I have a black-colored patch on my penis. What can be done about it?

Last updated on December 3, 2024

Question:

Hello!

I am 20 years old. I have a bad habit of hand practice since I was seven. I am too worried about it. Many times I tried to stop it, but I failed. 

The problem is that I am suffering from a black color on my penis. Please! Can you suggest how it can be removed? What treatment should I apply? Please answer me in detail!  

Answer:

Let’s start with the first. Many men assume masturbation is wrong. I suspect that it is because it is a private thing that leads to strong feelings of pleasure, but more so because many use imagery of sexual scenes that are forbidden to get themselves sexually aroused. The Bible doesn’t call masturbation, by itself, sinful. What it does call sinful is thinking about sinful acts and desiring them. For details, see:

Oftentimes, we assume that if two things happen close together in time, then one thing will cause the other. This isn’t the case. A rooster crows just before the sun rises, but a rooster doesn’t cause the sun to rise.

What you may be seeing on your penis is commonly called a birthmark. It is a section of skin that has more tiny blood vessels just below the surface, and since the skin on your penis is so thin, you see them as a darker area. Birthmarks tend to have a dark red color.

A chemical called melanin gives people a tan or brown color to their skin. For some people, their skin doesn’t always produce melanin evenly. For example, red-headed people often have freckles, which are just small dots of skin that have more melanin than the surrounding skin. Those spots can be in bigger patches and are called hyperpigmentation. It means some areas of the skin go overboard in producing melanin. These patches appear as tan or dark brown colors.

There are many causes of hyperpigmentism. Some drugs have it as a side effect. Freckles on the genitals characterize some genetic diseases. For some men, the median raphe, the small ridge that goes from the anus, across the center of the scrotum, to the tip of the bottom side of the penis, can have more pigment than the surrounding skin. Then, there are rare cases where patches of skin are darker because of genetics.

Having a birthmark or hyperpigmentism doesn’t make your penis ugly or non-functional. Since you keep it private anyway, few will ever know you have a dark area there. And when you get married, your wife won’t care. I’m sure you might find a dermatologist (skin doctor) willing to take your money and remove the mark, but the procedures available for removing birthmarks are painful and are likely to cause scarring. For hyperpigmentism, there are ointments to bleach the skin or acids to remove the top layers of skin in hopes that the new layers won’t be dark. Generally, these treatments don’t work reliably. You will generally find reputable doctors telling you not to worry about it because it isn’t worth changing.

Now, all of this assumes that the dark area is just a skin discoloration. If there are other symptoms, such as the discoloration spreading, the area being raised or rough, or the color of the spot changing, you need to see a doctor to ensure a treatable disease isn’t causing it. But if it is just a patch that you basically have always had or had since adolescence, then it isn’t something to worry about.