Time Under Pressure and Oxygenation

Was just reading around on various forums, and I found a link to a study from 2014 detailing a controlled vacuum pumping experiment regarding oxygenation. While there are tons of opinions afloat concerning what is the maximally beneficial time under pressure, after searching Thunders I found no links to this study and wasn’t able to explicitly find any posts that had specifically related the method used for this study, which was found to have produced some good results re: oxygenation.

In their study, a number of men experiencing erectile problems after having recently undergone prostatectomy (partial or total removal of the prostate) were instructed to use a vacuum device, cycling the vacuum to induce ten erections within the span of approximately two minutes. Measurements of penile oxygen saturation throughout the penis were found to be on average 55% higher after this method.
The study is called:
"A pilot study to determine penile oxygen saturation before and after vacuum therapy in patients with erectile dysfunction after radical prostatectomy."

Link:
https://www.ncb … pubmed/24506138

There are lots of anecdotes abound suggesting that something like this cyclical approach is a good method to avoid a hypoxic (oxygen starved) condition, with some members of the forums employing much higher pressures than are generally recommended, but likewise for very limited duration.
Still, I thought it would be useful to ease the access to the scientific opinion on this subject, as well as lend some more emphasis for those casually perusing these forums on **limited or cyclical durations under stress and pressure**.

I believe that in my earlier (even) stupider years with PE, I, like many, was enthusiastic to the point of catastrophic hubris, clamping a little too long, and overall taking duration under stress WAY overboard. I did some tissue damage that it seems I was mostly able to reverse and I think adding to the cautionary voices on this site is always gonna be a good thing.

Beyond that, I’m interested to hear of any more concrete scholarly research that might specifically speak to oxygenation as relating to these vacuum durations.

A related study that I’m fond of sharing, this other NCBI study relates further evidence that while 10 minutes increased tissue VEGF levels, 30 minutes under stress (in this case from a penile tourniquette or a clamp) actually DECREASED VEGF levels below the control group, which had no tourniquette! VEGF being vascular endothelial growth factor.
This should accentuate, especially for newer members that these tissues don’t respond to stresses in a linear way, and are quite volatile regarding the fine details of the stresses they are put under.

"Effect of penile tourniquet on growth factors in rat penile tissue."
Link: Effect of penile tourniquet on growth factors in rat penile tissue

At any rate, if anybody’s got access to more scholarly data on the relationships between tissue oxygenation or VEGF levels and pumping pressures/durations/etc I’d love to see them!
Thanks, all.

I’m thinking the primary source of oxygen to your penis is coming from your blood flow and the easiest way to stimulate blood flow while pumping is to milk the tube and/or do kegels.

Yeah these are possible approaches. However I’m skeptical whether either technique can compete with the vacuum itself as far as keeping or renewing the same pool of blood in the tissues. With cyclical vacuums however, a continuously fresh supply of blood is unquestionably guaranteed, right?

I also wonder if there are other physiological mechanisms at work that would point us toward either longer or cyclical durations under stress. Something like that VEGF response arc.

Based on my own experience from pumping, maintaining blood flow and proper oxygenation is very important.

Great question Golddinger. The question has been bouncing around in my head for a while… the relationship between vacuum / time / oxygenation.

I have yet to find the answer. I’m not sure if we are going to find a scientific answer in the world of PE though. But here’s hoping. :)

I think cyclical pumping is a very good way to boost oxygen supply while pumping and I have used it especially with my electric pump, although it can also be done with a manual pump. For me, this method also seems to accelerate expansion results.

With an electric pump, you can pulse the pressure quite rapidly and that is very effective.

Just to clarify

“Each man cycled a VED to achieve full erection 10 consecutive times over a period of approximately 2 minutes without constriction ring.”

Is that saying that over 2 minutes 10 cycles happened that caused max expansion?

What kind of pressures were you using with a manual pump? Was it something like start at 2hg, down to 1hg, up to 3hg, down to 2hg, etc, or something else?

Avocet8 covered this topic in his thread - Pumping when you have ED

Pumping To Treat ED

You can cycle whatever level of pressure you are conditioned to use. For a manual pump it is not as easy to control how much pressure gets released, but for me I would cycle from say 6hg up to 8hg and back down or even 6hg up to 9hg or 10 hg and back down and repeat for several minutes.

My manual pressure gauge doesn’t even start to read until 2hg so I am thinking cycling from 3hg to 5hg and back down to 3hg if you can control it that close and repeat for several minutes.

My electric pump uses a bypass valve to control pressure, so the less air that is bypassed, the higher the pressure. Setting the pressure is done by turning a screw that controls the amount of air bypassed, but by holding and releasing your finger over the bypass valve outlet, you can pulse the pressure very quickly and easily for a great effect. I could set say a base pressure of 6hg and easily go to 10hg or even 12hg for 1 or 2 second bursts just by holding and releasing my finger over the bypass hole.

Okay, cool.
I’m seeing that he touched upon the topic, but I’m specifically interested to see if we can dredge up any more scholarly research on relevant variables that might play into a broader-reaching understanding of oxygenation, or growth factors.
Or maybe we can look more closely at why 10 minutes of blood-starvation doesn’t seem to produce the negative effects of 30 minutes of blood-starvation.
Anyway, if we don’t learn anything new and just end up further emphasizing that all PE methods ought to be robustly aware of encouraging circulation rather than simply clamping down or pumping for as long as possible, well that’s not so bad! I still read so many accounts of new people being way overzealous and having terrifying or catastrophic experiences. If they’re not gonna read as much as they should, more emphasis on temperance is always a positive thing for these forums!

@Golddinger - thanks for this thread and your posts. I am also interested in these topics. My thoughts:

Regarding the published research: I think it is a good idea to read the research but also recognize the limitations and question the methods/results. This is exactly what happens in peer-reviewed journal articles. This also appears to be your approach - good!

Oxygenation and perfusion is essential for human tissue. However, many PE methods (clamping, hanging, etc) for length and girth ignore both. So I tend to favor prioritizing “penile health” over gains in length and girth. A foundation of penile health allows brief episodes of PE without ill effects - thus we have PI’s (Physiological Indicators) that tell us when we have done too much PE and need to back off.

Keep in mind everyone is a bit different. Consider a young healthy male penis vs a 70 year old man with ED. So we have to know ourselves, realize our limitations and most importantly focus on what is appropriate for ourselves.

I absolutely believe short cycle pumping can improve penile health by improving oxygenation and perfusion while jelqing helps tissue pliability - think massage. However, the penis is different from other human anatomy. The body sends complex signals to the penis to form and keep an erection - the arteries dilate (blood coming in) and the veins constrict (blood going out). Therefore the most effective way (in my opinion) to improve oxygenation and perfusion of the penis is to short cycle pump WITHOUT the veins constricted, i.e. without an “erection”. In other words, pull blood into the penis AND let it leave, over and over again. I think the scientific literature misses this point when they use the word “erection” in describing their methods.

What are your thoughts?

Wow! Sorry for the delayed reply, I’m not as diligently active on the site as others. But thank you so much for the well thought out reply, that’s the kind of discussion I’m really interested in on this topic!

You raise some very interesting structural questions concerning different approaches to PE. I tend to agree with you that any exercise that keeps the health of the penis at the focus is going to end up showing better results than some kamikaze exercises which are doing barely-controlled damage, although I don’t have any conclusive data or evidence to believe it! I did however, many years ago by now, make some serious serious almost catastrophic mistakes in my approach. Topmost was leaving a too-tight wrap on at the base of the penis -overnight- (in the misguided effort to remove discoloration) and waking up with something that looked and felt quite totally dead attached to my body. That’s obviously the extreme, but that experience really made me conscious to consciously keep penile health in the forefront in my exercise routines since then, and it really seems like that can’t be a bad thing.

I guess there are some other quite open-ended and unexplored questions that we or someone could be thinking about.
Specifically, the relationship between oxygenation and growth is a big one! Some big gainers attest to long seemingly hypoxic periods of clamping and they warn that one must be “conditioned” in order to pull these off (another big question mark being, what kind of conditioning would in any way affect the tissue’s need for freshly oxygenated blood??). Other big gainers seem to have privileged the safe or health-oriented approach. Different strokes?? For different folks? What’s going on here?
Also, the relationship between oxygenation and fibrosis or tissue hardening is an interesting question. Do higher oxygenated exercise approaches either reduce or exacerbate the processes that lead to tissue hardening? What kind of tissue healing does high oxygenation best facilitate? How could an answer to that question be exploited?

I wish I had more answers to these questions, but I think the questions themselves could lead us to some interesting places.

More relevant scholarly data or research most welcome!

Eureka!
Actually, I did a quick google search on "ncbi oxygenation tissue fibrosis" and found this article from 2011:
"Reversion of penile fibrosis: Current information and a new horizon"
https://www.ncb i.nlm.nih.gov/p … les/PMC4149188/

Still reading through it now, but seems to indicate a strong correlation between consistent, ongoing oxygenation and reversing of age-related penile tissue damage like corporal and tunical fibrosis, nerve damage, and tissue atrophy. Seems like it could provoke some very rewarding concepts!

Anybody know anything about NO-cGMP? I assume it’s nitric oxide related.

The article gets a little too chemistry-language heavy for me, some help deconstructing it would be most welcome!