Phimosis

Yet another reason given for circumcising your son is Phimosis. Phimosis is a condition in which the foreskin sticks to the glans and cannot retract. Circumcision actually does treat Phimosis. If you cut the foreksin off it won't stick to the glans. (Well most of the time, but now we are just splitting hairs)

Well I am going to be honest with this. It is a very hard topic to blog on. When it comes to phimosis everyone is different when it comes to what is normal. It is really something that needs to be done on a case by case basis. For this reason I am not even going to bother with the citations and just use ubiquitous knowledge.

Most of the people who are circumcised becuase of phimosis are circumcised at an early age. They are typically diagnosed with childhood phimosis. The problem is childhood phimosis, as doctors usually diagnose it, doesn't exist. That is the way males are born. The foreskin is usually unable to retract until age 1 at the earliest and can be as late as age 13. If the foreskin is able to retract before that it usually means that someone forced it, which is potentially dangerous as it can lead to infections. The reason that this happens is not a conspiracy theory. It is simply an ignorance from American doctors because the last time a majority of males were intact was before WWII. American doctors simply don't know how to deal with a male that has not been cut at birth.

To put it in another way, the skin bonds to the glans in almost the exact same way that your fingernail bonds with your finger. It stays this way for quite awhile. The time frame varies from person to person, but it is not a problem unless it persists until puberty. I don't think you have ever had a doctor that wanted to remove your fingernail simply becuase it could not detach from your finger. If your doctor has done that, you should probably find a different doctor.

Another obvious point this bring up is cleaning. You don't force your fingernail open to clean underneath. Neither should you force your babies foreskin back to clean underneath. Don't get me wrong, after the skin is able to retract, cleaning is necessary, but until that time, if he doesn't retract it, you don't retract it.

Now that we have gotten past that, lets talk about real phimosis. Like pretty much all disorders that circumcision is supposed to cure, phimosis is pretty uncommon as less than 1% of males will ever have it. If you are so unfortunate, steroid creams and stretching techniques are usually very effective in a short amount of time. If it doesn't work there are other less drastic methods available that essentially pry the foreskin off the glans. Normally this is incredibly unhealthy, but if the body doesn't do so on its own its needs to retract at some point. The last method is effective almost 100% of the time, which would make circumcision to treat phimosis silly as it is a much more radical procedure.

If it helps you get the concept better, think about getting your teeth pulled because you have a cavity. The only thing that makes circumcision to treat phimosis more credible is phimosis is the only thing that circumcision actually treats. For everything else you are just trying to prevent something. Everything else is like having your teeth pulled to prevent the cavity. For phimosis you are actually treating cavity, (to go along with the analogy)even though it is a bit of an overreaction.

Another condition that gets thrown into the this category is one where the skin at the urethra is too narrow to allow urine to pass through. Sometimes stretching and, small cuts are used. Often doctors remove the entire foreskin. This is one that makes zero sense to me. You have an opening that is 1 mm in diameter. You need it to be 5mm in diameter. In order to achieve this we are going to cut off 15 square inches of skin. What? Who came up with this logic? Why don't you simple perform stretching techniques, or cut off a small portion of skin to allow urine to pass? Its the bureaucratic mentality I swear. (insert sarcasm) Oh well. I say again, All of these conditions are very rare.