If you're suffering from urinary incontinence bladder leakage or loss of bladder control
then sometimes you might find yourself needing some protection like a pad or
a depends. But unfortunately, if you're not wearing the right one
it can make for some really embarrassing accidents. I previously made a video on
reusable underwears that you can use for urinary incontinence which I'm a huge fan of but sometimes
they just don't hold enough for people who have really severe incontinence. I'm Dr. Rena Malik,
urologist and pelvic surgeon, welcome to my channel here we talk about all things
urology that includes urinary dysfunction sexual dysfunction kidney stones prostate issues you name
it we cover it so if you're new here welcome and if you enjoy what you see make sure you subscribe.
so in this video we're going to review a few different types of absorbent
products available for incontinence and specifically some products that you may not know
are available to you if you are finding yourself struggling with urinary incontinence you might be
the one in four women about 25 of women who suffer from urinary incontinence or men who suffer from
urinary incontinence after having prostate surgery or having neurologic problems or a number of other
issues that can cause accidents in men as well if you're suffering from this type of leakage there's
lots of products available to you there's pads and absorbent diapers there's also bed and chair
protection that you can use to cover these areas so you don't get urine leakage onto your furniture
or your bed sheets there are external urinary collection devices like condom catheters or
this thing called purewick which helps wick away urine from women that can help with collecting
urine and there's also specifically adapted clothing like we talked about before in our
video and certain types of swimwear today like i said we're going to focus on pads and diapers
how these products work is they are exactly like babies diapers they have a hydrophilic
layer inside of them that will attract all the urine and soak it up and keep it away from the
skin to keep your skin dry to prevent any skin breakdown and there's different types of products
you can buy typically if you have moderate incontinence which means that you're having
more than about an ounce of urine loss or you're leaking usually more than a few drops with every
accident then you want to use a pad and if you're having severe incontinence where you're having a
flood or definitely more than a few drops you may want to consider adult diapers and the
reason being is these tend to fit more snuggly and can hold more volume of urine did you know
however that not everyone uses the right type of pad in fact one in four women are using sanitary
napkins or pads that are used for menstruation for urinary incontinence and that is not a good idea
also 17 percent of women who use incontinence products are using things like tissue paper or
just a towel and these are usually not adequate for soaking up urine the reason you want to avoid
menstrual pads for urinary incontinence is because they're not designed to hold that amount of fluid
they won't hold as much which means you'll have more accidents and more urine leaking all on your
clothes and on your skin and also these other types of things like tissue papers and towels
again they're not gonna wick away that urine away from your skin and help keep your skin clean
and dry you may notice if you're suffering from incontinence that sometimes your skin gets kind
of red and irritated what i recommend for people is using like baby butt cream seriously go to the
store and get the big thing of destin that they use for babies bottoms it works great to prevent
urine from getting onto your skin and causing irritation you can also use vaseline and you can
buy more fancy types of creams but these are super cheap and available everywhere also you may hate
the smell of urine and you might get so sick of smelling that every time you change your pad
the one thing that people find that they do when they're suffering from leakage is they
don't drink enough because they're worried about having more leakage but this makes your urine
more concentrated more dark yellow and then it also makes it have a really strong odor
so trying to avoid drinking too little is actually going to help prevent that odor so
the first company we're going to talk about today as far as absorbent products is attends a tens is
a company that's completely online based and so they offer incontinence products you purchase them
online they mail them to you and they do have a variety of different options when you go on their
website you can look at pads based on how severe your incontinence is what your mobility is like
what your gender is this is the attends discrete bladder control pad and you can see that they have
a number of absorbencies ranging from one to six every product that i review here today
has some sort of proprietary technology that guards against odor and wicks away the urine to
keep you completely dry so i'm not going to go into the specific details about that but we're
going to test their most absorbent product to make sure that it really holds up to the test
so they had again they have women's products and they also have male guards these are actually
shaped differently because obviously male anatomy is different and you're gonna leak at a different
area in your underwear than women would leak and so these are specifically for men so i strongly
encourage men to use products specifically designed for them you can get these products
online and if you go on their website and put in your zip code you can find out where you can
get it near your home as well they are also typically available in medical supply stores
today we're going to review the attend shaped pad super which is the heavy absorbency
and we'll test this shortly it says that it holds about 38 ounces this is the attends super
pad and you can see they have these little um leak guards it's quite big actually it's a very big pad
so that it can collect lots of urine leakage and we'll start with a cup of fluid
so here you can see that we have a cup of fluid so here we've got a cup of yellow colored fluid
all right that's quite a bit of fluid let's give it a second
okay so it's been about 30 seconds to a minute it's starting to dry up actually quite a bit
nothing leaked through and the back side is so it's only leaking because i got it outside
of the leak guard here but nothing leaked through so it held that pretty well but it is quite heavy
and quite big and you can see the color on the back here turned blue
to let you know that it's uh it's damp if you were not sure like if you had a caretaker
they could tell that it needs to be changed the other great thing about attends is they do
have a donation project where they donate to adult seniors who have incontinence needs and throughout
the covid pandemic they have donated nearly 200 000 products to seniors in need the next
product i'm actually really excited about because i had not heard of them before
they are made completely in the united states and they are carbon neutral using post-consumer
recycled packaging so they're also trying to do well by the environment they have a number
of different options available for you to use and the greatest part about it is you get your first
box for free as a trial and then after that you can join a subscription model which is really
great and the pricing is pretty reasonable as well check out the link below if you want to
check it out make sure if you're you mention any of the products i talk about today check out the
links in the description so because market has a number of different products and here you can see
they have different types of absorbencies and you can see right here that tells you how much
this particular pad can hold this can hold about one cup and on the back of this it actually tells
you the ingredients which is great because i see a lot of these products on the market don't tell
you what's in them so this one says it's made of polypropylene and polyethylene as the back sheet
and there is polyacrylate and cellulose ecf fluff and these are completely latex free and there's no
optical brightener there's no perfumes no lotions and it's made completely without any latex as i
mentioned before and it also tells you your shelf life so overall i really like that so here's the
moderate the maximum has a two cup absorbency and the overnight has a three cup absorbency
and so they also have their bladder control underwear which you can see right here and these
tend to pull on and off just like underwear and they have these tearaway side panels which many
of them do their sizing is based on your waist size and they come in obviously beige coloring and
very interesting this says it's a hundred percent recyclable the maximum holds up to four cups
here and the overnight holds up to six cups right there so we'll test out the overnight one
this is the because overnight plus bladder control underwear this is actually very soft here
very elastic as it should be and so we're going to flip it inside out to do our test here
so this has these again these elastic things to keep the urine from coming out
so I've got about two cups of urine here or fluid I've got two cups of fluid here
so to let you know most people if you look here two cups is about 500 ml of fluid most
people's bladder capacity is somewhere between 300 and 600 ml and so yes someone, in theory,
could lose quite a bit of volume if they're leaking all night long
and so this is an overnight diaper, okay and so it's actually quite dry
already and only the wetness is just on the edges this is shockingly dry
and nothing has leaked through but it is again quite heavy but i have to say i'm pretty impressed
with the product after two cups i mean that's a ton of leakage and it's holding up quite nicely
the other really thing here you can see it says i'm green and that's because it's made from
polyethylene that's actually produced from sugar cane and polyethylene is the material that's used
to help prevent the urine from leaking out of the diaper on the back side and also sometimes on top
to allow the urine to soak through to get into that absorbent core and this is actually produced
in their company using raw sugar canes they're not using fossil fuels to make the polyethylene
which allows them to have this carbon neutral or use less carbon to produce their product
the next product that we're going to discuss is prevail incontinence products this company has
been doing incontinence for a long time they have a lot of dedicated support their website is very
informative on a lot of the technology that goes into these products they have products for men
as well like here and in on the products there's no latex and on the back here they have a phone
number for 24 hours seven day a week nurse that can help you with any questions you might have so
they come in multiple different absorbencies again a male guard so they have these women's daily
pads as well and they again have their absorbency noted right on the packaging and lastly they have
daily underwear for both women and men and they have their little sizing chart here and if you
go on their website you can also get some free samples which is always great so i would recommend
to anybody who's looking for incontinence products please look for free samples see what you need go
on their website and make sure that you're getting the product that's right for you okay this is the
prevail daily underwear for men and so again soft up here this one's not an overnight so it's not
going to hold quite as much as the last one we tested but again very stretchy and nice feels a
little bit more plasticky i would say than the because market ones but let's test it out all
right for this one i'm gonna do a cup and a half so for this one i'm gonna do a cup and a half
okay that's a lot of incontinence let's give it a second to soak it up
getting dry
so this blue part is definitely very very dry and this white part is taking some time to dry
up and then there's nothing leaking or going through and yeah very very dry on the outside
as well I hope you all found this helpful please comment below if there are specific
topics that you want to learn about so I can make videos just for you I'm Dr. Rena Malik,
as always remember to take care of yourself because you're worth it