www.incontinentsupport.org

The more my friends and family learn more about my incontinence and my willingness to offer advice, the more they share this info with their friends and family. This network gets larger and larger every year. I often refer them to this forum for advice or to certain companies to buy their products.
I can comfortably say that I know 30-40 people who have incontinence. The vast majority of these people have mild incontinence. Its stress incontinence that is managed with pads. I know some with moderate incontinence (urge or stress) and they typically use pads or protective underwear that are purchased from the local pharmacy/grocery store.
I know very few people who have severe incontinence who require diapers. In fact I only know 2 other people. One individual is active. The other individual is demented and bed-bound in a nursing home.
Based on my experience It seems that the market for diapers among active people is pretty small. I am sure this has implications for companies producing incontinence supplies.
This also raises the value of this forum because we can share our tips and experiences which may not be common.
Do other people share the same sentiment?

I think from a "global" perspective this view is correct - at last if you trust the statistics. How ever - for me I can say, that most of the people with incontinence I met where people in my local support group and I would say 70% of them had serious problems where pad's would’t help - maybe 40% of the 70% where doing ISC most of the other were using catheters or diapers.
The reason for this is most likely, that people with "minor" continence problems will not show up in such groups because they try to fix there problems while buying pads and try to cover there problem. The fear of talking about this is to high and if they go to a doc or talk about it, things had become mostly that serious that it can't be hided with a pad anymore.
This is is maybe one of the biggest problems with UIC because a lot of those who suffering from that had been helped better if they had found there way earlier to a specialist.

How ever - you're also right that there might be a tendency for "over protection". If I think about myself, I would say a formed pad will also work in 90% of the cases for me. The point is - that I don't like to risk the last 10%. This would be a absolut nogo in my job - and this was by the way a really complicated discussion with my health insurance that tooks nearly a year to win this fight. In the end they had to pay me back my expenses, but all in all I would say that this was the most disappointing part besides doing the tests until now.

fiacs: That's amazing that you know so many with incontinence issues. I have two friends that have had bouts of incontinence due to prostate cancer but only one still uses pads, the other doesn't but runs to the bathroom about once an hour. I suggested that he try a pad but he was visibly horrified at the thought and I dropped the subject. Both of these friends know of my incontinence and know that I wear "Depends" to handle it. They didn't seem interested to know more details of what protection I use so I left it at that.
Speaking of "Depends"... I found it interesting that you equated the different levels of incontinence with the level of protection used. That certainly makes sense on the surface, especially for the most minor forms of incontinence. However in my case I would consider that I have light/moderate incontinence, but in fact my supplies cabinet has everything from pads to MegaMax diapers in it. I find that regardless of my level of incontinence the situation and activities I anticipate for the day ahead dictate what protection I will use. For example for a day just around the house a light pull-up may suffice. For active yard work I use a premium pull-up with a compression pant to keep things in place. For a full day out and about or on long car trips the MegaMax diapers are my choice. At night I wear a quality pull-up with a cotton pad inside and PUL pants over it all. I'm not sure if everyone else varies their level of protection to this extent but it sure works well for me.
Finally I think that this forum is an invaluable resource for those with incontinence issues. With everything from JD's Diaper Primer to the zero judgmental emotional support one can get from others with the same condition I'm unaware of another place on the web so helpful. I think the only reason there aren't more members here is that they simply don't know of it's existence.

I wish I knew an equivalent number of people on Twitter - That would translate to some nice $$
All kidding aside. My wife's best friend has an absurdly lucrative multi-platform direct-to-consumer beauty product marketing business and my wife has been working with her before we met. Their clients/customers are pretty much all women.
Women seem to open up about their medical problems more easily than guys. Every week or so, my wife will tell me about a new female customer who confides about this problem.
You'd be surprised how quickly that adds up.