What does the future hold for Diapers?

[wetmick]

I was thinking...

(In the UK) When *normal* people are having a conversation/joke about adult diapers they usually refer to Tena Pants as the offending item. (Similar to Depends Pull-Ups for our international friends)

If I goto the local chemist or supermarket my eyes cannot help but stray and stare at the incontinence products on offer and all I ever see in the adult sized section are of the Pull-Up style.

As you may or may not know Pull-Ups are crap, they don't fit/work/feel comfortable or hold more than 5ml of pee... the list goes on, however the one thing they succesfuly reliably do is leak... lots!

Due to the sheer national coverage of these products I can't but help think there must be a huge demand... but why?

Well one would assume that Pull-Up style diapers have some sort of amasing feature over traditional disposable diapers... which, amasingly they do! They allow *normal* people to go to the toilet when they want as opposed to being "locked" into a diaper and having to use it in a concious non-accidental manner.

But at what cost? Well Pull-Ups may be the future of the semi social acceptance of diapers but they are highly inconvenient.
Manufacturers of these products often boast that the Pull-Up is discreet and may be swiftly and conveniently removed by simply tearing the sides.

Ok, so if I was a *normal* person who had accidentally wet there Pull-Up
I would find a "restroom" hopefully before the Pull-Up decides to leak (wheres the discression in leaking?) I would then have to drop my trousers, conveniently tear away the Pull-Up, clean myself and then oh no, whats this? Oh its only something the manufacturer didn't think about... I'd now have to begin taking my shoes off and then proceed to getting half naked in a dirty public toilet stall with nowhere to even hang my trousers... how convenient is that??

If you too thought not very, then give yourself a point.

Take the above scenario but instead of being a *normal* person Im my very own perverted self with a bladder weakened through sheer determination and effort and a highly absorbent fairly discreet traditional style diaper. I would semi conciously wet myself, then carry on doing what I was doing, then later I might wet myself again, at which point I could get up and go for a leisurly stroll to a nice clean restroom (no urgency to get to any old restroom) When I get there I'd non-inconveniently remove my diaper via the sticky tabs, clean myself then replace the diaper whilst comfortably sitting on the toilet seat... not realy inconvenient is it.

So instead of shops filling there shelfs with inferior Pull-Ups wouldn't the shops be better stocking quality diapers, Tena also produce superior quality traditional diapers...

I think the world needs reminding about what realy is and realy isn't inconvenient.

I'm sure there are people out there who would disagree with me but all Pull-Ups in UK stores should be replaced with proper diapers...
Just because you occasionaly have to conciously wet yourself doesn'tt mean your going to become incontinent, excellent bladder control can still be practised if not greatly improved upon.

I wish people wouldn't be so pig headed about the feeling of dignity regarding diapers and concious wettings, afterall if you are *normal* and have a form of bladder weakness then surely you'd want to get rid of it ASAP and the best form of bladder control and strengthening exercise is to practise how long you can hold your pee and how clenched you can keep your bladder muscles. Sure you can sit on the toilet and see how long you can hold off though that in itself is inconvenient. You can't get the urge to pee and think Oh i'll see how long I can hold it whilst sitting on the sofa because chances are if you do that you will wet yourself on the way to the toilet but with a proper diaper the *normal* person could hold there bladder aslong as humanly possible where ever they are with the reassurance that if they do "flood" theres something substantial in place to deal with it!

What does the future hold for real QUALITY diapers?

Sorry to have wasted your time with my pointless ranting and opinions,
feel free to comment.

[Loci]

Hmm... a really good questions... which is often discussed in my regular Adult Baby board... there will be less diapers with foil outside but cottonlike cover... diapers will get thinner over time...
As an adult baby a pull up diaper is out of question as it must be a real diaper. And even there are huge differences between the countries. In the US Bambinos seem to be the favorite Adult Baby diapers because they are cute and can hold "much". In Germany there are no such diapers especially for Adult Babies (prude US seems to me more open to fetisch aspects than good old germany :wink: ) but the power of Bambinos is at the very... very lower end of diapers you can buy in Germany. At the moment my favorites are Attends 10L which can take up nearly 4 liters (with a standardized test... it's about 1.5 liters while really using it).

[Gee2]

If you look how far baby diapers have come you can see how far behind adult diapers are. adult diapers I think were mainly for old people that didnt move around a lot or bedridden.
If you look at the number of people that actually reported bladder problems the need is there for a quality diaper. baby diapers are made to keep up with very active toddlers and can hold swimming pools.
pretty much any diaper you buy in the store over the counter is going to suck. i once got a couple of attends diapers that were used at an actual hospital and the plastic on these were almost as thick as plastic pants. they were so thick I could barely move in it and when i filled it and took it off it didnt look like I even peed in it.
the good diapers are out there, the public just doesnt have very good access to them. attends makes an extended wear diaper that is great but you cant just walk in and buy them you have to mail order them. not good for privacy heh?
as a tip in the united states there are 2nd hand stores called value village/goodwill/ st vincent dpaul and a couple others. I go to these places because people donate tons of adult diapers that were left over from old relatives. you get quality diapers for a third of the cost. I just got 48 attends for 5.99. and they were not the ones you buy over the counter because they come in different packaging.
whats cool is nobody cares or thinks twice when I buy them and my privacy is safe and it saves me tons of money.

I have wore pullups and I usually wear two or three at a time so I can remove the wet one and pullup the others. I do this with diapers also I put on two so when one is wet I dont have to lay down any where i just pull down the outer diaper to dispose of the inner.

[wetmick]

The root of the annoyance for me is more so the fact that I like to wear proper diapers and I can get them but its not exactly easy.

I wear Kendall Lille Supreme Extra if im wearing at night time (very thick 3000ml sales figures circa 1800ml real figures) and Lille Classic Extra if I want to go out diapered in the day time (2200ml sales ~ 1100ml real).

I can get them from a local "disabled shop" (millercare.co.uk) and they are very cheap for such high quality diapers you could almost say there "industrial" (I've tried lots of brands and these are by far superior quality for cash when compared to standard Attends etc that are available in one or two chemists) The Supremes cost £13.50 for 28 and the Classics £11.00 for 28... sounds great... but there is a catch, my local branch is at the end of the street where a couple of very good friends live (which makes me more paranoid as they arn't the sort of friends that would "let sleeping dogs lay" or so to speak).

I could get a train and a bicycle (cheaper than what it costs in petrol on the motorbike) to a nearby town that also has a millercare branch, but as sods law would have it I also know somebody who lives on the same street... Then just as I pluck up the courage to walk into the store I get greeted with the super overly helpfull staff who don't give you chance to have a good ol' browse before buying and if you dare ask something like size or absorbancy they bring out the catalouge and start with the specs like how big/absorbent/tapes is it for day/night etc (an AB's wet dream~shame Im about as far from AB scene as humanly possible because I'm realy no into the whole baby association thing... I prefer a view more that a diaper is a device for punishment and psychological torture aswell as being a huge emotional comfort) though at the end of the day the staff are only there to help, after youve overcome the all of the embarassment and your heart stops pounding you've got to pay for them - diapers are tax exempt in the UK so they issue an invoice... which requires an address - this is no biggie though as you can supply a false name and address (unless you want to claim your 30p of tax back)...

Wouldn't it be so much easier if you could just walk into Tesco, stare at a selection of Kendall's, Tena ("Slips" only) Attends etc etc go self service checkout and not have to communicate with another living soul?

Oh, I could order online but where I live theres no postal service and the place that deliveries are sent to would more than likley open it by accident.

We should probaly start some sort of Global Anti Pull-Ups campaign and call it the Global Anti Pull-Up Campaign!!! (if only we could get enough like minded people as crazy as me... we'd be bigger and better than Al Qaeda and we would proudly wear our diapers in our pants instead of on our heads!!!)

[wetmick]

One other consideration regards the technology used in baby diapers is that an active toddler weighs im guessing about 20kg if a toddler puts 500ml in the base of the diaper and then falls and lands on there bum theres only 20kg spread over an impact area of around 3.5" sq, meaning that if there is a good fiber-gel mix it should be "stiff" enough to allow the liquid content to shift away from the impact zone without leaking, if an adult weighs say 80kg and has say 1000ml under a 4.5" x 4.5" impact zone your looking at 3 times the weight on little over twice the surface are with twice the liquid content and in said scenario whilst sitting the diaper will leak more through the sheer pressures placed upon the gel/fiber than a lack of absorbancy throughout the overall product... think of it like holding a sponge soaked with water, if you apply the pressure of two fingers horizontaly across the centre then the majority of the water (providing your using a quality sponge) will move to the outer edges of the sponge if you were then to repeat but instead using the palm of your hand the water would flood out.

The problem with diapers is its a fine art of mixing weights, surface areas and the density of the celluar structure of the gelling compound... think of it like soft grapes and ripe grapes being crushed between your fingers, it is far easier to extract the juice from a soft grape... the problem the manufacturers have is that if they make a gel/fiber mix like that you end up with a huge solidified bulge in the diaper and as romantic as it sounds for all the fans of waddeling huge diapered butts it could be rather inconvenient for the manufacturer aswell as the end user... im no physician but im guessing that long periods of sitting on the bulge would take weight off the bum cheeks and put more pressure on the base of the spine potentially causing people back problems, If I was a manufacturer I would rather go for a softer mixture that leaks once in a while rather than being sued for because of people either developing back problems or falling off chairs because of the "opposite of the weeble effect" of such a dense bulge under ones bum (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbP6zUcQ2Tw)

I appologise for my crude maths and even cruder logic... I failed at maths at school and drink my very own brew of fuzzy logic... but it all makes complete sense in my head.