Last updated on November 16, 2024
Question:
Hi,
I was wondering if I could get your advice or opinion.
I’m 20 years old. A few years back, I was hit hard in the testicles, and it caused a varicocele to appear. I went and saw three different doctors, and they all told me nothing was wrong, but I knew otherwise and did my research online. Since then, the varicocele hasn’t bothered me, but I moved to a new town recently (away from my family for college) and have been doing a lot of walking, which can bother me sometimes. Also, on an unrelated note, can testicles shrink? As of late, I have noticed that mine have been looking smaller, and I really don’t remember them being this small in the past, although it could be me just worrying. I measured one, and it came to barely 1.5 inches. Any advice?
Have a great day. Thank you greatly!
Answer:
A varicocele is the same thing as varicose veins that plague older people. Your veins have small valves to keep blood from flowing backward as the heart pumps. If the valves were there, blood would pool in your lower extremities, stretching the veins. In a varicocele and varicose veins, one or more valves have failed and allow blood to backflow, pool, and stretch the veins. The result is pain.
I would be surprised if a hit in the testicles caused a valve to fail. It would be hard to differentiate it from a coincidence if it did happen simultaneously.
An ultrasound examination can show the pooling since the vein where the valve failed is bigger. If doctors didn’t find a varicocele, the pain may be due to something else. Since it happened several years ago, I guess some scar tissue might have formed.
Since it only bothers you when you are active, a simple solution is to wear a jockstrap or compression shorts when you are doing something active. This will take the strain off the cords holding your testicles and likely eliminate discomfort.
Unless an organ is dying, it doesn’t shrink. If your testicles were dying, you would be having severe symptoms. The fact is that, like most men, you really don’t know what size your testicles are. Now that you are having some problems, you are paying attention but comparing notoriously inaccurate memories. We tend to measure things by comparison, thus when your testicles grew as you reached manhood, they seemed huge because in comparison to childhood they are huge. Now that you’ve grown used to them, they don’t seem as big but it isn’t because they shrunk; you are used to the size.