Know Your Knob: all our penis health links
Cumming FAQs
What happens when you come?
When you come or ejaculate, white semen containing sperm comes out of the end of your penis. It can happen during sex, during masturbation or even during the night in a dream. It's perfectly normal.
I've got blood in my semen. Is it serious?
This is can be very scary but is usually harmless. A bit of rough sex or masturbation can cause it so you only need to seek help if it keeps on happening. In fact, only one in five cases have an obvious cause but very, very rarely it can be a sign of something more serious so see a doctor if it lasts a month or more.
One less serious cause is Orchitis: the inflammation of one or, more rarely, two testicles, usually as a result of a bacterial or viral infection. Common causes include mumps - approximately one in four men who catch mumps will develop orchitis - and sexually transmitted infections such as chlamydia and gonorrhea. In epididymo-orchitis, the epididymis - the sperm-carrying tube attached to the testicle - is also affected.
I come too soon/not soon enough.
The main problems with ejaculation are coming too soon or not coming at all. If you come too quickly, remember this: every young man on the planet has come too soon at some time. It can be very embarrassing but, like death and taxes, it's a fact of life. In twenty years time you'll be wishing you still had the problem.
Coming too quickly is often called premature ejaculation. Taking too long to come or not coming at all is called retarded ejaculation.
I produce less semen
As men get older their prostate gland changes - the prostate gland produces most of the fluid which makes up the ejaculate. The hormones that control semen production also change, and so it is completely normal for the volume of ejaculate to slowly reduce with age. It is also normal to take longer to build up the volume of semen as you get older so if you ejaculate frequently this will also mean a smaller volume. But note, a reduced volume of semen is not a sign of any prostate disease.
A reduced volume of semen is therefore normal as you get older and doesn't need any treatment as such. However if you are trying to father children it would be worth seeing your GP to arrange a semen analysis. If you maintain a good level of hydration and increase the time between ejaculations this will maximise the semen volume.
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Date published
07/04/14
Date of last review
07/04/14
Date of next review
07/04/17
References
The Men’s Health Forum need your support It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking. In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to. It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for. We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing. Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can. |