Hard Flaccid - Breakdown

[Godisreal]

Good day everybody on this forum. Hope you're managing.
I just want to break down the "mystery" with hard flaccid... is it even a mystery? Or am I missing out on something here? I've had it coming back and forth ever since my first injury a few months back, and I still don't understand what it means. Is it a bad state to have your penis in? Is it just a natural "after injury" state that will go away with time?
Please share your opinions on this, I'm hoping to make this the official "hard flaccid thread". Because I can't be the only one who doesn't understand this so called syndrome...
I've seen that most posts about this are filled with people promoting heat therapy and just overall relaxing and absence from stress. These things are already mandatory for me when dealing with peyronies, but I would like to get to the bottom of this. Again, please feel free to comment about your experience with hard flaccid syndrome and what you are doing to prevent it.
God bless you all  

[melting]

Basics:

The majority of the HF patients is in their 20s–30s. Patients usually seek medical advice due to the following complaints: penile sensory changes (numb or cold), semi-rigid penis at the flaccid state, decreased frequency of morning and/or nocturnal erections, loss in erectile rigidity, difficulty in achieving and maintaining their erections, need for excessive physical or visual stimulation to become erect, and pain on ejaculation and/or urination.
Psychological symptoms are usually present ranging from mild anxiety to severe depression. Moreover, laboratory and imaging tests are often unremarkable. Our cases included men between the ages of 22 and 34 years of age and they all reported the onset of their symptoms after a trauma during sexual intercourse or tough masturbation.

A good take on the tense Pelvic Floor issue:

First things first: there is nothing wrong with your/your client's penis. Often, clients have been to many providers and have been given clean bills of health. He is shooed away with pharmaceuticals and no explanation why his friend is under the weather.
Ruminating on the issue can precipitate a key ingredient to the problem: stress. Stress causes activation of your sympathetic nervous system which in turn releases adrenaline throughout your body.
This system is called the Fight or Flight response, and unfortunately your penis does not know if you are running away from a pack of rabid raccoons or wondering why you do not have the same erection you had before. Adrenaline acts by opening blood vessels more to things such as your muscles, heart, or brain and closing down smaller blood vessels, i.e. to your penis.
This constant anxiety and stress can take a toll on your pelvic floor muscles too. While some of us hold stress in our jaws or stomachs, others hold their stress in their pelvic floor. They essentially forget how to relax their pelvic floor! Think of it like you have clenched your fist and you cannot extend your fingers back out to a resting position. It is stuck in a fist or you can only go part way.

(Hard Flaccid Syndrome: Penetrating What We Know — Entropy Physiotherapy)

Think of the pelvic floor reaction if you pull on your dick(don't do it hard!). It automatically retracts it. This is similar but chronic.
Imo, I have the observation that HF sufferers have a very similar mental state. Very anxious, cluttered mind, in their head and other nervous mindframes. Often then blamed on the HF but what was first, the stress or the HF? Anyway, the devils circle has to be broken. It has to be tackled mentally and physically.

Mental is very individual and can be helped in many ways yourself and professional. Same goes for the physical.

I think the bridge between mental and physical is breathing and everyone can do that.  
Breathing in fully expands inside out, our Shoulders, Chest and Belly and can also expand our Pelvic Floor(focusing the breath down and outwards).
Done right the soft tissue expands outwards, stretches the muscles and possibly even moves the tailbone outwards. A slow steady outbreath, until all air is out, relaxes the muscles.
Some muscles might resists this and it take time to get them loose.

All of the muscles down there are connected, so one tense muscle can tense all other muscles. Tension means no blood flow. Think of it like the penis being the sprayer at the end of a hose. Any tension between then water inflow and the sprayer will stop the flow. This can already start with the abs or lower back which are connected to the PF.  

[Godisreal]

Really appreciate you taking your time writing all this down melting!
Ever since I worsened my dick I've had hard flaccid almost all the time (always relived before taking a piss and while laying down tho). Anyway, the unknown is killing me, like it does with everybody else...
do you know if hard flaccid means it's getting worse? Or is it just a state that you work your way out of? I'm not sure if the quotes you shared covered that.
Anyway, thanks again for answering man.
God bless you  

[melting]

(always relived before taking a piss and while laying down tho).

There you go.  
Pelvic floor muscles involved in urinating. You're pressing outwards creating space and stretching the PF or the urine could be transported through the tightness.  
You can do the same with breathing. "breathing into your glans" is the focus of your mind.  
Laying down also changes the posture and how the muscles interact.

do you know if hard flaccid means it's getting worse? Or is it just a state that you work your way out of?

There are people without peyronies or injuries who have it. But a an injury could trigger the HF.
HF surely doesn't help the penis as it prevents nutrient rich oxygen to reach the tissues. Think about taking oral supplements for Peyronies Disease and then you have HF,.. most will be used up by the body and waste before it gets somehow to the penis.

So yes, you work your way out of it. As it's a rater chronic issue it's probably done with one action but daily as often as possible conscious work(or help by a therapist, like massages etc.)

[Lemten]

What the problem seems to me, after a decade of trying to figure it out:

If your "hard flaccid" is position-dependent, meaning that it comes and goes, and there are intermittent moments of complete resolution of the retracted tonus back to its former elastic state -- in that case the problem is more likely to be (predominantly) muscular.

But if the HF isn't position-dependent and stays stably the same for a long period of time, it's more likely that an injury to the surrounding tissues of the penis (fascia and/or tunica) is the cause, leading to a sort of a "strangulating" effect which produces the retraction of the penile tissues and is of course accompanied by muscular tension / spasms since this strangulating effect due to tissue trauma disrupts the normal tonus of the penis.

My HF has partly subsided in 10 years, peripherally. Meaning, it has gained back some of the softness around the penis, but the longitudinal "septal" hardness remains along the area of spongiosum / urethra. But I'm not even sure if this eventual softening of HF by itself was a good thing or not, becuse at the same time my erectile dysfunction is even worse than before. The penis doesn't seem to have enough strength to actually erect, but remains hanging in a rubbery sort of way even when there's a "signal" for erection and increased blood flow. It could be that the pelvic muscles have atrophied or weakened in some way due to the long-lasting HF and the disconnect it produced between the pelvic muscles, ligaments and the penis.

I'm not sure if that's the case, but that's how it seems to me at the moment.

[hope794]

Lemten, that's exactly what i feel about my erections since the onset of my Peyronies Disease: "The penis doesn't seem to have enough strength to actually erect, but remains hanging in a rubbery sort of way even when there's a "signal" for erection and increased blood flow."

This phrase is real!!!  

[smashin]

Get on cialis in that car, if you aren't already.