According to a recently published study, the average size of the male penis has increased significantly in the last 29 years. Which may sound like great news, but what does it really mean?

In a new video on her YouTube channel, urologist and sex educator Dr. Rena Malik talks about new discoveries.

“This is actually quite surprising, because over the year we’ve seen a drop in average testosterone levels, more testicular tumors and more genital defects in newborns,” she says, according to Men’s Health.

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“We’ve also seen that sperm counts are decreasing around the world. It would be expected that along with all these changes, there may also be real changes in the visual appearance of the genitals.”

This new study was actually a systematic review of a large number of studies that measured the length of a stretched penis. Photo: iStock.

She explains that this new study was actually a systematic review of a large number of studies that measured penile length (a good indicator of erectile length) of about 40,000 participants and erectile length of about 18,000.

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In the 64 studies that covered the length of a stretched penis, measurements ranged from 3.5 to 6.9 inches, with an average length of 5.1 inches.

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Of the 24 studies that looked at erect penises, the length ranged from 3.7 to 6.6 inches, with an average of 5.5 inches.

“When they looked at the numbers over a decade, they found that the length of the stretched penis didn’t change over time,” Malik continues.

“However, when they looked at length in an upright position over a decade, they found it increased by 24 percent, from 4.8 inches to 6 inches.”

But this does not necessarily mean that men now have bigger erections than in the past.

Malik breaks down some of the data from the review and finds that men who achieved erections via intracavernosal injection (as opposed to spontaneous erections) were more likely to see this increase.

But the team took that into account in their research. It also suggests that the conclusion of the study may be that a stretched penis is not an accurate enough measure of size for all demographics.

For example, in many older men the stretched length may exceed the erect length due to increased elasticity of the penile tissue.

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This does not necessarily mean that men now have bigger erections than in the past. Photo: Andrii Zastrozhnov

But what actually causes this increase in the size of the erect penis? Researchers speculate that this may be because boys go through puberty earlier, possibly due to external factors like pesticides that can affect our hormones.

“It’s really unusual to see such a dramatic change in such a short period of time,” says Malik.

“Ultimately, we have to be aware of what we put into the environment, what we put in our bodies, what we eat and what we are exposed to.”