The individual afflicted with genital retraction syndrome believes that his or her genitals (or in the case of women, breasts and/or genitals) are retracting into the body. Such a belief would be frightening enough, but local tradition adds the warning that such an occurrence is usually fatal.
If no one is around to help hold onto his penis, the individual may use mechanical devices to keep the penis from retracting, including cords, chopsticks, clamps, or small weights. Episodes of GRS may strike the same indvidual repeatedly, and epidemics of GRS have been noted, most famously the great koro epidemic in Singapore in 1967.
Case studies have not typically reported actual shrinkage of penes, and the majority of damage to the individuals has resulted from over-enthusiastic attempts to restrain the penis from retracting.
The Chinese version is situated within a larger set of concerns about the balance between male and female energies (yang and yin) within the human body. Chinese medicine sees most illnesses as symptoms of imbalance rather than as discrete entities. The term suo yang, literally translate as "shrinking penis", and represent not so much a disease as a symptom of extremely deficient yang. Thus it makes sense within the system for extreme cold (very yin) to overpower the yang in a vulnerable man and cause his penis (the symbol of his yang) to retract
