How does excessive masturbation change penis color?
Reasons why the penis darkens
Production of Melanin
The reason why the penis color changes or darkens is because pigment melanin is produced after during and after puberty. Everyone naturally makes pigment melanin, and the difference of skin color depends on the difference of the production of pigment melanin too. However, scientists still don’t know the exact reason why the genital area darkens.
One of theory why the genital area darkens is because the production of melanin gets productive as you get older. As people get older, the basal cell, cells that produces the melanin in the skin, produces more melanin to protect their genes from ultra violet rays (Encyclopedia for correct, 2010). Because the basal cells gets more productive as you get older, the harder it gets to remain the skin color lighter. The basal cells gets very active when excessive UV rays enters the skin, and to protect their genes from the UV rays, they produce more melanin to shut the UV rays from entering the deeper layer of the skin. This is why people get darker when they have suntan. However, because the production of melanin increases, as people get older, even areas that are protected by UV rays, including the genital area, can get darker.
As I said above, as people get older, their production of pigment melanin becomes more active. Since especially genital areas can easily gather melanin, it can get darker than your skin color of other parts your body.
External Stimulus
One of the other reasons why the genital areas get darker is because of external stimulus. External stimulus such as friction and heat makes that part of the body skin to produce melanin to protect itself (Saito K, 2012). If the skin of the penis is peeled, the peeled part gets constant friction, allowing that part of the penis to become darker. One miner type of external stimulus is masturbation and sexual intercourse.
However, masturbation and sex are miner external stimulus than other ways, because both of these are done in a very short amount of time. For example, letting the penis peeled all the day gives more constant friction than masturbation. Thus, masturbation and sex is not a big cause of making the penis darken.
How did this myth spread?
But where did this myth or belief arise? This myth arose from teenagers misunderstanding the existence of melanin. The myth, “If you masturbate a lot, your penis will become black”, possibly arose because teenagers or young adults have realized that their penis started darkening during the time of when they started to masturbate. Because the time when young boys starts to masturbate and the time when the melanin gets produced more overlapped each other, teenagers misunderstood that excessive masturbation lead to penis color darkening (Saito, 2012).
Used resources in this page
Websites:
loretta_wakana. (October 28, 2010). 正しいスキンケア事典／角質層に色のついたメラニン色素は存在するか？(Encyclopedia for correct skin care/
does a pigment melanin colored stratum corneum exist?). exciteブログ. Retrieved from: http://loretta.exblog.jp/14299750
Saito, K. (May 3, 2012). 性器の黒ずみ(Genital Darkening).性の悩みの相談室 (Counseling room for sexual problems). Retrieved from: http://
kyouyablog.blog105.fc2.com/blog-entry-661.html
Images:
Top image: Ferret, C. (2012). Un couple amoureux. Davidone: Photography. Retrieved from: http://www.davidone.fr/blog/photographe-de-mariage/
teaser-un- couple-amoureux-une-lumiere-du-soir/
