Most men don’t think beyond boxers or briefs when it comes to their underwear—but you should.
When it comes to underwear, most men think in binary terms: the classic boxers versus briefs debate, with a lot of guys dodging by wearing boxer-briefs for the best of both worlds. As with a lot of male clothing choices, there’s a traditional and gender-defined lack of interest in anything beyond sheer utility. Even men who do put some extra thought into what they’re wearing concentrate mainly on style and fabric.
But your underwear could be doing more. Specifically, your underwear could be offering support to your scrotum, that pouch of skin that contains your testicles. Sure, it’s designed to hang loose, but that can lead to a wide variety of discomforts and unhappiness—things you can avoid by wearing underwear that incorporates some scrotal support into its design. There are a lot of reasons why this kind of “pouch” underwear is a good idea for most guys.
First and foremost, pouch-style underwear for men is a step up in terms of comfort. As noted by Fast Company, it’s safe to think of these pouches as a “bra for your balls,” and they have the same general purpose—to support a part of the anatomy that normally swings freely. This can have a transformative effect on how you feel as you walk around, especially if you’re an older dude (more on that below).
Another way underwear with some scrotal support makes you more comfortable is the way the design lifts and separates your bits. Instead of getting sweaty trapped in there with your hairy thighs, which can lead to chafing, scrotal support underwear separates everything, improving ventilation in your bathing suit area. This can only be a good thing.
If you’re an active guy who plays a lot of sports, you’re basically always at risk of a testicular injury. There’s a reason a lot of sports leagues and schools require the use of a protective “cup” when playing sports—it’s easy to experience trauma to the scrotal area when people are kicking and running and throwing things around at high speed.
If you’re unlucky enough to experience any sort of bruising or injury to your testicles (or worse), wearing supportive underwear with a pouch design can speed up your recovery because it protects your scrotum from further irritation, and allows the muscles to relax and heal by supporting them.
If you’re not a guy of a certain age, you may not be aware that as you get older, your scrotum tends to sag. The whole point of the scrotum is to keep the testicles outside the body where they can regulate their temperature a bit more easily, and the body naturally raises and lowers your testicles in response to ambient temperature and other factors (known as the cremasteric reflex). As we get older, our skin loses that youthful elasticity, and as a result the scrotum can hang down lower than it used to—sometimes dramatically so. This means that it is entirely possible for older men (for the most part) to accidentally sit on their own testicles. It’s usually not a serious injury, but it’s one most people would prefer to avoid, and underwear that corrals your sagging scrotum goes a long way toward preventing that sort of injury.
Guys are lucky to have so many ways their testicles can cause them dismay and anxiety, including a varicocele, which is a swollen blood vessel in the scrotum. Many varicoceles have zero symptoms, but they do sometimes cause pain and discomfort. If the pain is bad enough, surgery is the only option; but if it’s a less-urgent discomfort, underwear with built-in scrotal support can help lessen pain by taking stress off the affected testicle.
