Penile Fracture Risk Goes Up By 43% Around Christmas, Study Says
Here's how this can be a hard thing to deal with and how you can prevent it
Christmas Day may be just around the bend. But here’s one type of Holiday break that you don’t want to have: a penile fracture. Such a fracture can occur when things bend the wrong way. And the rate of penile fractures has been 43% higher around Christmas Day than around any other day of the year, according to a German study just published in the British Journal of Urology International (BJUI). This was based on an analysis of GeRmAn Nationwide inpatient Data (GRAND) that found that 40 (1.3%) of the 3,421 hospitalizations for penile fractures from 2005 to 2021 had occurred within the three days (December 24 through December 26) around Christmas. Forty is not a lot over seven years. But it still begs the question as to why more people’s Tannenbaums are being Tannen-bent around Christmas.
Now, the word “fracture” may make it sound like your penis has bones in it. But there are no bones about it when it comes to your penis, no matter what you may call an erect penis. Your penis can still “break,” though. An erection occurs when you get excited—say when you see an exquisite piece of fruitcake—which then causes blood to rush into your penis. That blood enters the three spongy cylinder-like structures that run through the shaft of your penis, known as the corpus spongiosum and the two corpora cavernosa. When these cylinders fill with blood, they become stiff. What keeps the blood in these structures and things on the up and up is the tunica albuginea, a fibrous layer of tissue that surrounds these cylinders like an envelope. The tunica albuginea then helps hold the blood within these structures for the duration of your erection, which by the way should be less than four hours. A penile fracture is when this tunica albuginea gets torn.
Penile fractures are not common but they can result when your penis is erect and suffers some kind of blunt force that bends it like Beckham wouldn’t want to do it. This can result from:
Missing the target: You may thrust and miss the hole, instead striking the pelvic bone, the area between the anus and vagina, or if your aim is really bad, the wall.
Falling on or rolling onto your penis: This is why you should beware of any sexual position called “The Tumbler” or “The Log Roller.” And you shouldn’t run on a slippery wooden floor while naked, carrying a bowl of soup, and sporting an erection.
Masturbating a bit too vigorously: I know what you are thinking. You’ve never done this before. But if you treat your penis like a bicycle pump, you could end up bending it the wrong way.
Twisting during penetration: Sex is not exactly a game of Twister.
So what explains the findings from the GRAND analysis performed by the team from University Hospital, LMU in Munich, Germany (Nikolaos Pyrgidis, Michael Chaloupka, Yannic Volz, Paulo Pfitzinger, Maria Apfelbeck, Philipp Weinhold, Christian Stief, Julian Marcon, and Gerald Bastian Schulz)? Why did the daily incidence of penile fractures go up to 0.78 around Christmas day, which was 43% higher than the rate on all of the other days? And why did this rate actually drop by two percent during the three days around New Year’s?
Well, the results suggest that people may be doing something different with their penises around Christmas time. Maybe more people are trying to be more intimate with their partners. Maybe men are getting more vigorous with their Christmas trees so to speak. Maybe more are running naked on slippery wooden floors. The study couldn’t tell for sure since it was an analysis of existing data in a database and the investigators didn’t go back to each of the men and ask, remember that Christmas when you went for broke? What exactly were you doing at the time?
Regardless, a penile fracture isn’t something that you should just ignore. It may be hard to ignore, so to speak, when you hear a popping or cracking sound, followed by intense pain. There’s usually an immediate loss of the erection. You may also see bruising and swelling from the blood leaking. There could be blood in your urine or at the tip of your penis.
A penile fracture is an emergency that often requires surgical correction. It’s not as if the doctors in the emergency room can give your penis a pair of crutches that it can use for a while. Surgery entails stitching up the tunica albuginea. If you don’t get proper treatment for a penile fracture, it could heal in a crooked manner—which is not a moral statement but an actual physical concern. There may also be loss of sexual or urinary function.
Again, as the data showed, penile fractures are not super common. So, there’s no need to forego masturbation or sex simply because you are worried about breaking your penis. You can still give these gifts to yourself or someone else. Just don’t be too hard on yourself.