What Causes Electrodes To Lose Their 'Sticky'?
Excess moisture like water, sweat or even essential oils left on your skin can reduce the adhesiveness if it comes into contact with the electrodes. They can also dry out if they're left out of their sealable package.
How To Prolong The Life Of Your Electrodes
Dry your skin
Drying your skin before applying the electrodes is vital to prolonging the life of your electrodes.
Cleaning off oils
Ensuring the area of your skin being used is free from massage oils is important; you can use alcohol wipes if you're struggling to clean it off your skin.
Put away in between use
Place your electrodes back on their plastic backing and into their resealable package as soon as possible when you're not using them.
If you have got some electrodes that have started to lose their adhesiveness, you can help them by rubbing a small amount of water into the gel – it may seem slightly contradictory to what’s already been said about moisture on the skin, but it does help!
A few things you might want to consider when deciding if you’ll need a second set of electrodes when hiring or buying:
• Will you be using the TENS in the postpartum and/or pregnancy period as well as labour? If so, you may wish to grab an extra set (you already get one set with our hires or outright purchase options)
• Do you have any reason to believe you may experience prolonged early labour? (Potentially if you’re going off previous pregnancies or you have a significant pattern from your family) If so, you may wish to grab an extra set.
In saying all of this, when proper care is taken, their lives can be prolonged. I personally used our electrodes for 5 days of early labour, birth and then 10 days postpartum, and they were still holding up well.
Did you find you needed a spare set of electrodes? Or did you buy extra and find you didn’t need them?
