HEALTH WARNING: SMOKING CAN SERIOUSLY SHRINK YOUR MANHOOD

Are you ready for the cigarette health warning that could turn millions of
men into non-smokers overnight? Smoking will reduce the size of your penis.

This alarming finding has emerged from a study undertaken at Boston
University School of Medicine. Two hundred men submitted their erect organs
to the scrutiny of the ruler and the answer came back: If you smoke, you are
likely to have a shorter erect penis.

Get ready, then, smokers, with those 'size isn't important' justifications.
But surely, millions of shocked male smokers will insist, the effects are
minimal? Nothing to speak of between close friends, so to speak? Apparently
no such comforting conclusions can be drawn.

In keeping with the sensitivity of his sex, Dr Pedram Salimpour, one of the
researchers, is not talking millimetres - or at least he was not yesterday
when all he would say is that the study was 'the biggest ever' of its kind.

But the secret will soon be out. He emphasised that the findings were
'statistically significant' and that the full extent of the damage would be
revealed to the International Society of Impotence Research in Amsterdam
next month.

The tobacco industry may insist that this pioneering research does not stand
up, but the scientific facts are against it.

The effects of smoking on the penis is much the same as that on the heart.
It damages blood vessels, inhibiting blood flow. In turn, this effects
elastin, the magical substance which hold the key to what is widely regarded
as the ultimate measure of manhood - the ability to have an erection.

Elastin, Salimpour explained, is like a rubber band that you stretch. This
is what your penis does - it stretches in response to blood flow. Smoking
damages its ability to do that, and so what you finish up with is a
structure that will no longer stretch. What the researchers have yet to
establish is how long smoking takes to damage a man's erectile power.

This will require further studies, said Salimpour, but it seems the penis
may be even more susceptible to smoking-induced damage than the heart.

He explained: 'The blood vessels in the penis are much smaller - one
millimetre in diameter compared with 1.5mm in the heart.'

Smoking men might be better off asking themselves that, if smoking is
affecting the size of their penises, what is it doing to their hearts?
Impotence is also now emerging as a possible early warning of heart disease.

The vast majority of men have a penis between five and seven inches long
when erect. Most would shudder at the idea of losing as much as a centimetre
and will not be reassured by the claim that penis size is no more a measure
of manhood, sexual capacity or the ability to please a partner than is the
size of a man's foot.

And all you non-smokers. This is no time for premature elation. There is
bound to be a further study on the effects of passive smoking.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett