Question
Is penis atrophy real, and does your penis shrink with age?
Answer
The short answer is we don’t know for sure how the length of the human penis changes with age because nobody has ever reported or published a series of measurements made in the same male subjects across their lifetime.
The most recent study that used data from lots of different scientific publications, in which penis length was measured in individuals of different ages, showed no relationship between a man’s age and the length of his penis (consistent with a similar study from 10 years ago).
Treatment of health problems that become more common with age can affect penis length. Peyronie’s disease can cause a reduction in penis length, and surgery to correct the curve or bend in the penis can shorten the penis further. Prostate surgery can result in damage to the nerves and blood vessels supplying the penis, and can affect penis length but reductions in length are temporary in most men.
There is one thing that many men have in common that can make their penises seem to get smaller with age: obesity. The base of the penis sits behind the skin, so excess fat can hide more of it.
Tim Moss
Healthy Male Health Content Manager
Dr Tim Moss has PhD in physiology and more than 20 years’ experience as a biomedical research scientist. Tim stepped away from his successful academic career at the end of 2019, to apply his skills in turning complicated scientific and medical knowledge into information that all people can use to improve their health and wellbeing. Tim has written for crikey.com and Scientific American’s Observations blog, which is far more interesting than his authorship of over 150 academic publications. He has studied science communication at the Alan Alda Centre for Communicating Science in New York, and at the Department of Biological Engineering Communication Lab at MIT in Boston.
