Comparing Treatment Options for Bladder Leaks: Pads vs. PeriCoach
You’re already running late for work when, halfway into your commute, you realize you didn’t restock your purse with bladder pads. “Great—and no time to stop by the pharmacy,” you think. You resign yourself to creating makeshift “pads” out of toilet paper or awkwardly asking any sympathetic female coworker you can find to spare a couple of pads to get you through the day.
This is an all-too-common scenario for women living with bladder leakage, known as urinary incontinence (UI). In a previous post, we compared how prescription drugs stack up against the PeriCoach Kegel exerciser for addressing the symptoms of bladder leakage. In this post, we’ll compare bladder pads with PeriCoach. Before we do, let’s revisit just how common bladder leakage is among women.
Bladder Leakage: A Problem for Millions of Women
The numbers are striking: Nearly one in three women will experience some form of UI in her life. Stress incontinence—leaking a few drops or a stream of urine when you laugh, cough, sneeze, or physically exert yourself—is the most common type.
UI does not discriminate by region, race, age, or fitness level—women in every corner of the world experience bladder leakage. While it’s more common in menopausal women and those who have been pregnant and given birth, it can also affect younger women who haven’t had children.
Many women turn to pads to deal with their bladder leakage. Yet, at best, this is a temporary solution. Pads don’t address the root of the problem, which, in many cases, is weakened pelvic floor muscles—more on that later.
First, let’s look at the cost of bladder pads and their impact on women’s daily lives.
Bladder Pads: Bulky, Costly, and Embarrassing
You might be surprised at how the cost of all those pads adds up over the course of a year. A U.S. study found that routine care costs for UI, which includes items and services like bladder pads and briefs, odor control products, laundry, and dry cleaning, cost women between $50 and $1,000 per year.1 Women with severe UI spend an average of $900 a year on routine care costs.1
The findings of an Australian study were similar and found that community-dwelling women spend $710 million ($387 per woman) every year on routine care costs.2
It goes without saying that bladder pads have their disadvantages, to which any woman who has ever used menstrual pads can attest. Pads are bulky and uncomfortable, they’re prone to trapping embarrassing odors, they’re inconvenient, and, as we’ve seen, they’re expensive.
So, what’s the alternative to bulky pads? Earlier, we mentioned that stress incontinence, caused by weakened pelvic floor muscles, is the leading cause of bladder leakage. What if women could ditch the bladder pads, slash their costs dramatically every year, and take control of their bladder function? This is where PeriCoach comes in.
Strengthening Your Pelvic Floor Muscles with PeriCoach
For women with stress incontinence, strengthening the pelvic floor muscles can provide significant relief from bladder leakage. It’s important to see your doctor to determine the cause of your bladder leakage since some forms of UI can be caused by something other than weak pelvic floor muscles. Urge incontinence, for example, is often caused by damage to the nerves of the bladder or damage to other parts of the nervous system.
PeriCoach was specifically designed to help women improve the muscles of the pelvic floor. An insertable incontinence biofeedback device that guides you through pelvic floor (Kegel) exercises, PeriCoach is fitted with three biofeedback sensors that detect the contraction of your pelvic floor muscles when you squeeze against the device.
PeriCoach then sends that information via Bluetooth to your smartphone, so you can see your muscles working in real-time. PeriCoach helps you improve pelvic floor muscle strength and control, and it enables you to track your progress over time.
You can feel confident that PeriCoach is safe and effective—the device is FDA-cleared, which means it has met stringent product safety requirements. A one-time investment at under U.S. $250, PeriCoach is significantly less costly than using bladder pads (which don’t address the root cause of the problem) indefinitely.
Learn more about PeriCoach and hear what real women are saying about this life-changing tool for improving pelvic floor strength.
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