But blue balls, as a malady, are indeed real. Symptoms include feeling as though you’ve “just been donkey-kicked in the testicles by an irate ass” at least per my friend Dan. “Doctors don’t call it blue balls, though. The closest medical term for what you describe would be “testicular vasocongestion.”
Let’s first take a step back and talk about regular-colored balls. When a guy becomes horny, the arteries that carry blood to his genitals get bigger (vasodilation) while the veins that carry blood away get smaller (vasoconstriction). Thanks to all that vasodilation, the testes engorge to about 20–50 percent larger than their usual size. When a guy cums, the constricted muscles relax and the additional fluids flow out from the genital area. Only then do the penis and testicles return to their normal size.
When the exact opposite happens no vasodilation, no vasoconstriction deoxygenated blood pools in the testicles. As a result, the scrotum may turn blue. They’re also known as “lover’s nuts,” “hot nuts,” “sad balls,” and “testicular terror.”
The most common condition that’s confused for blue balls is something called varicocele7 when veins become enlarged inside your scrotum — a la varicose veins in the leg. Varicocele can definitely be a pain in the sack. The treatment for that isn’t ejaculation it’s surgery.
Many men are a little too quick to self-diagnose blue balls. Some patients complain about blue balls, it’s not because they were having sex and didn’t ejaculate. Some of them have pain caused by infections; others have sexually transmitted diseases or epididymitis, inflammation of the coiled tube at the back of the testicle that stores and carries sperm.
