The small, medium or large plan can all be modified to suit your thinking. Generally, the larger and more broad-based the plan, the better and faster it works to assist the healing process that you are attempting to promote.
Very often the starting point is based on personal finances and how determined a man is to be successful in his Peyronie’s treatment. Many men think, “I really would like to use all the different elements of the Large Plan. It makes sense to approach my problem from so many different directions, but I just can’t afford it right now. But, I can manage the expense of the Medium Plan.” Well, there is your answer.
You get the Medium Plan, you use it faithfully, you use it aggressively, and you monitor your scar for changes in the size, shape, density and surface qualities. If you notice changes in your Peyronie’s disease you simply stay with that plan. If you do not notice changes in your Peyronie’s disease problem after a few weeks of treatment you begin to make small changes in your plan until the size, shape, density and surface qualities of your scar(s) change. All of this is explained in great detail in the “Peyronie’s Disease Handbook.” Knowing the exact size, shape, density and surface quality of each scar is absolutely essential to your success in Peyronie’s treatment. If you do not have this book, get it so that you will know what you are doing as you advance in treating yourself – otherwise you are just guessing.
You must understand, I have absolutely no idea what is required for you to be successful in eliminating your Peyronie’s plaque. How could I? I do not know you. I have not examined you. You are not a patient of mine. But I can offer suggestions and ideas for you to use to guide your own therapy plan for the greatest success you can achieve.
What I think is not important in regard to selecting a therapy or dosage. For that matter, what you think is not important in regard to dosage.
What you determine by trial and error – and hard work – to create your successful plan using the dosage level necessary to make positive changes in your PD is what is important.
Every medical doctor alive practices medicine using the trial-and-error method in this way. If you are prescribed a drug for insomnia, the starting dose is just a good guess what might work for you. The doctor might tell you to take one pill two hours before bedtime. He or she will have you come back to the office after a few weeks to see how you are doing. If the drug is not working you will be given a different dosage, perhaps two pills three hours before bedtime. If that does not work, your prescription might be changed to include a second drug or further increases in dosage. This trial-and-error method of medical practice has been used for thousands of years and is time-tested. It is how you will also treat yourself to achieve the best success you can against your Peyronie’s disease.
Peyronie’s disease treatment dosage
Dosage is determined by the daily level of all therapies needed to cause favorable change in your scar(s). Of course if you are taking five different internal therapies (vitamin E, vitamin C, Neprinol, Acetyl-L-carnitine and PABA), and two or three external therapies (DMSO, manual penis stretching video, Genesen pens), each one must be individually determined. While you use all internal and external therapies in your total therapy plan you must monitor the size, shape, density and surface quality of your scar(s) to note at what dosage level changes begin in the scar material. It is as simple – and difficult – as that. That is why no clear dosage numbers are offered to you since everyone seems to use different internal and external therapies, in addition to doing them in different ways. In this sense, since each man is different, and each man follows a different plan, each man must determine what he must do to improve his scar behavior. Again, the procedure to determine scar size, shape, density and surface quality is explained in great detail in “Peyronie’s Disease Handbook.”
The correct dosage of any therapy product is not determined from a chart. The chart that you receive with your first order only tells you the average range of how most men take the therapies. Your dosage should be what you need to take daily to cause changes in your PD scar. The dosage for you is what you learn works for you. No one can tell you what you need to take. You have to determine that by your observation what makes the scar size, shape, density, and surface quality change.
If you run into a problem, you can always send an email with your question and I will do my best to guide you through it.
Using this system of self-guided treatment you stand your best chance to use Alternative Medicine to increase your ability to heal and repair the damage to the delicate tunica albuginea known as Peyronie’s disease.
Penis Doctors or Peyronie’s Doctors? – Take Your Pick
Doctors who specialize in Peyronie’s disease
When you think about going to a “Peyronie’s specialist,” you should understand a few things that could make all the difference in the world to you. You should also know that Alternative Medicine is your safest and most logical approach to Peyronie’s treatment – more about that at the end of this article.
Each month I am asked for the name of a few Peyronie’s doctors; someone who specializes in the treatment of Peyronie’s disease, in a particular part of the country or a specific city. My answer that I do not know of any such doctor always seems to be a surprise. Often a follow up question is posed in which I am then asked for the names of penis doctors, and again I give the same answer.
For anyone interested in finding a Peyronie’s doctor, first consider that Peyronie’s disease is known as “the doctor’s nightmare.” Notice, the name is not “a man’s nightmare,’ or “a curved penis nightmare,” or “a patient nightmare,” but “doctor’s nightmare.” This suggests how much doctors in general do not like dealing with Peyronie’s disease. The average doctor does not like to deal with the diagnosis and treatment of Peyronie’s disease, as well as the many valid complaints and exaggerated demands of both the men and women who must live with this problem. Frankly, we men with Peyronie’s disease are often a royal pain in the butt for an MD to deal with.
Peyronie’s specialists
Most often it is the urologists who come closest to the idea of being penis doctors or Peyronie’s doctors. But even they often want to avoid the many frustrations and long explanations that are a part of working with men who have Peyronie’s disease. I guess that 99.4% of men who are given a diagnosis of Peyronie’s disease have not once ever heard of it before it is dumped on them. That this condition exists is a total shock to the man who first learns he has the problem. And just like the denial phase of someone who learns of the death of someone, there is a denial phase when first being told that the reason for the penile curvature, pain, or strange lump is an interesting thing called Peyronie’s disease that has no known cause and no known medical cure – other than Peyronie’s surgery. This news creates a lot of denial issues in the patient that the doctor must take the time to explain away.
It is said that no one is happy while dealing with Peyronie’s disease. Another reason the doctor is not happy is because he or she has no standardized or accepted form of medical treatment to rely upon. Generally, there are four three basic approaches for managing this problem medically:
- Offer no treatment, but simply monitor the progression of the problem. Suggest the patient come back in six months to determine if the problem has deteriorated enough to warrant the risks of surgery.
- Offer the patient to either “try verapamil or cholchicine or POTABA for a while, although I have not had much luck with any of them, or you can always use some vitamin E if you would like.” This kind of low key and unenthusiastic recommendation is based on the fact that none of these approaches work, and the doctor knows it. The MD is put in a tough position because he or she cannot help PD, and this is a known fact from the start. Talk about a negative situation that only gets worse as the penis shrinks or sex becomes difficult as a curved penis develops.
- Suggest surgery right away.
- Go home, ignore it, and try to learn to live with it.
These four options all seem wrong to the thinking patient. Yet, the doctor feels obligated to offer some kind of treatment when none actually exists, and he knows ahead of time that the patient will be upset when nothing helps. Long explanations, distrust, and complaints will follow over a few office visits until the patient figures out the doctor really has no Peyronie’s disease treatment. The doctor knows ahead of time he will look incompetent and non-caring no matter what he does. Hence the term, “doctor’s nightmare.’
For all these reasons only a few medical doctors have focused on Peyronie’s disease treatment. Some of those who work in this area of urology are:
Thomas Lue, MD – Los Angeles, CA
Culley Carson, MD – Chapel Hill, NC
Lawrence Levine, MD – Chicago, IL
Martin K. Gelbard, MD, Los Angeles, CA
Sudhakar Krishnamurti, MD – Hyderabad, India
These doctors are essentially using the same drugs as any general practitioner or urologist, with perhaps maybe the surgery they perform being different in some cases. You need to understand that while these doctors can be called Peyronie’s specialists because they hold themselves out to being more interested in or spending more time in the area of Peyronie’s disease treatment and diagnosis, there is not that much different they can offer than the doctor down the street in your town. The great difference with these doctors is the number of people they see who have PD, so they will have more experience in this area.
For this reason when some calls to ask about a Peyronie’s doctor, I suggest they just contact a local urologist they have confidence in and stick with him.
Since there is no accepted standard medical treatment for Peyronie’s disease, and so many doctors suggest not doing anything for the first 6-18 months, I strongly suggest that a person consider building up his own ability to heal and repair the Peyronie’s plaque or scar. Information can be found at natural Peyronie’s disease treatment.
Peyronie’s Vitamin Therapy
Peyronie’s disease vitamin treatment to promote healing and repair
All Peyronie’s disease treatment is controversial. Peyronie’s vitamin therapy is even more so because the medical profession has always been slow to understand the use of nutrition to promote wellness. This website presents information about the use of natural Peyronie’s disease vitamin and minerals unlike the conventional use of drugs and surgery to treat Peyronie’s disease.
The use of Alternative Medicine in the form of Peyronie’s disease vitamin, mineral and enzyme treatment has been developed in the following manner:
1. Distillation and interpretation of opinions and data found in hundreds of medical research studies and ongoing technical data from the scientific community, as found in the footnotes at the conclusion of each of the Peyronie’s disease treatment subheadings.
2. Concurrence of opinion of the three primary medical doctors, and Dr. Herazy, who practiced together at Pioneer Medical Clinic, Chicago, IL, using their combined clinical experience of 90 years in practice, along with their medical knowledge and experience with Complementary Medicine to promote the innate healing response of the immune system.
3. Observations and personal experience of Dr. Herazy who treated his own Peyronie’s disease problem while using these same Peyronie’s vitamin treatment principles. Dr. Herazy was successful treating his severe case of Peyronie’s disease, and presents on this website what he learned from his valuable experience.
4. Dr. Herazy’s experience and direct feedback from thousands of men and women who successfully used the Peyronie’s disease vitamin and enzyme treatment principles outlined throughout this large website. This valuable information is retrieved from many dozens of telephone and email discussions each day since 2002, in which issues of progress and lack of progress, modifications of Peyronie’s disease treatment protocols are worked out on an individual basis.
5. Analysis of data and information derived from PDI’s ongoing seven-year survey questionnaire research project, voluntarily provided by approximately 2,400 men who have Peyronie’s disease.
Peyronie’s disease vitamin treatment not mainstream
Traditional medicine, with no accepted Peyronie’s drug treatment, offers only surgery as a mainstream cure. The Peyronie’s Disease Institute is not against Peyronie’s surgery when a case has been unresponsive to prolonged and aggressive use of multiple conservative care. However, this is not how it is often done; too many men rush into surgery believing that is an easy and sure solution to a big problem. Each surgical candidate should remember these three things:
1. Surgery will not restore the penis to its original length.
2. After surgery, hardened scar will develop to shorten the penis, often by 1-2 inches.
3. There is no guarantee that additional scarring might occur at the site of surgery, resulting in a return and possible worsening of Peyronie’s disease.
Yet, there are many Peyronie’s vitamin therapies investigated in large body of medical research that documents positive, but inconclusive and sometimes variable, reports of success while treating PD. Improvement and recovery made in the body while using Peyronie’s disease vitamin and enzyme treatments can be subtle and slow since their purpose is only to support or encourage a normal process of nature that is reduced or absent.
Our Peyronie’s disease treatment theory is that the potential benefits of these subtle natural therapies are enhanced and multiplied by simply using several alternative therapies at the same time – known to science as synergy. It is easy to understand – at least for most laypeople – that a single natural therapy will not work as well as aggressive multiple therapies; like “ganging up” on the problem. One child cannot lift a grown man; five or six children can do it with ease.
It is our opinion that it is safe and reasonable to attempt to improve the eventual outcome of PD by faithfully and aggressively using several conservative Peyronie’s vitamin treatment ideas that are based on sound science and common sense. For more information, click on Peyronie’s treatment help starts here.
Potaba and Peyronie’s Disease Treatment
Potaba for Peyronie’s treatment based on PABA, a vitamin
PABA, or para-aminobenzoic acid, with a formula of H2NC6H4CO2H, is a white crystalline substance that is slightly water soluble. POTABA is simply PABA with a molecule of potassium added to it.
PABA has been referred to as Vitamin Bx because it is an intermediate step in the bacterial manufacturing of folate or folic acid in the intestinal tract. Some bacteria in the human intestinal tract, such as E. coli, require PABA for proper metabolism. Humans require folate since we lack the enzymes to convert PABA to folate, hence it is made available via the bacterial flora. Sulfonamide drugs are similar to PABA in their chemical structure, and their antibacterial activity is due to their ability to interfere with the conversion of PABA to folate by the enzyme dihydropteroate synthetase. In this way bacterial growth is restricted through folate deficiency without effect on human cells.
Medical use of Potaba (potassium para-aminobenzoate)
Potaba inhibits abnormal fibroblast proliferation, thus it can reduce formation of scar material early after injury. It is speculated that this POTABA anti-inflammatory activity is dependent on initial biotransformation that starts with granulocytes that are stimulated through the initial injury. It also inhibits abnormal fibroblast proliferation, acid mucopolysaccharide and glycosaminoglycan secretion that occur during the normal inflammatory process.
POTABA has been used to treat a variety of conditions characterized by chronic inflammation and fibrosis; this list includes scleroderma, dermatomyositis, morphea, pulmonary fibrosis and Peyronie’s disease.
A POTABA research study was conducted by Carson who retrospectively reviewed 32 patients who were treated with 4,000 Mg of Potaba three times daily, for at least three months and later were followed for an average of 14.4 months. Carson reported reduction of penile pain in 44% of those studied, plaque or scar size reduction in 56%, and improvement of penile angulation in 58%. Complete reversal of penile distortion and angulation occurred in 26% of those studied. The average interval to improvement was 4.2 months, and younger patients with a shorter duration of disease were more likely to respond to therapy. Even thought Carson’s study did not have controls, it suggests a possible role for POTABA in the medical therapy of Peyronie’s disease.
Unfortunately, the results of Carson’s retrospective and uncontrolled research were not reported as an intent-to-treat study. Further, the number of research subjects who started therapy but stopped because of severe abdominal symptoms prior to three months has never been disclosed.
Because of the expense of POTABA, the need to take POTABA three or more times daily, and frequent occurrence of severe gastrointestinal side-effects (burning pain, abdominal cramping, and bowel irritability0, make it very difficult for the average man with Peyronie’s disease to follow the treatment guidelines for even a short time. Yet in order to be effective, the length of POTABA therapy is variable, but sometimes lasting 12-24 months of active care.
Medical use of PABA
When a single potassium molecule is added to PABA, it results in what is called a potassium salt; this combination of potassium and PABA is called POTABA. It is used as a drug against fibrotic skin disorders, and as such it can be used in Peyronie’s disease treatment. PABA is also occasionally used to treat Irritable bowel syndrome to and related gastrointestinal symptoms, and in nutritional epidemiological studies to assess the completeness of 24-hour urine collection for the determination of urinary sodium, potassium, or nitrogen levels.
Despite the absence of any recognized syndromes of PABA deficiency in humans, many benefits are claimed for PABA as a nutritional supplement. PABA is said to improve fatigue, irritability, depression, weeping eczema (moist eczema), scleroderma (premature hardening of skin), a patchy pigment loss in skin called vitiligo, and premature gray hair.
Peyronie’s disease: POTABA or PABA?
The first Peyronie’s treatment work involved PABA, the vitamin. When this was shown to be successful, work was then done to show that POTABA, the drug, could be more successful. The interest is working with POTABA – the drug – was greater than with PABA – the vitamin – because the drug is more profitable and is easier to control use and distribution through the medical profession.
The reason PDI promotes the use of PABA for Peyronie’s disease treatment is because it has almost no side effects, is much less expensive to use, does not require a prescription and it combines well with other Alternative Medicine therapies.
For more information about the many ways to use Alternative Medicine to promote tissue repair and reversal of penile curvature, go to Peyronie’s Disease Institute.
Penis stretching for Peyronie’s disease
Penis stretching with fingertips is safer and works better
None of the popular mechanical devices for penis stretching were ever intended to be used for Peyronie’s disease treatment. These strap-on stretchers were only designed for men to develop a larger penis – and nothing more. Actually, there is no proof these penis stretchers make a lasting change in the length of the penis; all evidence suggests the changes are temporary and rather brief. Men with Peyronie’s disease are often desperate for something that might help them, and penis stretching with a mechanical device is often used with poor to bad results, that will be explained below.
Since there is no known or standardized medical Peyronie’s cure, it is only natural that men might resort to penis stretching sooner or later. The ads are very persuasive with beautiful women dressed in white lab coats to convince the buyer that a mechanical device for penis stretching work as an accepted method of Peyronie’s treatment, when that is just not true. It is just a marketing idea.
Any man with a curved penis due to Peyronie’s disease has looked to penis stretching with a high priced mechanical harness and traction devices because they are so widely advertised. What man doesn’t want to believe that the answer to his Peyronie’s disease involves making his penis larger? That is like telling an alcoholic that the way to get rid of a hangover is to drink another beer. He would like to believe that kind of solution.
Over the years I believe I have investigated every mechanical penis stretching device I have seen, and I find no great difference between them; they are all basically the same with little important difference making one better than another. These products are popular with men who have Peyronie’s disease because they propose a simple solution for a complicated problem. Everyone would like to believe solving PD is as simple as simple as straightening out a bent paper clip. But you notice they make many claims but offer no proof of effectiveness. In fact, in my opinion these penis stretcher products are dangerous.
Since I began my work in Peyronie’s disease in 2002 I have spoken to many men who are convinced their PD started with the use of one of those penis stretching devices. The trauma of forceful and prolonged stretching of the delicate tunica can be enough in some men to start the injury that results in excessive scarring.
Other men I have spoke to about these penis stretching schemes say they cannot use them. It is simple to understand if you think about it a bit. The head (glans) of the penis MUST be held firmly enough in a penis stretcher to develop traction force, but there is no good way to get a grip on it. So the head must be squeezed tight enough to not lose contact with the stretcher, and this pressure concentrated to one area at the glans (head) can cause tissue damage and it can be very painful. Many men report they can only wear it for a few minutes or an hour at a time. Bruises, open sores or blisters can develop in a short time. The manufacturer says it should be worn several hours or more per day. I think it is not very likely that most men could do this.
Safe, gentle, manual penis stretching designed specifically for Peyronie’s disease
If this problem of open sores and bruising were not actually a problem, the manufacturers would not include detailed information in their brochures about how to treat open wounds and infections caused by the stretchers, and they would not include information about wearing bandages and extra padding on the penis to prevent bruises and open sores. But the fact is they do. You will find they tell about these two problems and how to try to avoid kind of injury – they must because they try to prevent law suits that have occurred because these are common problems with the stretchers.
Even if these devices really worked, you would only have a temporarily elongated penis that still had the PD scar. This is not progress or good treatment for Peyronie’s disease.
Since the concept for penis stretching for Peyronie’s disease treatment is interesting, after an 18 month research project I developed a gentle manual technique that is specific to the problem of Peyronies disease. Keeping the penis stretched for just a few minutes with the fingertips safely and effectively can reduce the PD scar and distortion of Peyronie’s disease. If you want to learn about a safe and effective way of treating your Peyronie’s problem with manual penis stretching, view the penis stretching videos at the PDI website at manual penis stretching technique.