Tens Experimenting

[agapoulo]

Terryfighter I don't really get the Cardinal reference, but wrt the rest you can check any one of the anatomy resources widely available on the net, they will provide far better illustrations than I can.

In a nutshell you are trying to locate one of the electrodes where you feel maximum tension when you are contracting your external urethral sphincter. The other would be somewhere above and to the side of the tailbone. Check Wikipedia for a good drawing explaining pudendal nerve location.

It's probably better you experiment further rather than simply try to reproduce what I did, since my results are very imperfect. This way we can all advance the level of knowledge for this group.

[wetman]

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provide a diagram?

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Henry Gray's "Anatomy" is your friend.

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I don't really get the Cardinal reference,

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Reading Latin.

[Eir]

Terryfighter I don't really get the Cardinal reference, but wrt the rest you can check any one of the anatomy resources widely available on the net, they will provide far better illustrations than I can.

In a nutshell you are trying to locate one of the electrodes where you feel maximum tension when you are contracting your external urethral sphincter. The other would be somewhere above and to the side of the tailbone. Check Wikipedia for a good drawing explaining pudendal nerve location.

It's probably better you experiment further rather than simply try to reproduce what I did, since my results are very imperfect. This way we can all advance the level of knowledge for this group.

Cardinals are religious offiicials who among other things, wear red and speak Latin.

[Eir]

Last night I experimented with the TENS unit. I placed one channel on the lower left and lower right abdomen, another set from the perineum to the lower abdomen. It made it easier to urinate, and a little harder to hold, temporarily. But it was marginal.

[Bettypooh]

I haven't gotten back to this yet I want at least one full day to recover should my already tenuous bladder control become more adversely affected. To terryfighter, try moving the electrode pads a bit. In my one-time experience I did find exact placement mattered a lot.

Bettypooh

[Eir]

Betty, I have tried another circuit connecting my lower right abdomin to my lower right back, by the tail bone, and from my lower left abdomin to my lower left back. It made it difficult to hold. I felt an increase in urgency as I charged up to 17 mA. This is a comfortable level for me. I have a feeling tailbone area to perinium area would be more effective, but cannot quite reach it, need longer electrodes. My goals are not similar to those who seek incontinence. As I have been trained to hold it in sight of a urinal, in the presence of others!

[agapoulo]

Some more experimenting over the holidays, unfortunately not much success. I however found a very interesting document about blocking external urethral sphincter activity via electrical stimulation. The probes they use are transcutaneous and it's on cats, but it does give some hints re. proper frequencies, signal shapes etc.

http://nnr.sagepub.com/content/23/6/615.full.pdf

PubMed searches about pudendal nerve electrostimulation look promising.

[wetman]

That sounds exactly like what terryfighter could do with if he cant pee at the urinal. Press a button and go. But then, by the time that is out of the animal lab and into practice, he'll probably have solved the problem anyway...

[Eir]

That sounds exactly like what terryfighter could do with if he cant pee at the urinal. Press a button and go. But then, by the time that is out of the animal lab and into practice, he'll probably have solved the problem anyway...

Sort of. It is the internal sphincter that is not under conscious control. If anyone figures that one out, I will let you diaper me on national televesion, j/k. The external sphincter is the muscle we use to hold. It would be like having a garden faucet wide open, but having your water turned off, nothing comes out.

[Eir]

That sounds exactly like what terryfighter could do with if he cant pee at the urinal. Press a button and go. But then, by the time that is out of the animal lab and into practice, he'll probably have solved the problem anyway...

Persons with a suprasacral spinal cord injury cannot empty their bladder voluntarily. Bladder emptying can be restored by intermittent electrical stimulation of the sacral nerve roots (SR) to cause bladder contraction. However, this therapy requires sensory nerve transection to prevent dyssynergic contraction of the external urethral sphincter (EUS). Stimulation of the compound pudendal nerve trunk (PN) activates spinal micturition circuitry, leading to a reflex bladder contraction without a reflex EUS contraction. The present study determined if PN stimulation could produce bladder emptying without nerve transection in cats anesthetized with α-chloralose. With all nerves intact, intermittent PN stimulation emptied the bladder (64 ± 14% of initial volume, n = 37 across six cats) more effectively than either distention-evoked micturition (40 ± 19%, p < 0.001, n = 27 across six cats) or bilateral intermittent SR stimulation (25 ± 23%, p < 0.005, n = 4 across two cats). After bilateral transection of the nerves innervating the urethral sphincter, intermittent SR stimulation voided 79 ± 17% (n = 12 across three cats), comparable to clinical results obtained with SR stimulation. Voiding via intermittent PN stimulation did not increase after neurotomy (p > 0.10), indicating that PN stimulation was not limited by bladder–sphincter dyssynergia. Intermittent PN stimulation holds promise for restoring bladder emptying following spinal injury without requiring nerve transection.

Was this your abstract? I also saw tests on dogs and male rabbits, neither of which are primates. The test is to restore bladder emptying following spinal injury. It also uses the external urethral sphincter. I am curious what effect this has on the internal urethral sphincter. The malfunction of the internal urethral sphincter (slamming shut) due to a perceived threat in a public restroom caused by the presence of others is what causes paruresis. It is subconscious. I have retrained myself to be able to relieve myself standing in a stall, even in busy restrooms. I cannot deal with my privacy being violated visually. I have successfully used urinals on a few occasions, but have not been able to replicate these occurances... Hopefully this easy button will work for me. Chances are by the time they test this on Chimpanzees, I may already be paruresis free. The reason why norms can have wetting accidents is because their internal sphincters automatically open in response to pressure. In most cases, they are able to close the perineum in order to prevent wetness, and release until a more appropriate time. Come to think of it, I have never had a wetting accident since I have had this disorder. I have had it since I was eight. I don't remember wetting my pants as a child, either. I wet the bed at night, until I was in Junior High. I would be happy to be a pee mortal if it meant no longer having this affliction! In any event, when this is cleared for human trials, it would be fun to have a button on my stomache that says Mr. Soggy britches, that would cause subcutaneous electrodes to activate and release the external sphincter. This button would make a norm have an accident. If I ever become a norm, this would be the device my "babysitter" sometime down the road would use to keep me in diapers!!!!!

[agapoulo]

It doesn't work yet, but the experimentation is very time consuming since electrode placement seems to matter a lot, effect takes a while (more like facilitating than triggering so far). Also, individual anatomical differences make reproducing experiments amongst such a small group somewhat tricky.

If you want to see technical, start reading some uropharmacology textbooks and journals :-)

There are pharmacological techniques ranging from botox to some psychiatric and cardiovascular medications that do work, but the hazards and (other) side effects are pretty bad, it would be irresponsible to encourage their usage knowing they can get someone in real trouble. As far as I know, there is no magic pill yet.

[Creepymouse]

I was thinking over the weekend and came up with a possible improvement - albeit one that requires conditioning. I've seen anecdotal experiments where the 'subject' used a physical cue every time he used the restroom normally, and after a while if he used the cue outside of the restroom he found it almost impossible to avoid wetting himself.

What if it were possible to place the electrodes in a comfortable position, whether directly affecting the bladder control nerves or not, but most likely near the pubic area. Either using a sensor of some sort or manual activation, activate the unit whenever the subject is urinating in a comfortable environment - i.e. the desired outcome. After a period of time (perhaps a week to a month?) of consistent conditioning, it seems likely that applying the former reward stimulus would now cause voiding or at least make it very easy to do so.

Perhaps it would even make it easier for pauresis patients? I haven't done any real research on the matter, but if I understand Terry correctly, it is a learned response wherein the patient's subconscious doesn't recognize public restrooms as safe, but he can void normally in his own home. If conditioning when at home, and applying the same stimuli in a public restroom, wouldn't it likely offer at least some degree of improvement?

Seems to me this requires more research. It would be great if I had any way to reverse engineer a TENS unit.

[Eir]

^I love you for understanding something about shy bladder. Yes, it is a learned response. Classical conditioning should affect paruresis. It should also help those of you who want to get soggy britches in public!

In theory, TENS could be used to classically condition a paruretic, (or someone with a mindblock to wetting diapers) to accept that urinating in public is safe.

The only problem with using TENS in such a fashion is that it would be very difficult to keep those wascally leeds in place en route to a restroom. there are implantible leeds, but that is beyond my means at the moment. A way around this (after successful conditioning at home) would be applying the leeds in a booth. When patient successfully urinates in booth, the TENS is activated. I could try anchoring the condition of being able to urinate to the sensation of the leads gently pulsing my back or shoulders, a pleasurable sensation. I already know from experience that a day of fluid loading can rapidly cause an anchor to form, if formed correctly. Wait. I have my TENS, I will experiment with this new anchor now. I will let you all know how this works

[Creepymouse]

Cool, thanks Terry. I understand a little, because I struggle just a bit in crowded restrooms. I have the same response in certain circumstances while diapered, just not all the time.

What I imagined was a self-contained, purpose built device for this idea, or perhaps a purpose-built electrode would be good enough. I'm not an engineer, so I'm not entirely certain how it would work, though.

A device for pauresis rather than diaper training would possibly be very simple, I don't know why it wouldn't work. Have you ever licked a 9v battery? It produces a mild tingle on the tongue. The TENS unit I've handled was smaller than a deck of playing cards, running on a 9V battery. It had several settings and three modes, so I know the simplest form could be somewhat smaller. In addition, a 9V battery lasts a LONG time in that unit, so the bulk of the 9V could be reduced in several ways, depending on how much voltage is actually required for the e-stim to provide any sensation at all. It seems like a tiny circuitboard and a few coin cells might possibly be all that is required for the thing to work. It seems like it could be the size of a small pocket flashlight: If they can make tazers that small, surely a small e-stim would be feasible.

==		   Electrodes, flush mounted to the 'business end' of a flashlight sized device.

CB 		  Circuitboard with contacts to electrodes and all electronics required for e-stim

^^		   9V battery terminal

||		   9V battery

-- 		   Activator button, turns on the e-stim for 1-2 seconds

For diaper training, I imagined a sticky pad, like the 'wash and reuse' lint rollers or something like that. Something that would adhere to the skin but can also be repositioned, washed, et cetera. Two electrodes built into that, very similar to a standard TENS electrode but easy to place and forget about. I don't know how much miniaturization could be done and still get a reasonable amount of charge, but a rechargable battery would be great, with either a wireless remote or a button on the device. If it could all be included in the electrode 'package' I'm imagining something about the shape and size of a sleep mask to cover the eyes? It would require shaved pubes I think, at least as I imagine it.

Hmm... that electronics class I'm taking may be more useful than I thought. I am investigating further...

[wetman]

Creepymouse, the supply voltage does not limit the output voltage of a circuit, just think of the little emergency chargers for mobiles that run on a single AA cell of 1.5V, yet provide 5V output to charge your unit; power inverters that provide mains voltage (240V here where I live) from a 12V car battery; or the step up circuit of an old CRT screen: takes in 240V and puts out up to 30,000V.

9V PP3/ LR61 batteries are just used because they're common and inexpensive.

The output of a TENS unit will provide a quite high voltage to get over the skin resistance, but it will also work on a high frequency to limit the depth of the effect; furthermore there is a current limiting circuit in there as well. I'm sure you know that you can take thousands of volts from a spark after walking over a plastic carpet and that touching a live mains wire at even 110V might kill you; a Van de Graaf generator will make your hair stand on end with a million volts with no harm. It's current flow and the penetration depth that has to be limited, if you are unfamiliar with these, please do read up on it before you design a circuit yourself.

Have a look at this to get an idea what some manufacturers have already done in the way of miniaturisation. Similar units are available for very little money and could probably be misused for your purpose.

Good luck, and play safe!

[Creepymouse]

Yeah, I wasn't just gonna jump in. And I'm quite well aware of transformers and such, just not learned in their precise uses yet. There is a forum I checked out that has a variety of DIY and commercial solutions for electrostim of all sorts.

[Eir]

@ Creepymouse and Wetman. Sounds like you are making an interesting device. Your back pads should hold the electrodes in place. Assuming that you can build this thing safely what is your working theory. Are you trying to use electric stimulation to cause the sphincters to open or are you building a positive award device. Like, when you wet your diapers, the electrodes cause a gentle massaging sensation; rewording you for wetting, and causing you to relax more deeply until you are able to completely void. The Reptilian brain, or the R complex is what handles things like riding a bicycle, speed typing and also urination. When you break it down, this area of the brain is no smarter than Pavlov's dog. This is why it is possible to train humans. Pavlov fed his dogs at fixed intervals. The dogs salivated right before eating. One day Pavlov rang a bell right before he fed the dogs, and he did this at each feeding. Eventually, hearing the bell was enough to make the dogs salivate.

This is how I see your defice working: You are hanging out in your diapered butt, and are wearing this device. (the stimulator). A trusted AB friend makes you load up on fluids. Soon you have a bladder that feels like it is about to burst. If you are able to use your diapers, your friend activates the device, which causes a gentle massaging sensation, rewarding you for using your diaper. Again you are forced to fluid load, and when you feel the need to pee in your diapers, if you are able to release, your friend activates the device, which causes a warm massaging senation, which is your reward. This is done several more times. You fluid load, and when you feel the need to urinate, you release it into your diaper. Just like Pavlov's dogs who had to salivate in order to eat, you have to relax deeply enough to wet a diaper. This is how Pavlov proved his experiment. He rang the bell between feeding periods, the dogs came running, and salivated, they were presumably fed at the next interval (I hope). Eventually, you should reach a point where the activation of the device, causes you to wet your diapers. It is called classical conditioning, let me know if you are interested. Technically, you can condition yourself but it is harder as you must remember to activate the reward button.

[wetman]

Hello Terryfighter,

I wasn't going to actually build a device, I'm just theorising. And I pee easily anyway, so it wouldn't be all that useful to me.

But one could easily replace the 'trusted friend' with the remote by triggering the device if and when you wet. You'd need a couple of (ideally gold plated and teflon mounted) electrodes and a few electronic bits to detect a current flow or decrease in resistance. then trigger your reward device of choice. I'd also incorporate a little dead time between rewards; 20 minutes will surely do. Otherwise it might get triggered by the receptor not getting dry in between wettings. That is also the reason for using teflon mounted gold electrodes: they will not corrode or cause skin irritation, and teflon does not retain wetness, so as soon as the urine has run off, it will register as dry again. The detection could be done with an LM339 op amp and the dead time bit with NE555. I think the 555 can output enough to switch a small relay; connect at will. All should fit together into a box the size of a pack of cigarettes, including a 9V battery: Bob's your uncle.

Happy soldering.

[Creepymouse]

I think you both follow what I was originally thinking, at least for diaper training. (The story I've stolen from for the concept of "electronic-assisted diaper training" is attached. Starting on page 11 it has a great description of a very complex EADT program for their customers.) While I think that a pleasurable reward would hasten the training, my thought was simply to use the e-stim as a unique trigger sensation that wouldn't likely be felt in any other context. Another thread here on DD wrote of an experiment training with a phone ringtone when using the toilet and playing back that ringtone in order to cause wetting, which could allow the user to run across the same stimulus in another context by accident.

I have thought quite a long time about some sort of reliable way to detect when the trainee is wetting, without false-positives from lingering wetness. I'm not sure I can picture what Wetman suggested for a sensor. My most recent thought on the matter was some sort of shroud around the electrodes, the trouble is making sure there is a reliable way for any fluid remaining to exit the sensor. Maybe I'm over thinking it. Most of the sensor designs I've seen would not differentiate between a wet diaper and active wetting.

There was a previous thread I posted in here on DD titled "Pavlov's Diaper" I think. While Bettypooh and others here have shown that it may be possible to use TENS to cause contraction of the bladder detrusor or relaxation/inhibition of one or both urinary sphincters, I think that is likely to be much more complicated, such as electrode position varying from person to person. OTOH, classical conditioning should be reasonably effective on most people, as Terry said. In addition, the conditioning shouldn't be irreversable, which was one of the primary goals for this thread to begin with.

I think an interesting extension of this idea, provided the proof-of-concept works, would be to include reinforcement via a sound recording. The device would respond to whether the trainee is wetting or not, rewarding the trainee when they wet frequently and withholding audio reward when they are not. Above that would be pleasurable stimulation of some sort (I don't find TENS pleasurable using any setting, but I've heard that TENS and the e-stim used for sexual pleasure are somewhat different signals) applied as a reward and witheld when necessary. I think the thing to put it over the top would be to be able to detect the 'state' of the bladder. In the context of diaper training, it would be valuable to know whether the trainee is not wetting because they do not need to, or if the trainee is holding it (whether they're aware of it or not).

I come back to this idea every now and again, but I honestly think this conversation has pushed me in the right direction to make a little progress. It wouldn't be hard to design a circut to test sensor designs safely, and that's the first step.

Baby_Institute.pdf

Baby_Institute.pdf

[wetman]

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I'm not sure I can picture what Wetman suggested for a sensor.

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I'll try and think up something more precisely. I have got some kind of idea in the way of a DMCDC* which I might, at leisure, solidify a bit.

*Delta-Madent Comparative Detector Circuit **

** A project needs either a good name or some initialistic acronym that sends the bean counters into 'vegetable'-mode, otherwise you won't get any funds.

Opps, we're not at work here. Sorry.

[Creepymouse]

I'm just wondering if using a regular moisture sensor would work, by comparing the resistance using a microcontroller. Whether the sensor is in contact with a wet diaper or not, the resistance should fall off somewhat when new fluid is introduced into the area. Some soil moisture sensors follow the same principle, simply by measuring the resistance between electrodes in the soil (or in a gypsum form, to smooth out irregularities.) I'm not interested in HOW wet the diaper is, only an INCREASE in wetness, indication urination. Hmm...

Positioning could be a big factor in getting accurate readings. I imagine that a Texas-catheter would be a good base for a very reliable sensor, but perhaps not necessary.

There's probably something out there that would work perfectly, right out of the box, but I don't know what that would be.

Maybe Bettypooh would like to move this conversation into a new thread XD I kinda derailed it, though it is still somewhat connected to the original subject.

[wetman]

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I'm not interested in HOW wet the diaper is, only an INCREASE in wetness, indication urination.

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That was the idea behind the 'delta-madent' bit: to detect an upward slope of conductivity of one set of a pair of sets of sensors compared to the other set, to blank out the rising overall wetness of the nappy, and only trigger when a.) conductivity rises with a Δ larger than (1/ 200Ω)/ s * and b.) if it's wetter at that moment than the comparison sensor set in a 'not directly wetted at' position.

*Completely arbitrary figure, would of course need to be established by a series of tests.

[Bettypooh]

Creepymouse,

I'll move it if you want me to but it seems that you're still on topic to me. I have been following along with much interest and enjoying the thread, including this facet of it Some of the talk of programming and protocols is beyond me but the circuit stuff I can understand I have been thinking of the "new wetness sensor" in hope of helping, but all I can come up with at this point is that if the material used in the sensor body repelled moisture, it would only activate while new wetness appeared and as soon as the moisture was repelled it would go back to it's dormant state. Watching the action of water on teflon suggests that it may be such a material- water has no affinity for it, but I have yet to pee on my frying pan to see if urine acts differently Simple moisture sensor kits are available but are not 'graded'; they are either on or off. Perhaps using multiple devices (or multiple gates on a logic chip) with the sensor traces further apart for the wetter stages would work? I dunno.

I'm glad to see the continuing interest in safely adapting electronics to uses which may physically enhance ABDL enjoyment in any way, be it causing loss of control directly or indirectly or allowing wetness to be monitored remotely. I had written an unpublished story which I lost on my last HD crash that included a 'magic diaper' which could talk and said "I'm wet" when peed in and got louder the wetter it was. The story wasn't that good but my idea for 'electronic incontinence' took off from there and ended here and it's still going!

Bettypooh

[Creepymouse]

Sounds like a story I read, with a plot device virus called "BABIES" that causes horrible flu-like symptoms and permanent incontinence. At the end of the story, one of the products developed to help people cope with the epidemic of incontinence was a pager that notified them when it was changing time. XD

I recently saw a hack wherein the creator placed a conductive matrix in a pillow, and read back the resistance between the planes. When someone cried on the pillow (or...something else got it wet) it would sing a song from an electronic greeting card. lol

I gotta get myself a DMM :s

[Creepymouse]

Well, I came up with an experimental sensor to try, since I got a meter to test with. It's basically just a pair of diaper pins on the front and back of a soaker, with wires wound around them. That's the innermost soaker in a cloth diaper. I think the position may be a little low, but it seems to be working.

It didn't work for the first few minutes, probably since the wetness hadn't bridged the gap between the pins at first. It finally did start working after another wetting though. I tested while sitting at my desk, just to see if it would work. The resistance stabilizes between wettings, tending to inch higher as the wetness wicks away from the front-center where the sensor is. Even with the makeshift nature of the sensor, the resistance changes instantaneously at the start of a wetting. Oddly, the reading went UP occasionally, before dropping, I don't have an explanation for that. Either way, the change is dramatic enough that it should be possible to tell the difference between a wetting and movement.

Tiny wettings don't seem to pick up too well, probably just the ratio between new wetness and the existing moisture. The result seems promising. I wonder if a larger sensor area would improve the accuracy? Would one electrode on each side of the groin be more effective than between the layers? I still think false-positives will be a problem, but this looks pretty good.