Something I've observed reading these posts over the last few months is that more often than not, urologists are prescribing completely different protocols than the ones the forum touts.
The forum protocols don't appear, from what I can gather, to have helped many people at all, myself included (6 months of daily use, zero improvement.)
Urologists are prescribing 1, 3 or even 5 minute stretches at full erection where the forum protocols are suggesting 10s holds at less than a full erection.
Can anyone shed light on their VED protocol as prescribed by a Urologist, and how it worked (or didn't work)? Conversely, can anyone say that the forum VED protocol has worked for them?
Forum protocols are designed to keep the risk of injury to a minimum. Based on every single forum I have read about with pumping for us Peyronies patients who are susceptible to trauma it is very easy to injure oneself with a vacuum pump. Feel free to test out the urologists protocols at your own risk but keep in mind holding ones penis under vaccuum pressure for minutes is a big risk. Research on pumping for peyronies purposes as a whole is very minimal in fact some urologists like Dr Trost even recommends against it.
I have to add that the forums suggested holds of 10-15 seconds for 10 cycles seem very doubtful on it's productivity and effectiveness. I have been very curious at times to try it out. What prevented me is the hundreds of posts I've seen where people have injured themelves and become worse off. Some people even claim to only have applied normal amounts of pressure and holding for 20 secs and damaging themselves.
Yeah I've worked up to as long as 20s holds but I just don't feel like they do anything. I guess the way to do it safely is to increase slowly by say 5s per week, or even 2.5s per week, and back off if things start to go south.
Just got off the phone after asking my doc, and the nurse says the goal is to work up to a 15 minute hold per session. Fifteen minutes! But with the caveat that it should be pain free.
This feels like wild frontier, honestly.
Quote from: Dent-n-curve on May 03, 2023, 08:54:16 AMJust got off the phone after asking my doc, and the nurse says the goal is to work up to a 15 minute hold per session. Fifteen minutes! But with the caveat that it should be pain free.
This feels like wild frontier, honestly.
15 minute hold sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Quote from: Sonic on May 03, 2023, 09:47:44 AM15 minute hold sounds like a recipe for disaster.
It raised my eyebrow for sure, but
A. this comes from the Doc (or his nurse practitioner who answers questions) and
B. I'm still new enough to only know what I've read here and what I've heard from the doc. and
C. The 15-minute instruction was clearly qualified as "pain free". They said to discontinue if there's any pain.
I dunno. I'm glad I posted - curious to see how this reconciles with others instructions and experiences in the group here
You may have seen some of my other posts on the topic but my one doc (I've seen a few) told me to pump to full erection and hold for no more than 10 minutes. I've never done that and have only been doing a few minutes at most. Basically somewhere in between what I see here and what he said. My sessions are typically about 10 minutes and I don't even get to full erection until about 5 minutes of cycling. Thus I'm only achieving full erection for the 2nd 5 minutes and hold for 30 seconds up to a few m inutes and cycle that several times. Before this, I was doing the protocol here but saw no benefit in my dents/hourglassing/hinge. I've seen minor improvement with this newer protocol I'm doing and zero negatives.
I will point out I also did/do Restorex so I can't say with certainty that the VED/protocol is responsible for my improvements but I would speculate it is at least in part.
The only study I've seen on VED, that had positive results, had 3 minute holds.
My doctors opinion, at least in my case, is we are trying to stretch the problem area and you simply will not do that with repeated short holds or pumping to less than what actually stretches the area.
Quote from: Dorian on May 03, 2023, 01:01:54 PMwe are trying to stretch the problem area and you simply will not do that with repeated short holds or pumping to less than what actually stretches the area
Since I've started pushing my hold times to 15s, I've been filling the VED much more. It makes sense to me that holding for longer times will allow the tissue to stretch further. Between 10 and 15s, more air escapes from the problem areas and they fill in further. I will experiment with 20s holds for a few weeks before moving to 30s holds and beyond.